Hiding In Plain Sight
*
Sometimes the experience of writing my memoirs is like the experience of life--euphoric; sometimes it is homely and domestic; sometimes there is the sense of the ceaseless surge of the sea, of a fierceness of energy; sometimes I feel as if I am in possession of the heart's foul rag and bone shop, as the elder Yeats poignantly described his inner life. Sometimes I feel as if I am obsessively preoccupied with refining perceptions, with analysing. Sometimes I feel my agenda is in some basic ways one that is similar to Yeats who once said the only two things that should concern a serious writer is: death and sex. Well, like so many things, there is some truth here.
I feel no need to continue the external journey, occupied as it was with living in some two dozen towns over the last forty years, but I do not want my life to end. This tinkering in the world of thanatos, of the death wish, does occur for short periods late at night, a residue of this bi-polar disorder. But life's journey does not show any signs of ending in this my 63rd year, so continue it I will, as we all must to the end of our days. As Emily Dickinson puts it:
The Brain--is wider than the Sky--
For--put them side by side--
The one the other will contain
With ease--and You--beside--
The Brain is deeper than the sea--
For--hold them--Blue to Blue--
the one the other will absorb--
As Sponges--Buckets--do--
The Brain is just the weight of God--
For--Heft them--Pound for Pound--
And they will differ--if they do--
As Syllable from Sound--
Many autobiographers and analysts of autobiography examine their lives and the field of autobiography in the context of postmodern theory. Postmodernism is a movement, a theory, an approach, to life which encapsulates the arts, the sciences, society and culture, indeed every aspect of day to day life, but outside the context of a meta narrative. I find this theory useful because it exists as a polarity, one of the ubiquitous, multitudinous, polarities that define who we are and what we do. Postmodernism suggests, sees the world, the external world as one of ceaseless flux, of fleeting, fragmentary and contradictory moments that become incorporated into our inner life. The modern hero is the ordinary person and the world is filled with abstract terms. This postmodern society could indeed be called 'the abstract society.' It is a society filled with a commercial, private, pleasure-oriented, superficial, fun-loving individual. This type of society and this type of individual began to appear, or at least the beginnings of post-modernism, can be traced back to the 1950s.
The post-modern in autobiography tends to doubt everything about both self and society. After examining more than fifty biographies of Marilyn Monroe the postmodernist is left with plausibilities and inscrutibilities but not unreserved truth. This school of thought sees, deals with, multiplicity....
Ron Price, Tasmania
http://www.gradesaver.com/poems-of-wb-yeats-the-rose/forum/318/
IN all the secret pathways, in all the shadows that had snapped at his feet, things were rarely orthodox. The deranged dog continues to bark next door, it's entire life lived out on a concrete space, lonely as. It's incessant barking is part of the neighbourhood and part of our life. It never goes out. It just barks and barks and barks. It's called Lucky. The irony is lost on no one. The Lebanese don't coddle their dogs like westerners. Last night's blackouts gave every one the frisson of more chaotic times ahead. He was deeply moved; deeply shattered. He wanted to flee but there was nowhere safe. The old imagery, caught on open ground, was already fading. He was fleeing from one derelict structure to the next, but somehow he never made it from one building to the next.
He was still on open ground, and in order to protect himself had to invent some new way to become invisible; to hide in plain sight, to create a multi-tiered task force which would deflect all attention from the real person. There was no way out this time. She thought he was ruined, but in fact everything was loose, everything was in a different place, there was no salvation. They had grown up on a diet of television. All the old values, the narratives, the story telling, the communication between people, all of it had been washed away in a matter of 50 years. The place was now bereft of any genuine sentiment, for fantasy and fact had become entirely confused, the welcome sign was no longer out. No one dropped by any more. They were no longer young.
