A Dust Storm on Bondi Beach

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As an athletic endeavor, the act of surfing and the mechanical considerations of performance follow the traditional masculine associations. Power, strength and speed within the context of human exertion . The stuff of sports. As an aesthetic endeavor, the nuances of movement, positioning, and line more often drift toward the feminine sensibility. The stuff of dance. It is at the nexus of the two where greatness often lies. It is also where the confusion starts. The naked male aggression of brute physicality can create moments sublime. Gary Elkerton ripping things apart at the seams for example. A subtler, perhaps feminine, understanding in critical moments with no need for such muscle, can create the equally sublime. Rell Sunn’s luxurious lines for example. And what would be without Tom Curren’s mysterious blending of the two (for example)? The question cycles and recycles in the wider cultural movement, a way of life, where the bounds are blurred incurably.

It is always a question of context, motivation and purpose. In another world, it was not until Baryshnikov (and before, Nijinsky & Nureyev) did the male ballet dancer enter the wider cultural imagination as intrinsically masculine and anything other than power props for the female line. Here we see a case of the flip side of the coin. Even still, the Balanchine estimation of the balletic line is far more heralded in the ballerina than the danseur noble, perhaps a prime suspect in the cultural decline of an estimation of an art.

http://kurungabaa.net/2010/01/07/blurred-lines/#comment-3337

The green toxins which had lapped against the black walls were gone now; impossible to sustain in the face of such extravagant, such oft repeated beauty. They came from everywhere. The bursts of Italian. The machine gun of an excited Spanish woman. This year the bikinis are more micro than ever before; and he would stop, startled, at the sheer physicality of it all, these astonishing specimens. He passed Marsha's house almost everyday and the clouds of a drunken history broke away; and they were called for and cared for in a sea of regret. Because it could have all been so fine, that splendid piece of real estate. If she hadn't been so mad; and let's face it, so old. He was going to raise the mast after downing a bottle of red he had been fantasising about all day; and one way and another it never happened.

He always pulled short. He could not commit. So he walked past the empty house, she must be away, and people still laughed about the mad woman who had come to the party and told everyone they were lower than concrete, lower than the limestone beneath the concrete. Bands of beautiful things basked on the balconies; try that, they posed, they perved, they laughed, they gossiped; and they most certainly drank. Another round of zambuccas, he heard the young man ask the waiter at Tat's on the corner; the view of Australia's most famous beach all behind them. That blazing heat; these blazing days, the bodies dotted on the vivid sand like brush marks on a Fred Williams painting, daubs against a background, every unidentifiable colour in God's world. He could feel the need for change; for whole parts of the past to give away.

And so it went, oh so very far, from the sacrifices on the Mayan pyramids to Led Zeppelin and Mick Jagger on You Tube, from looking down at the world from 30,000 feet, thinking, never in history, never amongst all my ancestors, has this been possible, to fly so high, so see so much. And yet what had seemed so massively exultant, such a pinnacle of human achievement, was only a step towards a more glittering future, when computers encircled the globe and everything, everything, was ready for download or receipt. He could hardly breathe with excitement. There was so much to absorb. He wanted to be taken away. He wanted to see the world change. He wanted to walk along narrow alpine paths and be a million miles from anywhere. He wanted the water to lap in front of his hut, young love a lifetime ago.

He wanted to live it all backwards; to absorb once again everything that had been significant. Some of the best times of his life had been travelling; and for the past 15 years he had been transfixed here, by work, by children. After those first years travelling with them, when he used up his lieu time carting them arond the world on his back, it had been Sydney in one inner suburban setting after another. The dog shit simmering on the pavement. The ravaged air. The closed shops where the government had hoovered every last available dollar off the community and destroyed all enterprise; making it a wasteland for the old inhabitants as new new ethnic communities took over one site after another. It bred colour but remarkably little conflict, as layer after layer of immigrants swept through the city and beyond.

