Ancient Horizons
You are not alone, it seems. So they told him. All war is deception. His head was more disconnected than ever, merging with a non-human lifeform, or forms. That same white leering frightening image on the horizon, which he realised now came from a white toy that had terrified him as a child. For beyond the horizon, beyond sleep, beyond ourselves lay a vast unknown, and yet there it was. Frightening. And they kept saying: Be Not Afraid. But there it was, swept up in the infinite, who could not be afraid?
They were gathering in the reaches, along the cliff edges, the time machines were once again blinking in and out of consciousness, and the ancients, for they were truly ancient, held sway, and were part of us, part of us all. Here, now. For what purpose? He did not know. These tiny grasps in time, leaching on to a human, the immense circle, the gathering storm, the sea eagles that came for us, the mice afraid in the brush, these glimmers of consciousness that were here and gone, our lives a mist. Be Not Afraid.
There were some Christians nearby, he heard them pray for salvation and redemption. Once again someone in the neighbourhood had been diagnosed with cancer, or were about to be. Eaten alive. They stared or peered under the hood, and there was a whole world eating itself. We were all plant food at the end of the day. The mycelium spread everywhere, into everything. Those strange images over the horizon, a white cartoon face, black eyes, a toy, a memory. The country: it was increasingly impoverished.
They held no faith in their political leaders, how could they after the fraud that had been perpetrated on them. Safe and effective. They said. Renewables: cheap and reliable. Three word slogans, because no one could take in anything more complex. Slogans. Trash. A trashy culture. A voice where none mattered. An ear where none heard. Humus where nothing grew. A dead forest. That was this place.
Now he built a garden, and a different sense of time took over. He planted a Turkish fig and an Assyrian fig, if he got that right, perhaps Syrian. He didn't know. He didn't care. Things took their rightful place.
He could Old Deb, and once again they lamented over Lisa's parting. The body still hadn't been released, strange to think of her as a body on a slab, she had been so very much alive, a woman with all her surrounding charm, as if they took up more space than their mere physical presence, radiating warmth, fun, personality. That was it. They were here and then they were gone. We are the ancients. And we come to teach you something about the nature of life itself. Beware the unborn.
MAINSTREAM MEDIA
THE NEW DAILY
More police patrols and family service officers will be on the streets of Alice Springs after the violence-hit town emerges from its “successful” youth curfew experiment.
An additional 25 police officers and increased Territory Families staff will remain stationed in the town’s safety hub to allay fears that crime could once again flare up.
SKY NEWS
The week has ended in tragedy for Western Sydney after a teenage boy has been killed and another boy, 19, has been taken to Westmead Hospital in a serious condition after multiple stabbings on Friday.
As details emerge from the harrowing incident, New South Wales Police have said the stabbings are believed to be related to Western Sydney's infamous postcode wars.
GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Salman Rushdie has said that his first thought upon seeing the man who would stab him on stage in August 2022 was: “So it’s you. Here you are.”
“It felt like something coming out of the distant past and trying to drag me back in time, if you like, back into that distant past, in order to kill me,” said the Indian-born British-American author of books including The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children.