He had thought of so many wonderful things to say. Every little interesting thing he thought: I must tell her that. But she was paid to listen. That fact, too, as he looked out the window at the university students on the way to their day, added to the semblance of horror that was taking over the place. All was not lost; you could survive the most brutal of things. But so much of their image, both their self-image and the way others looked at them, was bound up with their jobs. There was general fascination with the goings on, what happened, behind the concrete walls of the Propaganda Unit. How did they decide these narratives? How did they pick the winners and the losers? How was everything so quietly assumed, when no purpose had been stated, when no God was allowed.
Those lonely winding streets of his childhood at least had an end; they led down to the bus stop and out to the wider world. The too bright colours, the intense greens of the trees and the vicious blue of the bay, was all part of it. He buried himself inside Swallows and Amazons; a place with friendly, normal families, people who loved each other, parents who acted like mums and dads should. All these things were plastered with a patina of regret. Some things would never be the same. Sometimes he could make a story out of the tiniest of threads; at others no amount of self-imposed grandiosity could create a single sentence. Go forth. He had been forth. All he found was the bars; and oh how much he had loved them.
Every figure, every laugh, every tableau in the sodden atmosphere gripped him as if this was the universal moment all men aspired to, that moment when God prickled in the fabric of things and a story of such profundity was there to tell, if only he could muster the words. If only he could be worthy enough to be granted narrator status. If not, there was nothing much to say. Another life gurgled on the stream; another life in the midst of millions, hundreds of millions, billions. He reached out and patted him, although he would much rather have kissed him, twisted and bewildered, with inappropriate passions. They curled in brief moments which existed only in brain flashes. And the whole world broke down. And he could have adored another totally.
He could make a fool of himself as he had done so often; declaring his inappropriate love. He reached out to kiss her. He ran his hands across her smooth belly. He wanted to deny everything, the past which excluded him from being a genuine man; the entities that had crowded in when his guard was down. He could see them thrashing on the ground, or trying to hide: the drunken queen, the marshmallow left young writer, so earnest, so committed, the grouchy old right winger who had seen the worst mankind had to offer and had therefore lurched into conservatism; harking back to a simpler time. He could make a fool of himself; or he could hide in plain sight. Finally, as he waved his hands in the plastic air, that is what he chose to do, building a perspex structure which distorted all light, which had so many cut and angled surfaces it was impossible to see what, if anything, was inside.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25267857-5001021,00.html
SYDNEY'S anti-terrorism defences were exposed last night after the city's emergency warning system failed to activate during yesterday's mass blackout.
Police made the embarrassing admission that the emergency warning system operated on electricity - and had no battery back-up - making it useless in the event of a power failure.
It was also revealed it took more than 40 minutes to issue an SMS alert to 2400 city office wardens, by which time they, along with thousands of office workers had already evacuated.
Officials defended the actions by insisting the warning system was "not to be used in any other situation than for a terrorist attack".
Were you caught in the chaos? Do you have photos of the results of Sydney's blackout? Send them to photo@dailytelegraph.com.au
Gallery: Sydney shuts down
The system was originally installed during APEC in 2007 and was designed to prepare Sydney for a possible terrorist attack.
Senior police, who have regularly said they would publicly test the warning system once a month, moved quickly last night to distance the force from the system.
"The RTA owns it. They own it and maintain it. Police simply use it," a police spokesman said last night.
But even if the system had been working, Deputy Commissioner Dave Owens had deemed it unnecessary to use during the blackout, the spokesman said.
"The system's status was not a consideration in (Deputy Commissioner Owens') decision, so it's not an issue as to whether or not it would've worked," he said.
Police sent out an emergency SMS message at 5.20pm but the RTA had also alerted radio stations of the blackout by 5.15pm, 35 minutes after it occurred.
City office workers spilled from darkened buildings on to the streets, with most unaware of what had happened.
"It wasn't clear as to the extent of the outage at first," a spokesman for Premier Nathan Rees said of the delay.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25267130-5013871,00.html
THE wealthy Chinese businesswoman who befriended Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon and showered him with gifts is a leading member of an organisation with strong ties to the Chinese military.
