Dereliction

*

Light breaks where no sun shines;
Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart
Push in their tides;
And, broken ghosts with glowworms in their heads,
The things of light
File through the flesh where no flesh decks the bones.

A candle in the thighs
Warms youth and seed and burns the seeds of age;
Where no seed stirs,
The fruit of man unwrinkles in the stars,
Bright as a fig;
Where no wax is, the candle shows its hairs.

Dawn breaks behind the eyes;
From poles of skull and toe the windy blood
Slides like a sea;
Nor fenced, nor staked, the gushers of the sky
Spout to the rod
Divining in a smile the oil of tears.

Night in the sockets rounds,
Like some pitch moon, the limit of the globes;
Day lights the bone;
Where no cold is, the skinning gales unpin
The winter's robes;
The film of spring is hanging from the lids.

Light breaks on secret lots,
On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;
When logics die,
The secret of the soil grows through the eye,
And blood jumps in the sun;
Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.

Dylan Thomas.

He had always believed he would die a street alcoholic, in Belmore Park, just near the news organisations where he had once worked. The City Mission van would find him one morning, cold, his spirit climbing into the surrounding skyscrapers, disappearing into the ether. We were sad, derelict, and in terminal decline. He had the alcoholic gene, and surely genes were destiny. But in the modern era it was possible to cheat death. And destiny. To become a different person, or any person you chose. He had decided, late in life, to take a different course, to abandon the path that one set of circumstances had mapped out for him, the path into dereliction. Sometimes, on stories, he would interview the street alcoholics, and could see himself so clearly in them, the person they once were talking to the person they had become. Often they had once been people of substance, careers, professions, loves, families, status, possessions, and here they were, mumbling, making little sense, ashamed.

He would always remember the tears streaming down one woman's face. He was fresh out of detox and charged with the zealotry of the freshly reborn. She had two black eyes and was with a couple of useless scum bags who were supposedly her friends, protecting her, but were just drinking her grog. She told him she had tried to kill herself only a few days before. He asked her why she had never stopped, why she didn't go into treatment. She looked at him, her eyes suddenly piercing, understanding exactly what he was asking, exactly where he was coming from. None of it works for me, she said. I've been in. It just doesn't work for me. I don't want to stop. And that was it, the flame of their interaction, the interview over shortly afterwards, she wandered off into the park with her "friends", and he could see she was still crying hopelessly, unable to stop crying, unable to stop drinking, damned, utterly damned.

Could he have reached out to help her? Would anything have made the slightest difference? He doubted it. But here, now, he could see the journey of dereliction in the lives, the faces of others. The hard drinking crew at the Glengarry. The gang he had befriended on his latest bust. How popular he had been, so briefly, a person with a life and career, someone who had defied the odds, who validated their own extreme behaviours, night after night at the pub. While for others the drink at the local at the end of the day was just a piece of entertainment, relaxation after a hard day's work, for him it instantly became everything, not just the soaring moments as the alcohol gripped his veins and elevated his thinking, but literally everything, the most important part of the world. Just as Sartre had declared a man's local cafe the centre of his universe, so the Glengarry had become the centre of his.

And that was where he met all the characters, Gersch, handsome, funny, effed up Gerschie, the only one who had lived a life as exotic and outrageous as his own, who's kitchen he had photographed one night. Gersch had decided to clean up, and they were sitting there amongst the mess crappping on and getting smashed, and Gersch was making a joke a minute about the terrible decay in which he had found himself. A sophisticated man, a great cook, fit from his life as a builder, he wise cracked about his own outrageous circumstances, living in a building site, worse than a junk heap. He started photographing his saucepan, a record of the strange growths which had taken up residence there. The fry pan was a particular source of foreign growths. It was dark, terribly ancient, sick, the sickness all around them. There wasn't any way forward. They embraced dereliction. They knew they would die soon. They knew the good times were over.

They talked, hopefully, about a future which could save them both, an alternative world where they drank successfully, were financially well based, their beds full of lovers and their hearts filled with joy. Gersch talked about the things he had done, how he had survived, ney prospered in a boarding house in England, supplier to all the expats, business booming, life an endless party. How he had ended up in prison in Eastern Europe, not a bad adventure for a boy from Wyong on the Central Coast, a place where most people never went anywhere, and all his school friends were still in situ, just growing older, having more children, establishing their own homes, their own lives. That had not been his course. How he had met a woman in Spain and now had a daughter he rarely saw. She was eight-years-old now. Her picture was proudly placed on the table, surrounded by chaos, all around the building falling apart.

