Goodbye Colin

And no-one saw the carny go
And the weeks flew by
Until they moved on the show
Leaving his caravan behind
It was parked out on the south east ridge
And as the company crossed the bridge
With the first rain filling the bone-dry river bed
It shone, just so, upon the edge
Away, away, we're sad to say
Dog-boy, atlas, Mandrake, the geeks, the hired hands
There was not one among them that
did not cast an eye behind
In the hope that the carny would
return to his own kind
And the carny left behind a horse, so skin and bone
that he named "sorrow"
And it was in a shallow, unmarked grave that the
old nag was laid in the then parched meadow
And it was the dwarves that were given the
task of digging the ditch
And laying the nag's carcass in the ground
While boss Bellini, waved his smoking pistol around
saying "The nag was dead Meat"
"We can't afford to carry dead weight"
while The whole company standing about
Not making a sound
And turning to dwarves perched on the enclosure gate
The boss says "Bury this lump of crow bait"
And the rain came hammering down
Everybody running for their wagons
Tying all the canvas flaps down
The mangy cats growling in their cages
The bird-girl flapping and squawking around
The whole valley reeking of wet beast
Wet beast and rotten sodden hay
Freak and brute creation
all Packed up and on their way
The three dwarves peering from their wagon's hind
Moses says to Noah "We shoulda dugga deepa one"
Their grizzled faces like dying moons
Still dirty from the digging done
And charley, the oldest of the three said "I guess
the carney aint gonna show"
And they were silent for a spell, wishin they had
done a better job of burying Sorrow
And the company passed from the valley
Into a higher ground
The rain beat on the ridge and on the meadow
And on the mound
Until nothing was left, nothing left at all
Except the body of sorrow
That rose in time
To float upon the surface of the eaten soil
And a murder of crows did circle round
First one, then the others flapping blackly down
And the carny's van still sat upon the edge
Tilting slowly as the firm ground turned to sludge
And the rain it hammered down
And no-one saw the carny go
I say it's funny how things go

Nick Cave The Carny

Colin died in the early hours of yesterday morning. There wasn't any way he could continue in that state. I've never seen anyone so sick and still living. In the depths of our confusion, our naked, concocted despiar, his were the final flickers of a chaotic life. He was masterful at what he had done, but those days were long gone. The pioneer slut. The shriek of laughter. In your face. Daaaahling. All of this was gone now; the funeral, we think, will be on Friday. It's all sad, as the tennis, the Australian Open, plays on the television, and the muggy heat engulfs us all. Gone now, gone, my old friend. One of the last of the tribe. These daily cruelties. It wasn't love, but it was a deep and abiding friendship.

Some of it recorded, here on this blog. The time, in volume one, when we drove 24 hours straight across the vast Australian landscape and ended up at Streaky Bay ona the austere coast of South Australia, city slickers in the stifling heat, always at odds, ghastly and out of place, cross figured, across court, his ancient face, gaunt now, wasted, the shock of a suddenly old man, yet in his head they were still all young, partying, outrageous, on a crusade to change everything. Now all they ever do is celebrate diversity, take pride in their place at the margins, collapse in the heat, in drunken despair, these functioning alcoholics, their chaotic lives. He remembered many of the past emotions. While Australia Day played on the TV, far away, far away.

So Goodbye Colin, there's nothing left to say. You were a good mate. A crazy lover, if not of me of many others. These cautious, most beautiful days, where the Australian heat seaped through our loungerooms and we could hear the brids in the trees outside, could feel the countyr out there, away. It was cautious. We were often hidden. The bars themselves were secret, tucked away. We were shadows that lurked beyond the mainstream. None of us lived normal lives. We campaigned for a different world. They were never going to embrace us; this strange bubble of miscreants thaqt worked their way through the aging strands; once young, georgeous, proud, flaunting what we had and never doubting our success. And then aging, cruelly, often loved, reviled, cast out, poverty stricken.

There wasn't a shocking past. We didn't have the same strands, the same history. Many were surprised we had families at all; as if we had come full blown into these shrieking, disturbed malcontents. How many loves had passed us by? Why weren't we comfortably ensconsced in the suburbs, driving in smart cars, raising successful children. What did we believe any more? Anything but conservative; the left was surely there to support us. People like Colin would never have thought of voting anything but left; yet the left had betrayed him as surely as it had betrayed so many others; their pack mentality, their brutality, their stifling lack of conscience. He could see that gaunt face, those fragile bones, that frail frail body that could not have been thinner. Beaten away. Eaten away. He tried to hold back the tears.

