Seen Better Days

*





And I saw it coming
I saw emptiness and tragedy
And I felt like running
So far away
But knew I had to stay
And I know when I'm older
I look back and I still feel the pain
I know I'll be stronger and I know I'll be fine
For the rest of my days

I've seen better days
Put my face in my hands
Get down on my knees and I pray to God
Hope he sees me through till the end

I noticed the smallest things
But I didn't notice the change
It was hot in the morning
Then it turned so cold, twas the end of the day
There was no condensation I just felt like I was in space
I needed my friends there I just turned around
They were gone without a trace

I've seen better days
Put my face in my hands
Get down on my knees and I pray to God
Hope he sees me through till the end

Now I have just started
And I won't be done till the end
There's nothing I have lost
That was once placed upon the palm of my hands
And all of these hard times
Have faded round the bend
Now that I'm wiser I cannot wait
Till I can help my friends

I've seen better days
Put my face in my hands
Get down on my knees and I pray to God
Hope he sees me through till the end

Seen better days
Put my face in my hands
Get down on my knees and I pray to God
Hope he sees me through till the end.

Pete Murray, Seen Better Days.




He caught sight of him, just another old man sitting on a rock by the beach, watching the sun set. In front of them a pregnant woman struggled with a toddler, while her handsome young husband carried the picnic equipment. Creatures at an entirely different part of the life cycle. The surf was flat, not quite Venice but a beauty for which others would pay a great deal to see. It was a part of the Australian psyche, these gorgeous scenes, the reflecting ponds beneath the cliffs, the suck and thunder of the waves, the mill pond still surface of the public swimming pool, the snorkler breaking the surface in an assault on time itself. The coal ships lay off on the horizon, waiting for clearance to go into port. For a moment he wished he was out there, away from the land, away from all this dying.

Colin stopped taking his anti-viral medications five months ago; and is now dangerously thin. Already this year he's been in hospital for a tumour on his bladder, a heart attack and a broken jaw after he fell. You should take that sustagen stuff, he said, you're very thin, dangerously thin. Colin laughed. HIV, the diet that works, he quipped. Why did you stop the medication? he asked. Was it making you sick? That, too, he said. I've just decided I've had enough. I wandered into one of the wards by accident when I was visiting the other day and they all knew me, Hi Col, you back love? They know me too well. He tells the story twice. The
HIV has already gone to his brain.

He brought him a book to read, but there was no point. He'd be lucky to get through the books he already had. He cooked a delicious dinner, at odds wit their circumstances, his gaunt, yellow face, his Belsen thin arms and legs. Stick like, they say, and he could see where the analogy came from. He expressed surprise at the excellent dinner. I knew you were coming, he said. What was the happiest time of your life? he asked, the seventies? Because it was the late sixties, early sevfenties when he first met him, always the party boy, always outrageous, not well darling, not well, he would gasp, as he flung himself onto a counch, in the land of mandrax.

Way back then, way back when Colin had been a teenager, they had all been part of that scene that focussed around Harry, in that old terrace overlooking Woolloomoolloo, before a view of Sydney came to be worth a million dollars plus. He would be sitting up in bed naked, with Philip McCarthy, the wild one, and the pair of them would take any opportunity to get stoned, again, and romp, again. In the era when gay couples were not commonplace and their adventurism and devotion to each other was as astonishing to us as it was affronting to every body else. Got a problem, love?

And now we were two old men watching the sunset, listening to the lap and suck of the sea, watching as the lights came on the coal boats dotting the horizon. I wish I'd learnt to sing, to follow that, it was something I always wanted to do, he said, and began singing some song to himself he did not recognise. Whatever hopes he had had in life, it was too late now. Why did you stop the tablets, he asked again, rather than skirting around the subject. After Tom died, he shrugged. There's just no quality of life.

There was the peace of the dying in the small, housing commission flat, the neat, well cared for gardens, the way he has pulled his world into this tiny, pleasant, humble place. The late 80s, early 90s, he said, in relation to the question on the best time of his life. Living with Howard, he said. Howard was the astonishingly handsome young man he had spotted through his office window, all clad in leather, climbing off his motor bike, when his heart went thump. He had been working as an AIDS councillor for the health department, an expert on HIV, an educator teaching people how not to catch the virus sweeping the world. They had their face to face, client health officer interview; and shut the door, and rolled on the floor in a moment of instant passion. And later that night, met up again, and in the throws of all that instantaneous lust the condom had burst. And he knew immediately, he says, that that was it; he had it. Howard lived for another three years; they were inseparable. And 12 years later, having outlived all his lovers, at the age of 56, Colin is preparing to join them.





THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/angry-libs-have-had-a-gutful-of-costello/2008/09/13/1220857899019.html


Angry Libs have had a gutful of Costello

Kerry-Anne Walsh Political Correspondent
September 14, 2008

LIBERAL MPs are bracing for another week of destructive stage strutting by Peter Costello, who Treasurer Wayne Swan has labelled an egomaniac.