He found the oldest known corners of paradise, in the rich agricultural areas to the north. And at the same time, each week, or most weeks, he would walk briefly past the cul de sac off Elizabeth Street in Paddington, and looked at the house where John Bygate had lived; the one who to him had been the centre and the beginning of everything, the glamorous success story he adored, the trendy house paid for by the sugar daddy, the records lining the wall, hundreds of them, classical, modern, Stravinsky and Janis Joplin; Sylvia Plath books open and read. Daddy, Daddy. He travelled with Harry Godolphin from Kings Cross to the holy citadel, that house where everything he wanted to be lived and breathed, that house whose inner-circle he so desperately wanted to be a part of.

That fabulous person became a derelict. That handsome, handsome man vibrating on the stairs as the acid hallucinations shot through him died of a brain hemorrhage in some dreary Adelaide suburb, unemployed, unemployable, still drinking his flagons of white wine and downing his pills, his beloved pills, and laughing in that knowing snickering way as if he was the only one who got the joke, talking of the psychiatrist who had been such help to him. He arrived, years later; and was so popular, the success story from the city. Their roles had been entirely reversed. Once he had been so in awe; now the subject of his awe was pathetically grateful to see him, and looked, though he did his best to maintain his looks, as if the alcohol was taking its toll. You're happy to be lost in the spaces between your thoughts, his friend said. I'm not, I have to think one after the other. They both laughed. Asia my boy, he said. That's the place for blokes like us. At least there they believe in happy endings.

THE BIGGER STORY:

Looting has turned violent in Haiti's shattered capital Port-au-Prince, with a mob of about 1,000 people fighting for goods in a central street, according to a journalist.

The United Nations says the earthquake, which officials say has killed at least 50,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless, is the worst is it has ever confronted.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has now arrived in the country, which was again rocked by a strong 4.5-magnitude aftershock overnight.

Photographer Carlos Barria says men with stones, knives and hammers are now battling to grab T-shirts, bags, toys and any other items they can find in destroyed houses and shops.

Police present earlier were nowhere to be seen.

"It's anarchy there now, total chaos. The police have gone away," Mr Barria said.

"They are fighting, hitting each other, throwing stones at each other."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/01/17/2794066.htm?section=justin

TONY Abbott's pledge to take full control of the Murray-Darling Basin if elected has been met with widespread disapproval across the irrigation industry, with the Opposition Leader accused of a "simplistic" approach to the management of Australia's largest river system.

On Thursday, Mr Abbott said if he led the Coalition to victory at this year's federal election, and the states resisted the idea of a full federal takeover of the Murray-Darling, he would hold a referendum on the issue.

But his proposal attracted criticism yesterday from industry bodies, including the National Farmers Federation, the National Irrigation Council, the Australian Conservation Foundation and the NSW Irrigation Council.

"It's just ridiculous," said Arlene Buchan, rivers spokeswoman for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

"We welcome the fact that he recognises the importance of fixing the problems facing the Murray-Darling, but the idea of a referendum -- and the timing of this proposal -- is extraordinary.

"This is not the time to be throwing a bomb. After so many years, we are finally at a stage where some real progress is being made in regards to the basin. Mr Abbott seems to forget that the current agreement had its origins under the Howard government and, after much negotiations, also has the support of the states."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/abbott-mauled-for-talk-of-murray-darling-takeover/story-e6frg6nf-1225820177750

BEIJING — At the elite Tsinghua University here, some students were joking Friday that they had better download all the Internet information they wanted now in case Google left the country.

But to many of the young, well-educated Chinese who are Google’s loyal users here, the company’s threat to leave is in fact no laughing matter. Interviews in Beijing’s downtown and university district indicated that many viewed the possible loss of Google’s maps, translation service, sketching software, access to scholarly papers and search function with real distress.

“How am I going to live without Google?” asked Wang Yuanyuan, a 29-year-old businessman, as he left a convenience store in Beijing’s business district.

China’s Communist rulers have long tried to balance their desire for a thriving Internet and the economic growth it promotes with their demands for political control. The alarm over Google among Beijing’s younger, better educated and more Internet savvy citizens — China’s future elite — shows how wobbly that balancing act can be.

By publicly challenging China’s censorship, Google has stirred up the debate over the government’s claim that constraints on free speech are crucial to political stability and the prosperity that has accompanied it. Even if it is unlikely to pose any immediate threat to the Communist Party, Google’s move has clearly discomfited the government, Chinese analysts say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/asia/17china.html

Bondi Beach In A Dust Storm.