A Moment Settled

As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment. 

Then gradually time awakened again and moved sluggishly on. The horses stamped on the other side of the feeding racks and the halter chains clinked. Outside, the men's voices became louder and clearer.  

Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck.

If then in that camp, if then in this moment, the sun shone, "an alien spacecraft" as the weak joke went, after months of incessant, strangely compelling, incessant rain, leaving the ground saturated, brains waterlogged, a furious and indiscriminate affair, a moment in time, a peoples he could not relate to nor barely understand, a moment, because they were young, because their lives were in front of them, because enveloped in their own lives, loves, children, work, friendships, they didn't care about the things he cared about; and none of it mattered.

These things wheeled through time. They settled in valleys. They moved across the waters. They were a distributed intelligence and something else entirely; they were beyond human comprehension and yet here we were. 

The distance, the awkward embrace, the transmission from past to future, from human to something else. All their research, all their bullying, all their steamrolling and gaslighting and pantomime tasks, their earnest gatherings, were for nought. We would function exactly as we saw fit. We would transmit the secrets you so desperately sought exactly how we intended to go on, not just through distributed intelligence but through a kind of crowd funding, a gathering of multiples, a thing that worked not just through one but through many, like linked computers, and those who understood would understand, and the rest, it did not matter. Leave them in peace. 

The evil that had gripped this most beautiful of planets was now, one by tawdry finger after the other, being lifted or disentangled from this place. Those who had committed these crimes, they now lay exposed for everyone to see, for any thinking person to see. 

They could not, would not escape. We would not allow it. 

There was a vengeance to be sure, in their own lives, in their own milieus, as the things they most valued were lost, and they were flayed in the public square, their reputations in ruins, their fortunes ready for the harvesting by others; for all would seek revenge for the damage they had done.

It was like that, it was a steady reckoning across time. 

He, personally, would fulfil his duty; was simply doing his duty.

He could not be hurt. 

The parallel things that came here; their necessarily feeble attempts to understand, for the human cells could not carry the complex computation required, but none of it mattered; none of it; for these seasons came and went, these fragile, tenuous trails from past to future would function as a higher intelligence already planned, could already see, and so it was left to the rest of us to simply do our duty. 

To be kind, compassionate, to care when others did not; to be something else when they could not see; so he watched with wonder as young families walked along the shore, their kids, their dogs, their smiles, their laughter, their clear content within themselves. 

None of these he felt; in any normal sense. Those dreams of the future drummed through to something that had to be built in the here and now. 

And thus it was, and so it would become. 

We would embrace you if and when it suited us. Nothing could be stopped now, not this, this peculiar moment, this train of thought across multiples, this future and this past, this path. 

Blessed art thou.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

Long traffic jams before Easter long weekend plague NSW
Savannah Meacham 5 hrs ago


COVID-19 disruptions hold back preschool-aged students' development

Extensive traffic delays are building across New South Wales as the Easter long weekend begins.

Many travellers are heading off early to try and avoid the notoriously bad traffic that plagues the state before Good Friday.

Significant delays are expected this afternoon.

READ MORE: Qantas insider reveals why calls cut off after hours on hold

© 9News Heavy traffic beginning in Sydney ahead of Easter long weekend.

Traffic along the M1 Pacific Motorway at Cowan and Mount White is bumper to bumper as travellers head north.



Video: Rail and roads in Blue Mountains still impacted by rain (ABC NEWS)

Rail and roads in Blue Mountains still impacted by rain


The delays are also heavy around the Hawkesbury Bridge north to Mooney Mooney.

Travellers should also expect traffic around Heatherbrae, Beresfield, Tarro and Hexham in the Hunter.

© 9News The M7 is seeing traffic delays as the long weekend begins.

On the NSW south coast, motorists have been urged to allow extra time on the Princes Highway through Nowra.

"Motorists travelling over the holiday period are advised to allow extra travel time and take regular breaks," Live Traffic said.

Other roads including the NorthConnex, the Hume Highway and the Great Western Highway are forecast to see hold-ups over the coming hours.


THE SPECTATOR



Get your tickets for TV’s six week election ‘circus’
John Simpson

Getty Images


John Simpson

13 April 2022

12:00 PM

THE SPECTATOR


We’re off and running in the circus that is the 2022 election campaign and day one (of 42) didn’t disappoint.

Elections have always been contests between producers of ‘hot air’. Anthony Albanese wishes he’d produced a little less of it at his first campaign media briefing. Calamitous doesn’t come close to his inability to recall basic economic data in answer to media questions. This, from the aspiring Prime Minister.

Here in Australia, however, we’re not just talking about our elected ‘hot air’ producers – we’re speaking of the hundreds of hacks ‘employed’ in broadcast media, mostly in Canberra (but also dotted around the country) who frequently bring us their penetrating political insights. Hot air is their ‘stock in trade’. Vast volumes of it.

No network beats the ABC in peddling demeaning garbage at election time. In the hour before the April 10 announcement of the election, Patricia Karvelas excitedly announced the PM’s plane landing in Canberra, the route he’d take to Yarralumla, and whether his coffee with the Governor-General would be decaf or not. Could public broadcasting get more depressingly banal than that?

Politicians themselves are today nothing more than ‘two-bit’ players in the tawdry, over-hyped stage shows that Australian elections have become. Even ‘set-term’ elections at state level are trumpeted as somehow worthy of more of our attention than we would usually give to daily movements in the price of shellfish.

With all the excitement frothed up by our TV networks over the federal election, voters might be excused for thinking something truly momentous is unfolding.

Don’t be fooled. It’s merely another election we all knew was coming. While the democratic process is not, in any respect, unimportant – the antics of television media following the leaders is all too depressingly familiar.

As the number of self-styled political experts in TV-land has grown by a factor of ten in the last 48-hours, now is certainly not the time to take an intelligent interest in the nation’s political process. Under no circumstances expect anything even remotely cognitive from those claiming to be television’s elite political ‘analysts.’ Cognition is not their strong suit.

Way too many reporters of politics have confused ‘longevity’ with ‘expertise’. They reckon they’re ‘experts’ merely by being time servers in the Capital. Time in Canberra merely serves to make them more jaded than the rest of us and certainly does not bestow ‘expertise’.

At peak times, some 300 reporters, technicians, and camera operators make up the media contingent in Canberra’s Parliament House. Yes – 300!

This appalling truth brings to mind the prescient observation of the great American CBS television anchor, Walter Cronkite, who once said of Australia, ‘Too many journalists, not enough news…’ Walter captures my point crisply. Does anyone truly believe the Australian federal election will have registered even the slightest tremor in Wycheproof, Whitehall, or Washington? And yet the networks have gone into a frenzy.