No Way Back

*

The thing that baffled him was why a good Christian girl like Carrie would even want to get tangled up with a guy like him. Couldn't she see he was damaged goods - a divorced father, a recovering addict, a musician who could have qualified for his own episode of Behind the Music, if only anyone had ever heard of him?

The flip side of his inability to see what was in it for Carrie was an all-too-clear awareness of what wasn't in it for him. Because the sad fact was that, even now, after he'd accepted Jesus into his heart, turned his back on drugs and alcohol, and committed himself to walk in the light of the Lord, he still couldn't manage to get himself all that excited about good Christian girls. Certain kinds of toothpaste, it turned out, were harder to get back into the tube than others.

The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta.

The self satisfaction of the smug rulers of the land, their absolute divorce from the ways of ordinary men, the brutality that he had seen in his own field, all of these things were not his own. He had been divorced from himself for too many years. The old friends he had cared so passionately about were long gone. Sometimes there was a brutal march. Sometimes he felt sympathy even for people who had never been kind to him. But the brutal truth in this sour city was that bastards thrived, simple answers were for fools, and his own opportunities were wasted in naive faith. There wasn't any reason to push forward. Careers went nowhere.

All of this, and Chris swept his hand in a gesture which embraced the whole of journalism, all of this is is so recent, it means nothing. For most of man's history they have been preoccupied with survival, with living from day to day. He began to expound an argument he had heard on the ABC the day before, a fawning interview with a global warming hysteric from the New York Times. All of these modern day gurus of the simple life were utterly smug in their own certainties, spewing forth their garbage while preening like bantam roosters. He was shocked by the inanity of it all. And now he was shocked by the brutality of the times.

He had seen it all before; in a different place, in a different time, with a different caste of characters. People he thought would be safe were disappearing. Stalinist style purges spread fear through the depleted ranks. Cogs in the wheel fell off. Fear ate at his stomach; at every one's heart. He was sad, distressed, moved. Part of the audience was peeling away. People who had been his mentors were disappearing. The city became uglier, more brutal, his financial circumstances even more difficult. We were shadowed by the ghosts of the past. The smugness of the successful ones took him right back to a different era. There wasn't much he could say that would really make a difference.

The old brewery that stood opposite, the old Australia Hotel, the entire dam block was now a gigantic hole opposite UTS. The landscape of his days in jail, the years he spent trapped at the Sydney Morning Herald, had been radically obliterated. Shadows were everywhere, fleeting, invisible. In fact the streets were oblivious to the changes. The soul of the city had shifted, was no more. His own despair, his own struggles, were minute in contrast to the unfeeling landscape, the shifting scenes, the heartless crowds. It was impossible to make an imprint on any one's life. He was shocked, sullen, trying to gather respect, a fan base, knowledge, friends. Always he thought of Plato's, or was it Socrates's, edict that men were villagers, they were not designed to live in large places.

Woe to those who build house upon house, the bible intoned. Every apartment block was an affront to the scriptures. But it seemed so true in this heartless place. Patterns of friendships formed only briefly, often around work. They would all head off to the pub on Fridays, and he, who often used to have a start on all of them, having downed several bourbon and cokes in the process of writing the story, would join them in the celebrations and the gossip; masquerading, as always, as a normal person. The alcohol helped maintain the pretence. No one noticed, or accepted that journalists were meant to be eccentric. The cruelty of the game, he couldn't believe what was happening.

Sooner or later it would happen to him, the execution. Vicious rumours circled like mad dervishes. John Alexander, who had inflicted so much pain on so many others, had done so much damage to Australian journalism, was featured in all the papers; this time for an out sized termination payment of $15 million from some company he had been at only briefly. The devil of the piece, these cruel whippet like pieces of shit, mobile garbage, vicious little men determined to push their imprint on to other people's lives, their chests puffed out. Alpha males. They had to destroy someone else in order to grant themselves power. Look at these reporters, JA had declared from behind the news desk one day, having emerged briefly from his office. They all look like pineapples. And that one's stoned, he said, pointing directly at him. No I'm not, he protested. Bullshit, Alexander spat, and stalked back into his office.

