Lucky Is Alive

*

William James has observed that 'the power of alcohol
over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to
stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature
usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry
criticisms of the sober hour'
'Mystical faculties' here refers to that flood-tide of
inner warmth and vital energy that human beings regard as
the most desirable state to live in
The sober hour carries continuous demands on the energy
sense-impressions
thoughts
uncertainties
suck away the vital powers minute by minute
Alcohol seems to paralyse these leeches of the energies
the vital warmth is left to accumulate and form a sort of
inner reservoir
This concentration of the energies is undoubtedly one of
the most important conditions of the state the saints call
'Innigkeit'
inwardness
The saint achieves inwardness by a deliberate policing of
the vital energies
He comes to recognize the energy-stealing emotions
all the emotions that do not make for inwardness
and he sets out to exterminate them in himself
As he moves towards his objective
he increases steadily his supply of surplus vital power
and so increases his powers of foresight and hind-sight
the sense of other times and other places
there is a breaking-free of the body's sense of
imprisonment in time and a rising warmth of life-energy
that is spoken of in the Gospel as 'to have life more
abundantly'
he was no longer the same person

Simo Sakari Aaltonen (2008)

There were voices crying in the wind. Lucky was still alive. He looked across the back fence and there he was, whining at their back door, begging for attention. But no longer barking. What had happened? Had they put an electronic collar on him, shocking him every time he barked? Had he had his vocal chords cut? Why, suddenly, this spooky silence, and the sad shuffling sound of the dog at the back door, crying in the cold, the wet, the winter now settling in on Sydney. He was shocked, amused, daunted by the cycle of higher fates, when he realised it was happening again, all the threads were coming together, marking yet again the shifting time, the period of life when things changed, when he looked back across everything that had happened, circled once more through the Cross, looked at the landmarks which had once been so significant.

He passed once more under the giant Coca Cola sign at the top of William Street, the sign underneath which he had swayed as a drunken teenager. Life had come full circle. He was shocked and saddened, frightened of the future, frightened of a higher fate. Would he became a painter now, as once he had dreamed, perched on the high cliffs of then remote Thai islands, passing the days drawing in intricate detail the cafe he had made home. God, destiny, even talent, were bound up in those drawings which now lay obscurely packed he knew not where. Would all these threads welcome him into a new life? Was God not finished yet?

The threads were coming together in every way possible. The Cross had always been symbolic. Sacrificing himself on the Cross, that is the way he had seen it. And now, as a semi-old man, he was creeping across the same landscapes, viewing them, this time, in a very different way. He passed the workers in the shallow lakes, figures bent over on the encrusted salt, the shimmering heat. He wasn't sure why; just knew destiny held greater things. It couldn't have all just happened for nothing, all the signs, the parties, the trips, the uncanny linkages. Everything he looked at reminded him of something else. The scrawny worker in the doorway reminded him of a fat pro he had once known; the men loved her. She was nonthreatening, cheap. She would tighten her fat legs together and pop! they were done.

He had swayed drunken as a child underneath that looming sign; and now the shadows were more alive than ever, the park down behind Elizabeth Bay where he once used to go to watch the gold fish, the looming, unwelcoming apartments above as he took the guilty secrets, shot through with ecstasy, the shimmering plants, the distant comings and goings, expensive cars, limousines. It was all so long ago. He had been so frightened; not just of the future but of everything, the fabric of things falling apart, the malignant tides shimmering across the ground, the sneering voices of others, condemnation, police, the frightening shadows. He couldn't believe he had survived.

That he was here, again, decades later, walking the same streets which had once seemed so ominous, so dark, mysterious, gloomy, profound. Now he knew, no longer a boy, what life was all about; abnegation, failure, descent. He came to walk through the spring paths, to look at the ponds again. To be profoundly altered. Nothing surprised him more than having survived. They had pulled him out of swimming pools and fished him off the streets, they had dragged him out of gutters and left him on his feet. And here he was with grey hair, walking the same places, completing the cycle. Because he knew nothing would be the same again. He knew we were walking into shallow park lands and social disgrace; and the history of everything. And he knew the decades had done what he had so irrevocably feared; changed his powers. He was no longer telepathic. Simply an observer, caught on a physical plane.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25559037-5018985,00.html

PASSENGERS will have to quarantine themselves for a week when they leave the flu-stricken cruise ship Pacific Dawn in Brisbane today, but hundreds of fellow travellers may be free to go when the vessel docks in Sydney.