Gersch's house was one of those places the head couldn't help re-writing, imagining what it would be like once renovated, instead of the bare walls and the plaster falling off, the doors coming off their hinges, the walls collapsing. No bath or shower. The fire poked into action for winter one of the only pieces of normality in the whole shambolic scene. And in the middle of this chaos of dereliction sat Gerschie, isolating as all good alcoholics isolated, and despite himself, despite his own failings, he couldn't help but carry the message: there are other ways, it is possible to stop, you don't have to die a miserable death as an alcoholic, although you are well on the path. Where ever he looked the bottles were mounting like snow drifts, and you had to be careful when moving around in case you knocked one over, because they were full of piss when he couldn't be bothered to go outside in the freezing cold.

Everyone loved Gerschie, and he was a popular figure at the Glengarry, the heart and soul of the place as they said. He would get tremendously excited after the tenth schooner or so, embracing everyone, laughing, telling stories. He was the only one allowed back into the inner sanctum, to see the real chaos that was encroaching across this wonderfully entertaining, talented man's life. The only one who sat there talking for hours, the cold and the rain descending outside, while in here, close to the fire, they told each other story after story, of hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures. Baring their souls as they became friends. It was the only way possible. Everyone here in the heart of the Glengarry was seeking release from their ordinary days, their ordinary lives, the vodkas at six dollars a pop indicating the heavy drinkers still drinking top drawer, the $10 bottles of Oxford red indicating the cheapest way to get pissed, the days when money had become the overriding issue. He himself, desperately trying to drink normally when he just wasn't a normal drinker, tried to limit himself to two bottles of Boag's a day - one of the finest beers Australia had to offer.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8137637.stm

US President Barack Obama has urged Russia to turn from the past, emphasising the common goals the US shares with its former Cold War rival.

He told young graduates in Moscow they were the "last generation" to be born in a "divided world".

Mr Obama sought to reassure the country that the US sought a "strong, peaceful and prosperous" Russia.

The speech comes on the second day of Mr Obama's visit to Moscow and followed his first meeting with Vladimir Putin.

During the breakfast talks he told the former president turned prime minister that he had done "extraordinary work" leading Russia.

In his speech, Mr Obama said both Russia and the US had shared common goals in, for example, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

"It is not for me to define Russia's national interests, but I can tell you about America's, and I believe that you will see we share common ground," he told the audience at the New Economic School in Moscow.

http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2009/s2619047.htm

PETER CAVE: Robert McNamara, the architect of the US's involvement in the Vietnam War, died today at the age of 93.

He was perhaps the most influential US Defence Secretary of the last century. He oversaw the build up of half a million troops in Vietnam, which became one of America's greatest military blunders.

After he resigned as defence secretary, he became President of the World Bank, reshaping it and winning praise for his fight against poverty.

But no matter what Robert McNamara did in later years, he could never escape the Vietnam War and after almost 30 years of silence on the subject he wrote his memoirs, describing the war as "terribly wrong".

From Washington correspondent John Shovelan reports.

JOHN SHOVELAN: Cocksure of himself, a dynamo and the "smartest man I've ever met" according to President John F. Kennedy, Robert Strange McNamara - the middle name was his mother's maiden name - was born June 9th, 1916.

He was the secretary of defence under President Kennedy and retained - after Kennedy was assassinated - by President Lyndon Johnson.

A brilliant man with his frameless glasses and slicked-back hair, he was a distinctive figure. His critics though made much of the fact that his middle name was Strange.

From 1961 to 1968, he oversaw the escalation of US involvement in the bitterly divisive Vietnam War.



http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/310124/google_maps_adds_real_estate_app?fp=4&fpid=1398720840

Google has added a real estate search feature to its Google Maps service in Australia, letting potential home buyers view available properties across all real estate companies in a particular area.

Google has worked with numerous property companies to provide hundreds of thousands of homes for sale and rent, which are displayed the map by small red circles.

A property search can be refined by price, type of property, number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, and parking availability.

Clicking on a small red circle will display information about the listing and the contact details of the agent will be displayed.

Google spokesperson Andrew Foster says that even though Australian home buyers already use Google Maps for research, the new feature now puts everything in one place.

"Given the importance of location to a home search, we've made it easy for home buyers and renters to see listings that match their criteria on Google Maps even as they pan and zoom the map to different areas," Foster said.

Other tools on Google Maps include driving directions, Street View and public transport information.