It was true, the Fairfax roof was a place they could occasionally retreat to for an indiscreet puff. It was the era. They thought they had the right to be as smashed as they wanted to be. The old timers drank themselves to oblivion on a daily basis. The younger ones mixed and matched. And the traffic sang down Broadway; and he thought of all these things, staring at the old Brewery site, now a vast empty hole. Even the hotels, which had been so much a part of the life of the district, were gone. He shuddered. He looked at the aboriginal sculptures in the UTS window. He remembered everything that had happened, and new now it meant nothing. The soldiers were gone, the sailors were gone, the journalists who had made their own little nests in the surrounding pubs, they, too, were all gone. And in these times, when day after enfolding day exploded into the future, when thought was proscribed, money meant everything and fake philosophies presided, there was simply no way back to a more decent time.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/25/2526381.htm?section=australia

A man is in a critical condition after being shot in Sydney's north-west tonight in a possible bikie-related attack.

The man was shot in the chest and hip at Beaumont Hills at around 9:20pm (local time) and has been taken to Westmead hospital where he will have surgery later tonight.

"Ambulance officers transported a 39-year-old man to hospital with two gunshot wounds," a New South Wales Ambulance spokesman said.

Officers say those responsible fled the scene in a car.

Police say they are examining the possibility that the attack is linked to the recent gang violence, but preliminary inquiries suggest that it is not related to outlaw motorcycle groups.

No one else was injured in the shooting and a crime scene was established by police.

Police are appealing for witnesses but no description of suspects or vehicles has been released.

Earlier today, the President of the Comancheros group called for calm, saying he was aware of public concern about a bikie war.

He has banned his members from wearing gang colours or riding their bikes.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25243347-26397,00.html

KEVIN Rudd and Barack Obama are in furious agreement on the latest solution to the global economic crisis.

In a warm and relaxed meeting in the Oval Office yesterday, the Prime Minister endorsed the US President's $US1 trillion bank rescue package, the core of which is to call upon Wall Street fund managers - the very people blamed for creating the mess in the first place - to help claw the world out of crisis.

In fact, the President said the pair had "a great meeting of minds" on the financial crisis.

The prime ministerial seal of endorsement of the plan to ask for the market to be part of the solution was at odds, as Malcolm Turnbull noted yesterday, with Mr Rudd's searing critique of the free market in his recent essay in The Monthly.

As economists debated the merits of the latest bailout plan, doubts also emerged in Britain about the effectiveness of further stimulus packages.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's effort to win Group of 20 support for more ambitious budget support has been undermined by Bank of England governor Mervyn King warning that Mr Brown's own Government cannot afford to take his advice.

Addressing a parliamentary committee, Mr King said that "the fiscal position in the UK is not one where we could say, 'Well, why don't we just engage in another significant round of fiscal expansion?"'

No such doubts were evident in the first official meeting between Mr Rudd and Mr Obama.

Mr Obama said he and Mr Rudd agreed on the US approach to removing so-called toxic assets from the balance sheets of major banks in a bid to loosen frozen credit.

They also agreed on the need for regulatory reform, economic stimulus and protecting emerging nations from the effects of the recession.

"In the run-up to the G20, I feel there's a great meeting of the minds between Prime Minister Rudd and myself in terms of how we should approach it," the President said. But after the 70-minute meeting, the Prime Minister's staff denied his support for the Obama bank rescue package was inconsistent with his recent attacks on Wall Street funds managers and "neo-liberalism".

The new plan is to establish funds that would provide government loans to private investors wanting to buy out bad bank debts at a ratio of six to one. But it has sharply divided economists.

The Opposition Leader said there was a contrast between Mr Rudd's support for Mr Obama's plan and his attacks on free markets.

"Kevin Rudd's enthusiastic endorsement of President Obama's enlisting Wall Street investors to acquire and restructure distressed bank assets is impossible to reconcile with his denunciation of the private sector in his essay in The Monthly," Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Rudd's spokesman said last night: "The basis of The Monthly article was that we need to take steps to protect the market from its own excesses.

"It clearly follows that the market would be part of the response (to the recession)."