Retreat, Withdrawal

*



Well I don't dare close my eyes and I don't dare wink
Maybe in the next life I'll be able to hear myself think
Feel like talking to somebody but I just don't know who
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you

The last thing you said before you hit the street
"Gonna find me a janitor to sweep me off my feet"
I said, "That's all right mama.... you..... you do what you gotta do"
Well, I'm tryin' to get closer; I'm still a million miles from you

Rock me, pretty baby, rock me 'til everything gets real
Rock me for a little while, rock me 'til there's nothing left to feel
And I'll rock you too
I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you

Well, there's voices in the night trying to be heard
I'm sitting here listening to every mind polluting word
I know plenty of people who would put me up for a day or two
Yes, I'm tryin' to get closer but I'm still a million miles from you

Bob Dylan.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.
Pablo Picasso.



He wanted everything to be altered, of course, into the clearest light, the newest beginnings. The air was so clear, the water in the stream crystal. He had dropped a block of hash into that very same stream, back in the seventies; a loss which had been quite disastrous at the time. The old man in the shack had died and he had taken over his shack while his old man was away flying. They painted it all different colours, hung chains from one corner to another. His father, returning from his role as captain of a Jumbo, was horrified, when he eventually found out. Thought they were the most dreadful bunch of hippies. Thought his son beyond hopeless. He couldn't have been that mistaken. He couldn't bear the way things had gone so dull. Beneath the radar, there was no redemption. The antibiotics continued to fail. Partially, anywaqy. There was lingering pain, and therefore lingering discontent.

The city is quiet with the Easter holidays. Even the shouting in the backlanes seems to have subsided, although perhaps he had just been sleeping away the jaded hours. We were welcome. We were being embraced by a universal love. He kept opening the door; and falling through into the emptiness on the other side. Insistant, demanding dreams. Body pains. He was not classified, not yet. He wanted the eternal party, longed for it. Characters, the man said, so pretty, so casually under-dressed, stage managing A Distance Too Far, or some such title, at the Griffith Theatre. It's been called many things over the years, Nimrod. The city was no longer a village and strangers were everywhere. Only here in Redfern did they stay tightly knit; and even then there was many a squabble.

Brigette was at the centre of a good deal of the squabbling, he wasn't sure why. She rounded on the handsome tradie with his work boots and ruffled hair. Stop staring at me like that, you're a creep, I don't want you anywhere near me. Brigette was 40 and could wish herself so lucky; the man, fit, muscular, handsome as, had been charming us all in a joke telling competition. The seven dwarfs have an audience with the Pope. They ask him if there are any dwarf nuns in the Vatican. No, he replies. In Italy? they ask. No he replies. In Europe? they ask. No, he replies. In the world? they ask. The Pope goes off and consults with his advisers; returns with the answer, No, not in the entire world. Suddenly they burst out chanting: Dopey f'd a penguin, Dopey f'd a penguin. And we all laughed and he couldn't have been more charming until Brigette arrived.

It was of course the spirits that lived in the trees and the complex communities surviving underground which made all the difference. Brigette continued to explode. It turned out they had slept together, or he had slunk into her drunken bed, whatever the story she wasn't happy. You're a fruitcake, he said, and Jason joined in, what is this, why are you acting like this? He's a nice looking bloke, someone else said quietly, he seems like a nice bloke. But nothing would calm her. I'm not looking at you, he said, shielding his face; and shortly after disappeared. He missed him. His very flesh was charismatic. Everything was in the absence. He didn't realise, until he caught a flash of possibility in the most unlikely place, on the most unlikely day, how starved he was.

These terrible truths, from the hunted to the hunter, continued to haunt him, even now when his new clothes and sophisticated pose created a new trail. If everything was so vulnerable, why make it true? He wanted to step through the door and find a different place. Every day seemed much like the last; and it just wasn't right. But change was also frightening. Only now was he approaching the relic of one of the buildings he had been caught between, the one on the right, as if there was no point in returning to somewhere he already knew. You're destined, destined, the voice said, and he approached the ruins as if every mistake he had ever made was contained inside, as if this really was the final defeat.

