Core Principles

Art by Svikli.


"Pessimist - one who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both."
Oscar Wilde.

"It just isn't reasonable always to expect the worst to happen; it doesn't. Nor is it logical to paint all circumstances black; they aren't. It is just as easy, and just as reasonable, to look up as it is down. Habitual melancholy can be rejected as well as accepted."
Larsen & Hegarty


We were trailed in bliss; in discontent; the city overlaid with stories where we reach back decades to the hysterical lounge rooms and the anarchic fun that was our youth. In times, in great times, that we never knew in retrospect would be great times. They were always stepping stones to a greater future, a broader understanding. To a happiness presently deprived.

I was already sick; even then. I couldn't stop drinking; not even then. While most of the gang was happy enough sitting around smoking hash; common enough in those slack days; I was happily on the bar stool getting pissed, talking to total strangers.

What embers of the self there had been; the ashes of the architect of dreams. I would never know. The dizzying ranks; the crazy nights; I thought these were our future; that in them; ripped beneath the surface of it all; lay the meaning of everything. But the days passed and reality remained unripped. Our core principles descended from group households 30 years ago; and most of what went on has been forgotten. Most of the participants are dead; and I walk past the fronts of terrace houses, in Hargreave Street and Elizabeth Street in Paddington, long owned by someone else; and pointless stories pour through a dissolving brain. There were so many characters. There was so much life. And now our lives curl out in curious night shades; coated by conspiracy; cloaked in secrecy; the future another country.


THE BIGGER STORY:

Indian police say they found 19 unexploded bombs in the southern city of Hyderabad after bomb attacks at two locations killed 42 people.

Extra police and special bomb detection equipment have been sent from New Delhi to Hyderabad as the hunt begins for those who planted the bombs.

Hyderabad has a mixed Hindu and Muslim population and security has been stepped up to prevent any rising communal tension.

The blast locations were popular with both communities.