Mr Costello, who is promoting his memoirs - an extract of which appears in today's Sun-Herald Extra liftout - killed off his leadership ambitions in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald last week.

But his father-in-law Peter Coleman - who co-authored the book - muddied the waters yesterday when he said there was still a chance Mr Costello would become Liberal leader.

"Yes, there's a crack in the door," he told Channel Nine. "I think it's fair to say that option is not 100 per cent closed off. While he is in the Parliament it remains a possibility."

And last night Mr Coleman told The Sun-Herald his son-in-law hadn't "totally slammed the door" on the job.

Mr Costello's brother, Tim, added to the Coalition's woes yesterday by saying the Liberal leadership speculation would not stop until his brother leaves Parliament.

"While he continues to serve the people who elected him, the people of Higgins [in Victoria], and feels he's got a job to do there, there will be speculation," he told ABC Radio.

"And it will only be more intense if the polling shows that the Liberal Party is still struggling enormously."

Anger is increasing in Liberal ranks at Mr Costello's centre-stage antics as he prepares to launch his book at the National Press Club in Canberra. Reports that he wants to stay in Parliament to block Malcolm Turnbull from ascending to the Liberal leadership yesterday sent some MPs into orbit.

"We've had a gutful of him. What on Earth is he doing?" one exasperated senior Liberal MP said.

"He's causing chaos," said another. "I wouldn't be surprised if he got a visit from a few people telling him to pull his head in. He's killing us."

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24342808-5006009,00.html

ANGRY council voters across Sydney gave Labor candidates a kicking yesterday in an ominous warning to new Premier Nathan Rees.

Despite efforts to hide the Labor brand on how-to-vote material, the ALP experienced solid swings against candidates in traditional council strongholds, particularly in western Sydney.

The result capped off a devastating week for Mr Rees, who learned from the media yesterday that he was facing yet another by-election.

Failed Health Minister Reba Meagher joined the rats jumping from Labor's sinking ship by announcing her decision to quit NSW politics.

She said she decided to retire while handing out how-to-vote cards for yesterday's council elections.

Dumped planning minister Frank Sartor is now considering his future.

Mr Rees is facing at least four potentially damaging by-elections before the end of the year at a cost of more than $1million.
So damaged is the ALP brand that Labor candidates in yesterday's local government elections went to great lengths to distance themselves from the NSW Labor Government to try to avoid a rout.
Voters who turned up in Sydney, Marrickville and Leichhardt were confronted by Labor candidates campaigning under a new banner: Local Labor.
At Kiama, members of disgraced ex-police minister Matt Brown's party contested the election as Community First candidates and dropped any affiliation with the Labor Party.
At Orange, Country Labor candidates not only ran as unaffiliated but allegedly used masking tape to hide the word ``Labor'' on campaign posters.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24338763-1242,00.html

MICHAEL Costa has called for state governments to be abolished, declaring the NSW political system is morally corrupt and no longer serves the public good.

A week after resigning as treasurer, in an exclusive essay written for The Daily Telegraph, Mr Costa said the Government was dominated by "spin merchants" and "machine politicians" unqualified to govern.

Mr Costa claims the Premier's office had tried - unsuccessfully -- to take credit for economic figures they had no control over.

Health, transport and education had become focussed on keeping doctors, rail unions and lobby groups happy instead of serving patients, commuters and the public.

In a swipe at past premiers, Mr Costa said only one of the last five had ever managed a key portfolio, which were "always under-resourced relative to public expectations".

"It is no secret if a premier wants to diminish the status of a potential rival they are given one of these portfolios," he said.

The system had become such that in these portfolios buying off interest groups was often the best strategy for survival.

"Leave a portfolio with an interest group happy and you are a success. The cost is for someone else to worry about. The strongest argument for abolishing state governments is that it would remove a layer of political interference in service delivery."

Mr Costa claimed the Labor Party's head office was calling the shots in NSW and its role in deciding the new Rees Cabinet should be held up to scrutiny.

"The inept attempt by Labor Head office to unseat premier Iemma, the subsequent elevation of a so called "left-winger" to the premiership in a caucus nominally dominated by the Labor Right and the acknowledged unprecedented influence of head office in the selection of the Cabinet means rightly more public and media scrutiny is required of these positions," he wrote.

Mr Costa's extraordinary appraisal of the institution he has served for the past seven years, as a member of the Upper House and a minister, came as new Premier Nathan Rees confirmed that Wollongong MP Noreen Hay would also be dumped from a senior job over her involvement in the Matt Brown scandal.

It can also be revealed that Mr Rees fronted a meeting of his party bosses in a surprise appearance at head office yesterday to declare he was now "the boss" and would not tolerate internal warfare within the Labor Party.





Murals alongside Redfern Station, Sydney, Australia.