A Bohemian Heart That Died Of Indifference

The once vibrant bohemian heart of Sydney is now little more than a ghost town; with shuttered clubs and empty streets. And those forever signs: For Lease. For Lease. 

He had known this area so well as a teenager; been all over every little cranny, sat and watched the dawn from the top of buildings, the most beautiful scenes never easy to access. 

We came, we saw, and in this twinkling interests from afar, could only begin to understand why it was the way it was, this territory, his territory, as if he had once owned this place and was returning after decades away to examine the crumbling coach house and the neglected gardens. 

Of course everything overlaid everything in a city like this; a genuinely empty heart. He remained flabbergasted at how little people cared about the destruction of their own country, the absurdity of the Covid Scare, the contact tracing apps which were now a constant part of their repressed lives; even though there was barely a case in the entire state. 

For a disease you had almost no chance of dying from. 

Scott Morrison, who as a Pentecostal believes in the healing power of Christ, put on a great show of being the first to be infected with the flu vaccine. 

So suspicious was Old Alex of all the hooplah, the loss of freedoms, the destruction of the economy and the shameless self aggrandisement of the political class he wouldn't have been the least bit surprised to hear it was a dummy dose. That's how insane the whole madness had become.

He remained, as so many others commented, amazed at the subservience of the population; the general level of ignorance, the follow-the-leader docility of the mob. It was a shocking thing, but there it was. People didn't care about their fellow humans, they didn't care about the fate of the nation, they didn't care about their fellow Australians, they cared about their own little self-affirming circles and the measure of their comfortability. 

That was it. 

No grand ambitions ignited public sentiments in the Land of the Long Weekend.

So it was then; we gathered up the threads of our own past, the human past, and ignited in wave after wave like flashbacks, and pretended we weren't still young there amongst that species, when we could be young and old and fluid in time and reach back across our own timelines; when we could reach greater depths and soar ever higher than we had ever been able to do; there in their tormented youths and wild nights when everything from sobbing ecstasy to frantic desperation mirrored through their every waking moment.

Everyone was at war. Much was hidden. "They're early days," one of the Watchers on the Watch commented, noting the all too human adjustment Old Alex was experiencing after seeing his mother into a nursing home. 

Like every prolonged trauma or dispute, it took a while to recover from its resolution, although really all one should have felt was relief. 

We came we saw we conquered. 

Here in the very steps amid the very buildings he had spent his younger days he remembered incidents or traces of contempt or flashes of divine humour or the wall to wall flesh of a bygone, hedonistic era.

And we rose to face all our critics. 

Three detectives stood up and left the restaurant. "They're here because you are here." That same thought he had possessed in far less prosaic circumstance; enraptured by the divines, surrounded by glorious spirit, stunned anew at the fascinating beauty of this planet. 

All over again. 

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Smug Scott was nowhere to be seen for most of this week. This was a change as Smug Scott has become a fixture of the political landscape, as much as its owner, Prime Minister Morrison, might want a different face for the nation.

There are always hints of Smug Scott, that self satisfaction from someone who publicly believes he has a “flow brain” which is explained as a high achiever being “in the zone” after completing a challenging task.

It’s not just for people who aim high. They reckon kids who overdose on video games experience intense “flow brain”.

Scott Morrison says he’s got his own “flow brain” and he uses it. It helped him get us mere mortals through the challenges of the Plague Year apparently.

You see it when he thinks he’s lauding it over his opponent in parliament, Labor’s Anthony Albanese. You also see when he closes his eyes and raises his open palm in one of those strategically let loose videos of one of his prosperity gospel churches on a busy Sunday.

This week it was parked in the “who can I blame for this?” room in the prime ministerial suite on Parliament’s south-western side.