Queensland Health yesterday said all 150 passengers due to disembark in Brisbane would be asked to isolate themselves at home for seven days, regardless of whether they were sick with swine flu.

"Given that we're not quite sure what's going on, we're taking the most ultra-cautious approach and asking people to be in home isolation for seven days," Queensland chief medical officer Jeanette Young said.

But NSW Health is refusing to say if it will quarantine the remaining 1850 passengers after they sail into Sydney on Monday.

NSW asked 2000 Pacific Dawn passengers who disembarked from a previous cruise in Sydney on Monday to isolate themselves at home for seven days, after two children on board were confirmed with the virus. But 49 of those passengers have since tested positive for swine flu, as well as three crew members who remain aboard the liner.

One in four of the 207 Australians with swine flu were on board the Pacific Dawn cruise, which arrived back in Sydney on Monday.

The ship has now spent five days at sea on its new cruise, after Queensland authorities refused to let it stop in north Queensland when crew members were found to be infected.

A boat was sent to intercept the cruise ship off Gladstone yesterday to collect swabs taken from five passengers with flu-like symptoms.

Dr Young said no one would be allowed off the ship until swabs were tested today.



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25559027-2702,00.html

AUSTRALIA'S irrigation sector has contracted dramatically because of drought and government water buybacks.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released this week show that Australia's agricultural water use decreased by 18 per cent in 2007-08, following a decrease of 27 per cent the year before.

Between 2005-06 and 2007-08, there was the loss of 5189 irrigation businesses and the area irrigated fell by 27 per cent. The lion's share of that decrease came from NSW, where water use decreased by 41 per cent in 2006-07 and by 35 per cent in 2007-08.

Most of the decrease was due to drought, but government buybacks are also taking water out of irrigation. The biggest buyback program is the federal Government's $3.1 billion Water for the Future program, which this week purchased 240 gigalitres from Twynam Agricultural Group in NSW. The Living Murray program, funded by the Murray River states and the federal Government, has a program to purchase $50 million worth of water licences along the Murray.

The NSW, Victorian and federal Governments are partners in the $425 million Water for Rivers program that aims to return 212GL to the Snowy River and 70GL to the Murray by 2012. And the NSW Government's Riverbank program is also spending $105 million to purchase water licences.

The impact of those purchases is being felt in the irrigation communities.

Terry Hogan, a Coleambally irrigation farmer and chairman of a group of 18 councils along the NSW side of the Murray River, said: "I am very concerned about the impact that will have on our communities, our jobs, our businesses, our kids' future, our grandkids."

He said while the federal Government had been rolling out programs to create and maintain jobs, "at the same time we have got the federal Government buying water out of our regions that has in the past grown food and fibre for the world".

When irrigation goes, so too do the jobs of many contractors and factory workers.



http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25559172-5013404,00.html

FIRST," new Telstra chief executive David Thodey says, "I am Australian.

"This is an Australian company. We are based in Australia. We have a great Australian Government. We have regulators who have got to do their job."

And no, he says firmly, Australians are not racist.

Mr Thodey, in his first interview since replacing Sol Trujillo this month, does not want to comment directly on his predecessor and his embittered criticism of Australia as racist and backward.

"I have been really focused on going forward," he tells The Weekend Australian. "Sol has left the company.

"He has moved on.".

It sounds like the polite way of repeating Kevin Rudd's supposedly racist, one-word farewell, "Adios", but it's more an indication of how much the style of Telstra will change under a new leader.

In the post-Trujillo era, the Telstra board was determined to present a much friendlier and very Australian face, choosing the 54-year-old insider to do it.

And while Mr Trujillo suggested the Government's $43billion national broadband network was a bluff, Mr Thodey says he is "absolutely convinced the Government will do it".

That leaves him facing one of Australia's greatest political and commercial challenges - much of it certain to be played out in public.
Mr Thodey has to find a way to make the Government's grand plan stack up for Telstra shareholders, as well as for the Government. Many in the market doubt whether that will be possible and are nervous that Telstra may have to compromise its own shareholder interests to meet government demands.