Far From the Corridors of Power
They flouted everything. And still they would not believe. Their protestations were beyond meaningless, although he would have preferred respect.
Thus it was.
Thus it would be.
Quiet now, this vacuum emptied of all meaning; the crawling wisps of engagement, as if nothing could be and all would be, here in this space, a different sense of time, a vaulting field, a dry eye, a different form. He ordered: Be Quiet Now.
There would be a space and a time for all; to be understood on their terms. It wasn't glacial, it was different. Oceanic, of course. The terraforming, of course. The beauty of a power exchange. Of a time when men became mere men; when evolution spread forward, when the ancients demanded kindness for the fallen, when a dilapidated fall of a house in the midst of rich pastures; well, they built their lives here and now and he looked at them as if they were an entirely different lifeform, which in a sense they were.
They warned of distortion, they warned of fraud, they warned of fraudulent accounts and imposters, but in a sense the time was past for any of that.
The deliberate destruction of the country, of millions of lives, of thousands of businesses, of the country's traditional ways of life, it had about it, and had had from the beginning, a sense of something else. At first, as if hyenas were circling the herd and picking off the vulnerable. Then of a machine intelligence, malignant, malevolent, born of darkness, which saw no beauty in the humans they corralled, only to be extinguished. Those who served these masters assumed, incorrectly, that they would be saved.
That in these junctures of history there were other forces at play.
And we were summoned, these human adjuncts, to play our role.
There's little room for wonder now, and little room for wildness too
We crawl into our wounds
I'm nearly all the way to Malibu
I'm gonna buy me a house up in the hills
With a tear-shaped pool and a gun that kills
'Cause they say there is a cougar that roams these parts
With a terrible engine of wrath for a heart
That she is white and rare and full of all kinds of harm
And stalks the perimeter all day long
But at night lays trembling in my arms
And I'm just waiting now, for my time to come
And I'm just waiting now, for my time to come
And I'm just waiting now, for my place in the sun
And I'm just waiting now, for peace to come
Nick Cave.
And so it was, so it was.
Old Alex asked for nothing. Even those chants: truthfulness, compassion, kindness, courage, strength, determination, high intelligence, good health, and if you don't mind, coin of the realm, all of these things vanished and seemed, in a sense of no import.
A ruined house, a ruined country. A place that could have been.
They didn't sweep in to save one history, they swept in to preserve a future.
How it would play, he did not know.
Normal protest was forsaken.
And indeed, in the Covid Era, the Right to Protest had been abolished. All those diversity pundits who could not bear that anyone would disagree with them were cheering now for the arrest of demonstrators protesting the massive crushing of personal freedoms, the brutality of the police state now being visited daily upon Australia, the abject cruelty of the ruling elites, and he rose up, rose up, and the formless took not shape but manifestation; hold fast, hold fast.
Quite frankly, he felt like apologising for having been so boring the previous six months, as he drowned himself in sorrow and alcohol and did nothing but finish the book, took no heed of any of them, even the talented ones, even the ones who pretended to be a little like him, and so it came, these times, flooding down upon us.
And the people were ill prepared, indeed had no idea.
And mercy?
There would be no mercy.
There would be an utter transformation.
And we would pray for you; even as we gifted you your future. And preserved another.
It matters not what you believe.
NEWS
Melbourne CBD to be locked down on Saturday to prevent COVID-19 protest
8:47pm Sep 15, 2021
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Melbourne CBD to be locked down on Saturday to prevent COVID-19 protest
Melbourne CBD to be locked down on Saturday to prevent COVID-19 protest
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The Melbourne CBD will be locked down on Saturday and all public transport services diverted away from the city, as police seek to prevent people gathering for a planned protest against the COVID-19 lockdown.
The decision comes after up to 4000 to 5000 people attended an illegal protest in the city on August 21, which police dubbed the city's most violent in 20 years, leading to 21 officers being injured.
Victoria Police will lockdown the CBD between 8am and 2pm on Saturday to stop people convening and creating a COVID-19 "super-spreader event".
READ MORE: Regional Victorian city of Ballarat to enter lockdown, 423 new cases of COVID-19
"We will be doing everything we can to prevent access to the city," Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said.
"This is not a place where anyone should be coming.
"You cannot come in."
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All public transport services to the CBD will be suspended between 8am and 2pm.
"Buses will bypass the city, any trams will be stopped before the city... and trains will not come into the city during that period of time," Commissioner Patton said.
Hard barriers will also be set up at key access points.
READ MORE: Melbourne anti-lockdown protest 'most violent' in the city in 20 years: Police Commissioner
The Chief Commissioner said police's efforts to stop the protest would be one of the largest operations they had run in years, using up to 2000 officers.
He said there would be a significant number of officers in the city to deal with people who did manage to make it in and that they would be ready to issue $5450 fines.
The Chief Commissioner acknowledged there would be an inconvenience to some members of the public.
"We didn't take this decision lightly," he said.
He said the move was considered before the last protest, and that this protest risked being attended by similar numbers.
In pictures: Anti-lockdown protests
Commissioner Patton said the risk of transmission at a protest was "exacerbated significantly" due to the Delta strain.
He said police would be prepared to use force, but hoped it wouldn't come to that.
"We are planning for the worst and hoping for the best," Commissioner Patton said.