And all was lost; all was chaos; and in these sad days for the funeral of the lost, he was our lover, our boy, our funny man. Oh Daaahling, but these darlings had turned into sad sighs. Shadows of former selves. Reflections from an earlier age. He had eaten heartily and drank to his soul; but it was gone. He had joined his best friend Lyn Hapgood, who had overdosed while pregnant. Ian Farr who had gone to the doctor one week with a stomach ache and was gone to the next. All the old lovers, who were dead. Each and every last one of them, dead. "I've had enough," he said, months before. He didn't remember the walk we had been on. But he remembered those days, 30 years ago, when we had thought we were on the cusp of everything, the little band of artists that would change a conservative, stifling country, that would open us up to some great form of liberation. Instead we shrivelled, instead we died.

None of it was his best. He had no idea what to say. He was teary, but there was nowhere for it to go. It's not as if it was unexpected, his 16-year-old daughter said, entirely unfamiliar with death. It's a relief, surely, that he's not suffering anymore, he told himself. And of course it was. If he was a dog he would have been put down long before. The virus got into his brain. He didn't know where he was. But he remembered me; and I was shocked by the sadness of it all; so far away; these distant times; we were strangers not in a strange land but in a strange time. Not well dear, not well. And they laughed. And he sat up in bed with his lover, a cheeky look on his face. They were all so daring. They could see the city from their squat, the musty straw carpet smelling of bong water. They embraced each other. And 40 years later they embraced each other again; in death. The lone voice of record; the loneliest role. He sought a new generation; and shuddered at the depths of his own dysfunction. And here was hope, in death, another life. And he smiled, eyes glittering through tears. Or that was what he hoped; at athe memory of it all, the fun times; the laughter only they ever knew. The wild tribe. The forgotten tribe. The dead tribe.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/26/2474568.htm

As debate rages over whether January 26 should be Australia Day, some Indigenous leaders are protesting against what they call 'invasion day'.

The new Australian of the Year, Mick Dodson, says the use of January 26 as Australia Day alienates Indigenous Australians because it commemorates the arrival of the First Fleet, and he has urged national debate on whether or not to change the date.

But Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has emphatically ruled out any change with a "simple, respectful, but straightforward no".

Mr Rudd said there have always been controversies about national days but that Australia is a nation for all Australians.

"A nation which has apologised for the mistakes of the past, and there have been many. But a nation now resolved to close the gap. A nation now resolved to close the gap in education, in health, and employment, and those things which matter in people's daily and practical lives," he said.

Federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull also says he does not think there is a need to change the date, which he describes as "very appropriate".

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees say Australia Day may be controversial but it should still be celebrated.

But the organiser of an Indigenous rally in Brisbane, Aboriginal activist Sam Watson, says Australia Day should be moved to another date if Indigenous Australians are to deal with the emotional turmoil that the day represents.

Mr Watson was speaking prior to leading a march from State Parliament to Musgrave Park in inner Brisbane, in protest over Queensland's long-running stolen wages dispute, and the Northern Territory intervention.

"January 26 is only the day in 1788 when the First Fleet arrived to set up the colony of New South Wales," he said.

"It's got nothing to do with Aboriginal people, it's got nothing to do with the nation of Australia as it stands today.

"If they want to have a true national day, it should be June 3, for example, which was the day the Mabo decision was handed down in 1992."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/26/2474607.htm

New South Wales authorities say serial killer Ivan Milat has cut off one of his fingers and put it in an envelope addressed to the High Court.

The Department of Corrective Services says Milat used a plastic knife to sever the little finger from his left hand inside his cell at Australia's highest security prison - Goulburn's Supermax jail.

A spokeswoman says the 64-year-old put the finger in an envelope addressed to the High Court.

She says he then handed the envelope to a prison officer at lock-up time this afternoon.

Milat has been taken to Goulburn Base Hospital under guard with his severed finger on ice.

The department says he seemed to be in shock after the incident.

He has been serving a life sentence since 1996 for murdering seven backpackers in the early 90s.

The High Court dismissed his application for an appeal in 2004.