Helen Liu, who was born in the northeastern Chinese province of Shandong and is now an Australian citizen, is a member of the editorial committee of Shandong Ming Jia.
The organisation, which translates as Shandong Celebrities Family, promotes the work of leading people from Shandong.
It has extensive membership within the China's military, the Peoples Liberation Army, especially its logistics division.
Ms Liu has attracted enormous attention after allegations reported last week that Mr Fitzgibbon had been the subject of a covert spy operation by officials from his own defence department because of his relationship with her.
According to the claims, departmental officials regarded Ms Liu as a possible security risk.
Ms Liu, who has had many property development interests in China and Australia, is among members of the Shandong Celebrities Family network whose activities are regularly covered by its own colour magazine.
Of the past 10 cover photos, three have featured senior army officers - two men and one woman. Calligraphy, which is a strong feature of the organisation's website, was written by a former commissar of the PLA's logistics division.
Shandong is famous as a source of senior soldiers in China.
Ms Liu has also become a prominent representative for the People's Republic in the vast overseas Chinese world - a role that gives her high status back in China.
Mr Fitzgibbon, who describes Ms Liu as a personal friend, met her during a trip to China with his father, former Labor MP Eric Fitzgibbon, in the early 1990s.
Over the years, Mr Fitzgibbon has introduced Ms Liu to Labor MPs at dinners. She paid for two trips Mr Fitzgibbon made to China in 2002 and 2005, which he failed to declare on his parliamentary statement of pecuniary interests until last week.
http://www.climatechangefraud.com/content/view/3642/218/
The War on CO2 Isn’t About Science
Written by Bob Ellis, Dakota Voice
Monday, 30 March 2009
Alan Caruba’s latest column provides some simple bullet-point truths about the religion of global warming which demonstrate that adherents to this religion are believing in something as silly as ancient astrology:
Here are a few things you need to keep in mind about carbon dioxide:
– CO2 is not a “pollutant.” It is a trace gas necessary for all life of Earth because it is essential to the growth of all vegetation.
– Without CO2 all vegetation—grasses, forests, jungles, crops such as wheat, corn and rice—dies. Then herbivores die. Then you die.
– The CO2 produced by human industry or activity is a miniscule fraction of a percentage of greenhouse gases. It constitutes a mere 0.038% of the atmosphere.
– The oceans emit 96.5% of all greenhouse gases, holding and releasing CO2 as it has down through the millennia of Earth’s existence.
– In past millennia, CO2 levels were often much higher than the present.
– CO2 levels rise hundreds of years after temperature rise on planet Earth.
– The Sun is the primary source of warmth on Earth. Rising CO2 is an effect of global warming, not a cause.
– Both global warming and cooling are natural phenomenon over which humans have no control.
– The Earth is not currently warming. It has been cooling for a decade and likely to continue for at least another twenty years or longer. If a new Ice Age is triggered, it will last at least 10,000 years.
– Polar ice is now at record levels and still growing.
Obviously this reality doesn’t match up with the flames of hysteria being fanned by Al Gore and the UN. The science is simply not on their side.
So why this massive campaign of unscientific lies? Well, it’s not hard to figure out, when you understand the great motivation of power-hungry big-government socialists.
And Caruba spells it out:
The EPA proposal is not about science. It is about power and it is about money. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “The administration has proposed a cap-and-trade system that could raise $646 billion by 2019 through government auctions of emission allowances.”
Folks, don’t fall for more socialist lies aimed to remove more of the money you earned from your pocket to make even bigger government which aims to rob you of more of your God-given liberties.
More and more Americans are waking up to the fact that the fantasy of anthropogenic global warming is a load of hot air.
Isn’t it time you took a look at how thin the “facts” are behind Al Gore’s religion, and join the rest of us in rejecting this anti-American nonsense? It’s time we relegated this crazy notion of man-made climate disaster to the place it truly belongs: a Saturday-afternoon C-grade Sci Fi Channel movie–something you might watch if you were snowed in and stuck in the house, but wouldn’t bother with if you had anything better to do.
