Before The Alcohol Ate His Body

*

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden

Well we were crippled by the side of the mountain, away from the beach, as if we had been walking towards the desert but failed. For across the mountain lay another mountain, and no one from our village had ventured further. In stories, that was all, there were men on horseback and privileged fights, carousing in sophisticated taverns, away from the quiet, incestuous village life. We released the dog and gazed after it lovingly, our substitute child we had loved so much. Everything to us in the cold London winters. A long way from the outpost from whence we came.

The speed they scored down Chelsea Road kept them all awake, the toxicity of their pleasures raising no doubts, for there was no tomorrow, only the dawn, the embrace, the inappropriate randiness, the knives drawn if you threatened to leave. It was so vivid and yet so shameful. So many had promised to cure him; and failed. He could see the whack whack whack of the crystal light in the turgid dark of the London suburbs; densely populated, aching with history. He was always the emissary, the one sent out to score. Out in the streets when no one else wanted to be out; haunting Vauxhall when the snow piled in the corners of the streets and the pubs, which they rarely had money to venture into, churned out a foreign world of which he would never be a part.

Richard was always there, at two am, when everybody else was asleep, downing shots of Drambuie or Tia Maria or some exotic cocktail he had lifted from his place of work, speeding of his head, always happy to see you, his old mate from Australia, his dark mentor, the one that had introduced him to William Burroughs and the merry dance; the plain sacrifice, the glass raised; his handsome face, his dark limpid eyes, always part of our fantasy and our lives. He was beautiful, simply beautiful, in his unadorned way, and we all adored him. He would embrace us, not knowing what he did to our hearts, and that would be the end of it, as they shuffled into the crippled dawn.

Richard is dead now because they're all dead now. If it wasn't AIDS it was overdoses, and in his fragmented self, in the shadows where he had once lived, that face resonated as the spirit of adventure, as a beloved man, as everything we held dear. Him and Stephen drinking in the bar at the London School of Economics, drinking the afternoon away and laughing in delight at their shared jokes. And he flitted past, even then not able to drink in the same quantity. They laughed and share their jokes, and greeted him as the writer, sure that one day he would write their story too, the silent observer, the court poet.

They could see from the bar windows into their backyards, the Hollyhocks in astonishing bloom, here in the centre of London, ten minutes from Trafalgar Square. He was shadowed in his own guilt and felt as if he was being followed, always, about to be exposed for the criminal he was, a fraud more interested in being plastered than in producing the lines of lyricism they all expected. Every now and then something was published, as he interviewed famous author after famous author, lunching with Joseph Heller, wrinkling their foreheads at the antics of Norman Mailer, being welcomed into Gore Vidal's room at Claridges. Please don't be overwhelmed, he said in his sweeping way, welcoming them in.

And yet they sat on the balcony of that bar and pissed the afternoons away. And everything they thought they were going to achieve never happened. The book he had laboured so hard over fell flat on a spike of rejection slips. Stephen worked as a nurse and all his various enterprises, playing the harp, becoming an osteopath, creating a home for wealthy queens, none of them were happening yet; the days when he was to become a doctor far off. And as for Richard himself, the centre of our entrancement, he drank and he drank in those days when he could still be fabulous, in those days before the alcohol ate his body and the pills left him a mumbling wreck, and those affectionate embraces he reserved for his loyal circle of friends; they became the embraces of a dying man, a tragedy within themselves. He excused himself and wenwt back to the typewriter; something had to work sometime.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25090812-5001030,00.html

NEVER has an Oprah audience been more besotted.

Even with his shirt on, Hugh Jackman had the women melting faster than the chocolate on the Tim Tams he handed out to them as he explained the Aussie tradition of dunking them in a cup of tea and sucking out the middle.

Breathe out slowly . . .

Mark my words, today he will have a worldwide television audience of half a billion eating out of his hand as he brings some much needed gentlemanly charm to that glitzy, ditzy, weary and dreary ceremony they call the Oscars.

Gallery: The heavenly Hugh Jackman

Special section: Hugh Jackman - life, career, more pictures

Why? Well, importantly, the reigning sexiest man alive is not an American, although you would think he was being appointed President and not just host of the entertainment world's most scrutinised gig if you listen to some critics.

The Aussie hunk has copped a lot of crap on American blog sites from people wondering why, in such tough economic times, such a crucial job should be given to a colonial and not an American.

Witness the dismal displays of try-hard homegrown US hosts to see why they need to break the mould. The 80th anniversary of the Oscars last year was the lowest- rated and least-watched since the awards were first telecast in 1953, hitting a low of 32 million Americans.

Special Section: Oscars 2009 full coverage and try our Oscars predictor

Gallery: The Oscars nominated actors and actresses

Lighten up bloggers - this is not the real world, it's showbiz.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/22/AR2009022200867.html?hpid=topnews

BEIJING, Feb. 22 -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's blunt and unadorned style of diplomacy has been evident throughout her maiden voyage the past week in Asia. She questioned the efficacy of sanctions against the repressive junta in Burma, spoke openly about a possible succession crisis in North Korea and admitted that she expected to make little progress on human rights in China.

To a certain extent, these comments crossed taboo lines in international diplomacy. U.S. officials generally do not say their sanctions have failed, or speculate about the future government of another country, or suggest that a carefully watched human rights dialogue is largely a farce.

Clinton's willingness to speak frankly -- combined with an extensive effort to get beyond ministerial meetings in order to hold town hall meetings and conduct local TV interviews in the countries she visits -- suggests she will put a distinctive personal stamp on the Obama administration's foreign policy. What is emerging is something less rigid, less cautious and more open.

Before her meetings in Beijing, for instance, Clinton said she would raise human rights issues with Chinese officials. "But we pretty much know what they're going to say," she said.
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Clinton's comments have stirred outrage in the human rights community, where she was once viewed as a hero for having confronted the Chinese government, in 1995, over its record. Activists say that without public, sustained international pressure on human rights issues, nothing will change in China.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25092106-5006785,00.html

AFTER two weeks of 12-hour night shifts helping to co-ordinate the fight against Victoria's bushfires, Deb Sullivan could have been forgiven for being unenthusiastic at the Princess Royal's visit to Melbourne's Incident Emergency Control Centre.

But Ms Sullivan, 48, a duty co-ordinator, was still shaking with excitement after spending several minutes talking to Princess Anne yesterday.

"I was a bit nervous, but if you'd spent a bit more time with her, she would have really relaxed you because of her genuine interest," she said.

"We were excited but we didn't think she would engage as much with us as she did, which is wonderful."

Dressed in a dark navy blue jacket and matching knee-length skirt, a sombre Princess Anne dropped in to personally thank emergency co-ordinators whose unseen work has been key in getting firefighters, trucks and helicopters where they are supposed to be.

Bent over a map of the area of Australia's worst bushfire disaster, Princess Anne listened intently as chief fire officer Ewan Waller explained where the fire had ripped through tinder-dry bushland, leaving more than 200 dead.