There was still time. He knew there was another life out on the road outside the city, through the garbage dumps which had once been suburbs; even satellite towns now crusted ruins. Burnt. Pillaged. He could hide or he could flee. They were his only options. He didn't want to be out in the open much longer. Everyhwere there was danger, brought on by his own stupidity. Your shadows, your death. Your brilliant hopes lying in shards oo the ground, broken glass on broken concrete. If only he had been wiser. If only he had been truer. This devestation, the after affects of the rioting, was not entirely his fault, but mirrored a deeper tale of woe and betrayal. Of compromise. Of an entirely unsettled being, dishonest to the core of its own chimeric being, not even an eye anymore, the all-seeing eye he had purported to be, just nothing at all.



THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/04/11/2540804.htm?section=justin

Some Daly River residents are holding the Northern Territory Government responsible for the suspected death of a man feared taken by a saltwater crocodile yesterday.

It is the second time someone has gone missing while swimming across the swollen river.

Relatives say they watched on as the 20-year-old man disappeared underwater in the croc infested river yesterday morning.

Officers have permission to shoot and kill the four metre saltwater croc they believe is responsible for the attack.

The Territory Government promised to raise the Daly River crossing eight years ago, but still has not done it.

Garry Higgins helped coordinate the search for the missing man and says if the crossing was raised, people would not be trying to swim across the river.

"This incident I think was preventable," he said.

"The only reason it occurred was because we have got 4,000 people on this side of the river and there's no means of access other than to cross by boat or swim and in this instance the person swam.

"The NT Government committed to lift the crossing or build a bridge prior to their first term in office.

"We have yet to see anything start with that. If that had been built this wouldn't have occurred. These people would be able to actually drive across the crossing."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jkcWIUobzfe0DCXm1fJn_Xfj_QpgD97FRJ100

Tears, tributes as Italy mourns its quake dead

By VANESSA GERA and ARIEL DAVID – 1 hour ago

L'AQUILA, Italy (AP) — It was a scene that moved a nation: mourners clinging to one another and sobbing over neat rows of more than 200 coffins, some with the tiny caskets of children resting on top.

Italians joined in an outpouring of grief on Good Friday as victims of Italy's most devastating earthquake in a generation were remembered at an open-air funeral Mass in the hard-hit city L'Aquila.

In Rome, Pope Benedict XVI urged survivors not to give up, praying at the end of the Good Friday torch-let Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum that they may see the "star of hope." And Premier Silvio Berlusconi captured the pathos that swept the country, wondering aloud: "How can one not be moved by so much pain?"

The 6.3-magnitude temblor — which killed at least 290 people and left nearly 40,000 homeless — struck Monday at the start of Holy Week, heightening the suffering in this deeply Roman Catholic country.

On Friday evening, hours after the funeral, rescue crews started digging in the rubble of an apartment building in L'Aquila after dogs trained to look for survivors indicated that some life might be in the debris, Civil Protection spokesman Luca Spoletini said.

But officials cautioned against concluding there was a survivor.

"We will continue to dig until we have absolute certainty" that no one is alive, said Fire Cmdr. Antonio Gambardella, "but we have no illusions."

"We heard a ticking, a steady noise, but it could be water, or noise from a refrigerator," he said. Or the dogs might have sniffed out an odor left by people who had already been found.

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1608999/story.jhtml

BEVERLY HILLS, California — As anybody with an Internet connection knows by now, J.J. Abrams' highly anticipated "Star Trek" reboot premiered in Texas this week, and those who've seen the film say that the franchise's future is bright. In all the known galaxies, there is no one happier to hear this than the new crew of the USS Enterprise.

"I saw the movie and, for me, I was proud to be a part of it and to be one of the contributing factors that add up to make this whole experience," Zachary Quinto explained recently when we spoke with him about taking on the pointy ears of Mr. Spock. "Now it's about inviting people to come along with us, and to let people know that we really made this movie from a place of respect and from a place of celebration for what came before."

Asked which scene in the movie was her favorite, new Uhura Zoe Saldana didn't waste any time. "I think it's that space dive," she said of the high-adrenaline moment that features Kirk (Chris Pine), Sulu (John Cho) and an unlucky redshirt (is there any other kind?) parachuting out of a space shuttle above Vulcan and onto a Narada drilling-rig platform, as glimpsed in the trailer. "I keep talking about it, but [it's like] when you used to see those shows on MTV that had the most extreme sports with Dan Cortese — it's so awesome. ... J.J. took that and multiplied it times a million. Not only are these guys skydiving, it's a space dive!

"That's as far as I'm going to go because even just talking about it, my palms get sweaty," Saldana laughed. "It's the most engaging scene in my opinion, and Sulu and Kirk look so damn hot that I'm beside myself."