Blowing In The Cold Wind

*

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead.

Charles Bukowski

Blowing in the cold wind at the back of that desolate farm, heralding nothing but cold sprinkles from a stormy sky to settle the dust, was an old sheet of paper he chased across the parched fields. The End Of Sydney, it announced, and he realised it was an old flyer for a party he had held back in the 1980s. Some might have pointed out to him that just because he was leaving, he was heading off to London to live for a while, that it didn't mean the city wasn't going to keep on going. But he airily dismissed any attempts to rein in his grandiosity; for he knew where the world was shaking and what meant what. He invited everybody he knew; and hundreds turned to crash the party. It was a great success, humungeous. He had taken some of the crystal pains of acid that were around at that time, White Light, they might have been called, and he stood next to the fireplace greeting guests, but basically abdocating all the normal roles of host.

He was too far gone. The grog flowed and everybody bought more. The rooms were packed. Dean, Dean he could have so easily loved and had happily shared this place with for months, was overwhelmed, drunk, everyone was drunk, and the crowds kept coming. Keith, sick sick Keith who was already on his sharp decline into an eternal Housing Commission life, one leg shorter than the other, taunted him over his predilictions, his love of amphetamines, taunted him for no good reason while the world went whack whack whack in the crystal light and he could never understand why, why taunt a fellow traveller. There had been so many good parties. There had been so much mirth, so much defiance of the mainstream, so much clarity in an unclear world. Oh to be young, only once, he thought, if only once again, no wonder they sold their souls for eternal youth.

But it was not to be and he reached down to pick up the piece of paper, which had become lodged against a thorn bush. Out to the back was the collection of derlict cars the neighbour had collected over eons of family life. Nearby were the houses of his neighbours, unemployed men with wives who kept popping out babies and so they had to do nothing but drink and smoke and bong on and pass their eternal days pottering around their humble homes. They rarely went anywhere. They rarely did any work. He had asked several of them to help him unload the truck but somehow or other they were all too busy just then. Maybe another day mate. The government stimulus packages had made them lazy. The generous welfare from the babies meant they didn't have to work. It was cheap rent and nothing happened here; unless someone got more pissed than usual. It was clear he was going to hell in a hand basket and none of his dreams would ever come true.

This was the barren waste on which he had been abandoned, and the curdled little dwarf inside, drunk, misshappen, very funny, bitter as, well that little dwarf was just going to have to wait a little bit longer before he had his time in the sun. He bundled the bit of paper under a box. Oh God how lonely he had felt, way back then, way back now, withddrawal sweats shivering through him in what seemed like the firswt time in years. This was the price to pay, he thought as he talked absently to the dog and fed the pigs the neighbours kept in his shed. How bored they must be, stuck in that shed all day, everyday, with the only interuption the daily feed from the neighbours, when they remembered. It wasn't ever going to be Christmas again. As he walked up the road the kangaroos jumped out of the way.

Bruce was sitting on his verandah and invited him in for a cup of coffee. He was caretaking two adjoining houses, and was talking of moving on. Why leave here? he asked. It's nice. Try living in Sydney. Nothing happens here mate, nothing. It's a small village. Fart and they all know about it. He drank the instant coffee but nothing could warm his ancient bones. He just kept on shivering. I've got a hangover, Bruce declared, as if this might be news. Went to the pub? For a few. Bloody hangovers. It'll pass. I'm moving on, to the coast, where it's warm, where things are happening. Where there's gorgeous babes on the beach. Nothing happens here. Nothing. I tell you, nothing's happened since you were last here.

Maybe that's a good thing. Try living here full time; then you'd see. There was nothing to see but shreds of paper blowing across frozen fields, old party invitations, old scraps of uncompleted books, just old scraps that for some reason he had never thrown out. The winter sun sank quickly and the cold settled ever more deeply into the frost hollow. He hunched over the fire but it did no good. Some days may be meant to be joined, others were simply meant to be endured. That was all he could muster. He put another log on the fire and the flame flared briefly. He could heara the sound of the pub drifting down from up the street. Nothing could make a difference now.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,25955508-5005961,00.html

FEDERAL parliament is expected to sign off on a huge boost to renewable energy today.

The Government and the Opposition agreed on the Renewable Energy Target (RET) scheme yesterday.

The scheme will be put to a vote in the Senate toay, then it needs to go back to the House of Representatives for final approval, which is also expected today.

The RET will see 20 per cent of electricity come from renewable sources by 2020.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8210624.stm

Security forces in Afghanistan are on high alert on the eve of the country's presidential election, which the Taliban have vowed to disrupt.

Some 300,000 Afghan and foreign troops will be deployed to protect the 17 million voters at 6,969 polling sites.

President Hamid Karzai has urged Afghans to turn out to vote "for the country's stability, for the country's peace, for the country's progress".

Earlier, troops killed three suspected militants who attacked a bank in Kabul.

The government meanwhile came under severe criticism for ordering a ban on the media reporting violence on election day.

The United Nations has asked for the ban to be lifted, saying the Afghan constitution guarantees a free press. Some journalists have reported being harassed and beaten by security forces.

On Tuesday, more than 20 people were killed in attacks across the country, including a suicide bombing in the capital.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/08/2009819162711218741.html

An all-out attack on the Iraqi government came in the form of a series of powerful assaults that hit central Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The attacks raise a number of questions, among them who had the capacity to carry out the co-ordinated attacks and was the US right to pull out of Iraq's cities when it did?

As Baghdad reels from its bloodiest day this year, experts and journalists consider who might have been behind the attacks and what their motives might have been.

Mosab Jasim, Al Jazeera English producer in Baghdad

Jasim: It would be really difficult to enter the Green Zone with a truck filled with explosives
In my experience, getting inside the Green Zone to cover media activity is not easy.

First of all, you have to get at least two or three badges that allow you inside. Then, you have to cross through at least two or three security checkpoints, which are at least 600m outside of the Green Zone. At these checkpoints, you get searched, and after you pass through them, you are allowed on to the street that leads to the Green Zone and, from there, there is a final checkpoint and that's when you've finally arrived.

So it would be really difficult to bring in a truck filled with explosives unless it was co-ordinated from inside the Green Zone. Obtaining a badge means you've gone through all the clearance procedures. The bombers who were able to put the truck inside the area of the Green Zone had gone through all the necessary security measures and once they were cleared, they also received the badges which gave them access into the area.

I spoke to our police source in Baghdad and he was telling me that his sources said an attack would occur every three minutes from each other, exactly timed. He said the attacks had nothing to do with sectarian violence, but that they were something very well organised and co-ordinated.

Aqil al-Saffar, former deputy minister of national security in Iraq

Life was normal and it is still normal in Iraq after these blasts. I say this on so many occasions and now the government is trying to do their best to implement better security and build-up our security forces, but the foreign countries meddling with our regime, some of them Arab, are trying to interfere with our security situation and stop us from improving the situation here.

We are still in the process of building our security forces and I would say we have reached a good percentage of building our security but, maybe, it will take us months, or towards the end of this year until we have a safer Iraq. Up until now, I am satisfied, and people here are quite satisfied, with the way things are moving along.