Now Is The Time

*

All trace of everything was being erased as it happened, a program destroying its own path, physical pain alternating with a blank head. He plunged off the air just as quickly as he regained competence; and everything was delightful. Nothing made sense and yet he should have known better. After the 100th partner, most people start to lose count, the worker at the STD clinic said; when he claimed ignorance to the ridiculous question of how many people he had been with. The mirrored walls. The lithe bodies. The charming smiles. The pain that cramped his shoulder. The winning smiles that drained him of every cent; just as he had done to another generation in another country. As if it was all the same. A continuum. A little gaggle of them went to visit Mark from Wales; another of the charming British. Wise boys and wise scenes. Sow! Forward with strength; Aek kept emphasising, noticing how rapidly he had plunged off the air, disturbed. One phone call and he felt like drinking, that's all it took. They would never be the same again. The human body was not meant to cope with such sustained stress. Indulgence. Despair. An infinity of if not pleasure; then exploration. Work. Everything counted, everything was a quest. Except he didn't know where he was going.

They would be armed again. They would be made strong. He would join them in joy. He would go to the country and come back. He would constantly fork out money. Same same Aek, he would ask, as in, he costs money. Happy not to work. But the tumult and the shouting. Happy go school. Except what was real and what was not? He didn't know any more. As if he didn't have his own secrets; as if virtue was imprisoned only in the faithful; as if age didn't creep up on everybody. He couldn't be denied; and yet there was little to recommend either option. He couldn't make the voice recognition work properly. Persevere, Peter advised. Repetitive strain injury from a lifetime of typing was doing him in. There had been advantages to not having a computer; not working. Not indulging in a lyrical strain of imagery. Not pretending to be gifted; when all it constituted was hard work. At least you're doing something you enjoy, something that's a challenge, people observed of the film script he was struggling to complete; and he knew there were other ways, other things, thoughts that should be divined but weren't, forests that should be explored but instead only represented even greater mystery than the skyscrapers that surrounded them.

They went out to Issaan and he felt sick to the pit of his stomach. There wasn't much doubt where this was going when the massage boy appeared entirely naked in the room, generous to a fault, time out of mind, front and back; old soldiers, clamped cramped pain, singing soldiers marching in tight dappled uniforms, their olive skins against the wild dark, the pain that constituted a return to form, a time which was both terrible and perfect, which meant all was heading their way. He couldn't be sure but he was happy here. Never heard you say that; mamma said. But she had also warned, quoting an old song: My mother told me, there'd be days like this. Everything cramped up. Whole worlds slewed away. Earthquakes rocked the planet. Mai mee banhah, he said, there is no problem; although the constant drain on his finances represented exactly that. There were phrases to be had. There were times that should have been altered, transferred, transfixed, plastered into pin points of pain. Migraine, he tried explain, but this migraine was well into its fourth day and the flashing lights and the enveloping pain meant he could not concentrate, could hardly be seen for hearing, could crawl with embarrassments at the stories as they were rewritten; wanted to be safe, wanted to remember everything that had happened; wanted to know why there was no memory, why the machine was failing to function, why he couldn't stand up. If you don't agree with us you are incapable of honesty. Give it a rest. Sober days. He was sick of the lust. Instincts run riot; a quagmire of conflicting impulses. All of them out of line, out of queue, out of proportion. Blessed be the saints.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/judges-absent-as-gillard-bids-for-miss-australia-crown-20100831-14fkm.html

THE BIGThe definition of relevance aside for a moment, Ms Gillard was very clearly involved in a beauty contest yesterday.

Never has a larger crowd been assembled for a prime minister to flash her wares to a smaller audience.

Ms Gillard commanded a packed National Press Club, itself beamed nationwide on TV, to sashay her stuff to just three judges. And they didn't even turn up.

The independents whose eyes the Prime Minister most wanted to catch - Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter - were busily dashing elsewhere around Canberra seeking information from experts about whether they should gaze more kindly upon either Ms Gillard or the buffed Tony Abbott, who has been modelling for them in private.

Ms Gillard the trained lawyer would know, of course, that the longer the jury is out, the less likely the prosecution will get the decision it seeks.

Thus, she had to keep grimly prosecuting her case, which is why she took the stage at the press club to declare that she ought to be Miss Australia.

Why, she wanted to make the democratic system more open and more transparent and, especially, she wanted to ''strengthen the role of the national Parliament in the decisions that affect the everyday lives of Australians''.

Make that the everyday lives of the independents. And yes, ''clearly the new Parliament will also have to focus on the needs of regional Australia''. Which, of course, is where the crucial independents live.

But precisely what did she mean by parliamentary reform? She was asked about question time.

Would long-winded non-answers get the shove in the race to give the independents their desire?

Ms Gillard responded with a long-winded answer that didn't shed much light, though she suggested that time limits for questions and answers in question time and the ability to follow up with supplementary questions were ''obviously important''.

This itself was revelatory, for such tiny mercies had never been given the time of day by prime ministers until the independents were given the opportunity to cast a judgmental eye.

Ah, but what about the right to avoid the question?

''There's the vexed question of relevance, which of course - a bit like beauty unfortunately - is in the eye of the beholder,'' she responded vaguely. Yes, and no one yet knows what is in the eyes - or the minds - of the only beholders who count as this beauty contest grinds its frustrating way to an uncertain conclusion.

Tony Wright is Age national affairs editor.GER STORY:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/31/AR2010083104496.html

Saying there is "still a lot of work to do" politically in Iraq, President Obama on Tuesday congratulated U.S. troops stationed at Fort Bliss for their accomplishments in the war zone over the past seven years. He thanked a gathering of uniformed service members, some of them about to deploy overseas, saying their service made the withdrawal of combat troops possible.

"We are in transition," Obama said. "And that could not have been accomplished had it not been for the men and women here at Fort Bliss and across the country.

Still, Obama said he would not be taking a "victory lap" when he addresses the nation from the Oval Office on Tuesday night.

"It's not going to be self-congratulatory," Obama said of his prime-time speech, only the second such address he has made as president. "There's still a lot of work that we've got to do to make sure that Iraq is an effective partner with us."

Obama traveled to the Texas base, home of the 1st Armored Division, on a day unusual for its focus on the two wars he inherited upon taking office - a day his advisers hoped would underscore his fulfilled promise to end the Iraq conflict. Obama rose to national prominence as an opponent of the Iraq invasion and 2007 surge, saying months after it began - as the Democratic primary campaign was heating up - that the troop increase in Iraq "had not worked."

Obama called former President George W. Bush on Tuesday and is expected to mention him by name in the speech. But he has mostly sidestepped the question of whether he has changed his view of the surge, with his advisers saying that it was a combination of added troop strength, political improvements and the Sunni awakening that helped stabilize the country.

Further tests are on the horizon in Iraq, where a government has yet to be formed more than five months after the elections. Under the Status of Forces agreement signed by Bush and the Iraqis, all remaining U.S. troops are scheduled to leave by the end of 2011. The Obama administration has left itself very little room to alter those plans, saying that it would require a request from the Iraqis themselves to leave troops behind and that no request has come in. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said he could not speculate about an extended U.S. troop presence because it is a "hypothetical."

"We have to receive their request before we're able to discuss it," Rhodes told reporters traveling on Air Force One with Obama.

Picture: Peter Newman.
Pi