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| NSW, Australia |
And then, they sat out on the headlands and watched time pool out to see, watched it pool in the carpark, cranked the music right up. They couldn't have been here if they hadn't been there. Sometimes he went straight back into an irritable old routine. There was so much to do. Sometimes, frightened of the future, he felt overwhelmed. At others, one foot passed in front of another. They were the good guys the ones who gathered for coffee. The beachside suburbs, with their sleeping houses, had barely altered since the 1960s. The same lads gathered and strutted and hung, talked rubbish, saw one day end and another begin. Time coalesced around him, as if he could feel its drapes. There wasn't a sad song, there was no song. Themes ran dry, rivers ran on empty. Curdled, he had forgotten more than he had ever learnt. We, too, were captured, sitting there, looking out to sea.
Spooked, he followed their performance, always just out of reach. Out of sight, but not out of mind. The fear that he had known dissipated into another terror. Come right up, take a bow. How hard were these people to throw off? So, constantly concerned that the sheets would be thrown off, that once again he would have to wade through treacles of ridicule, he remained unknown, even to himself. Just another old man passing through. Someone who, perhaps, should never have been. The ocean, infinity, if that's what it represented, moved in a kind of eternal pattern, waves breaking on the shore. There was nothing to say. Every lad hanging by their car had one impulse, and never spoke. All was gladness and good tidings, or a dank, liquid fear. Or nostalgia for a time that was, and would never be again. Not for him; only for others. There was no way back.
He could not see a solution to this wavering dark. Except to get up and go on as before. One step in front of another, as they insisted. All full moons and crazy laughter. All a river on which he could not fly. All a circumstance that would never come again. There was no way to replay a sense of newness, to do things for the first time, not the last, to step off the cliff and land safely. The salt in the air seemed to give it an extra layer of density. All causual, menopausal, monsoonal. Flashes of other places; and then here, amidst the brooding houses. It wouldn't, couldn't, go on forever. Deeply restless, he turned, as if to confront them, but there was no one there. Phantasms locked away, telling him to move on. That was all. And so, eventually, barefoot, humble in the market place, he knelt down in the carpark and prayed. Let me be free.
They watched as other idle groups gathered and roamed. They all knew everybody. There was nothing else to do, go to someone's house, or hang. Make comments about the girls. Hey bitch. But it was all harmless, and free. No one could walk past without comment. He's a right c... A whale splashed out to sea, its tail lit by moonlight. The music cranked. He would never be in love again. So these idol moments, beads of eternity strung along a shore, were all that he could hope for, ever on the outside, barely looking in. He was yet to embrace his destiny; the next part of the journey. Arise, be blessed. Gaze on cathedrals which took hundreds of years to build. Travel constantly, from one blessed hotel room to the next. Making routines for weeks, or months, and then gone again. There was only the work, a constant thread. It would have to do for continuity. For a stable life form. For an entity beyond mere longings. For the documenter of an age. For a being in crisis. For an intense moment which was gone barely before it formed. "The tracks of my tears," a corny song, blared briefly before an appalled young man quickly changed the channel.
The whale splashed out to sea again, on its annual migration back down to the ice. He said nothing. He didn't want anyone to know who he really was. Or how lost it was possible to feel.
THE BIGGER STORY:
FOR 14 long hours over the weekend, Tony Abbott was just one of 1392 anonymous, sooty-faced firefighters battling to keep the relentless NSW bushfires at bay.
His favoured white-shirt-blue-tie combo was swapped for yellow overalls as Australia's 28th prime minister joined his Davidson RFS brigade on a back-burning operation in Bilpin, near the Blue Mountains, for a night shift that began at 6pm Saturday and finished at 8am yesterday.
If not for a couple of photos circulating on Twitter, it's a fair chance that Mr Abbott's weekend exploits would have gone unnoticed.
His office did not issue a statement until the blurry image of the PM giving the thumbs-up from behind the wheel of a fire truck appeared on the social media site.
While many Twitter followers praised his volunteering spirit, others questioned the wisdom of the nation's leader putting himself in the line of fire.
But for Mr Abbott, it was just another day as a volunteer firey with his local brigade, something he has been doing since 2001.
Prior to the election, Mr Abbott, a keen cyclist, runner, surf lifesaver and firefighting volunteer, vowed to continue his community activities should he assume the prime ministership.
Last month, his NSW Rural Fire Service brigade captain Trent Dowling told The Australian the Prime Minister was just another volunteer when he was on firefighting duties.
"It is the whole thing the brigade and the service is built on," Mr Dowling said. "It doesn't matter what you do outside, whether you are a plumber, a student, unemployed or, in this case, the Prime Minister. The rule that we have at our station is once you pull that uniform on, everyone is in the same boat.
"Anyone who bags him for pulling on the uniform and thinks it is a picture opportunity, I would suggest they do the course and join the brigade and come and see what we do."
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