One Crowded Hour...

*

Now should you expect to see something that you hadn't seen
In somebody you'd known since you were sixteen;
if love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw?
and that doesn't hold nothing together
Far from these nonsense bars and their nowhere music it's making me sick
And I know it's making you sick
There's nothing there, it's like eating air
It's like drinking gin with nothing else in
And that doesn't hold me together.

But for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room
And I sailed around all those bumps in the night to your beacon in the gloom
I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June
But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin

Augie March

The Australian Open is slowly winding to an end. One Crowded Hour. You Were The Only Person in the room. And everything dissembled. Everything fell apart. He was brought together and brought apart; and if only these final days weren't so cruel. He misted up at the very foot. His daughter was packing up her bags for the last time. The children were off into their own lives. Everything had been centred around a single duty, to protect, to nurture. The children came and he went; in a sense. I didn't want to be an old, childless queen sitting on a bar stool, he said, And yet he went back to that bar, the Oxford Tavern, where he used to get blindingly drunk after work, knowing when he started on the bourbon and cokes that soon enough he would remember nothing; soon enough would be the click in his head on the dance floor, and all would disappear.

It was this union with the world, this abnegation of the self, a total loss, that he so repeatedly sought. I was well known in my profession, even admired to a certain degree, but it never brought me happiness, he said. Trying to concoct a story out of nothing but disorganised strands; bits and pieces of another life. In reality nothing but a drunken union with the forces of the dark. He would crawl home to his apartment, but it meant nothing. Their life was meant to be a bold adventure; the personal the political, brave, pioneering, a stroke for a better world. Instead they were just another group of young, prematurely old hasbeens, marking time, trying too hard, phony as. And so he sat in that bar and he drank and he drank; watching the traffic stream by into the night, watching the day turn blind and the barmen become increasingly besieged.

What's this, his friend asked, replaying the old joke as he rubbed his fingers together: the smallest joint in the world, rolled just for you. Another round. Of drinks and gossip. Once again they replayed the recent drama, when his friend had smothered his lover to death with a pillow; all to avoid the final stages of AIDS. Outside the office workers streamed by on their way home to the eastern suburbs; their trite lives and their trite concerns. He couldn't have been more awkward. He had already had two double bourbon and cokes before he wrote up that day's stories for the following day's paper; then he had had a couple of quick schooners which turned into several; and now he was on his way to a darker night. Surely all this meant something? Surely this marathon of self destruction had its own nobility of purpose?

But of course that wasn't the case. He didn't know until he had been shell shocked into an altered consciousness what was actually happening. He didn't realise that he was on the decline. He didn't realise there was another way of being. He didn't realise that not everyone drank like him; or to be more accurate, he didn't realise the consequences of what he was doing to himself. Much like a climb up Mt Everest, he thought of it all as a noble enterprise, having swallowed whole the the lyrical possession of the dispossessed, the noble struggle, the adventure. That this was a journey he was taking on the behalf of others. That to experience this journey, to record it, to document the fellow travellers he met along the way, was in itself the truest, most sincere, most creative thing he could do.

These delusions, acquired through the ether, through the breathing air, through the zeitgeist of the times, may have first formed in lightning moments of youthful camaraderie and shared joys, but solidified into dangerous falsehoods over years. Years he had always assumed would lead into greatness, never enjoying the moment, always looking to the future. William Burroughs. Silver fish boys ejaculating on silver streams. All these enthusiasms, these hallucinations, so hard fought, so heavily manipulated, were meant to be part of a noble history, but instead became a savage falsehood, hiding in the shadows, a wounded dog. Justine Hennana moves into the finals. Andrew Murray in the semi-finals. Nations barracking their stars. The kids waving goodbye.

He didn't know how to make this any difference. The pack mentality was as strong as ever. If the world didn't agree they weren't prepared to utter the thought. Independence was not admired. Independent thought was little more than a joke. Cruel to be kind, that's what he thought, but instead he ordered another double bourbon. The decline took him by surprise. He could see the pity in his visitor's eyes. The malignant nature of the air, the atmosphere, the fabric of things, was everywhere, fighting through the gluey air. He hadn't realised there was any other way of being. That there was any alternative. And, increasingly drunk, he had no idea there was any alternative. Wake up, smell the roses, someone said as he wretched into the gutter. You alright mate, someone asked. He grunted as he looked up. He would never be alright. He had been born fundamentally deformed; and nothing could change that.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article7004691.ece

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the incumbent President of Sri Lanka, was declared the winner of a presidential election today even as his main challenger, surrounded by troops in a luxury hotel, contested the results and accused the Government of trying to have him assassinated.

Mr Rajapaksa, who took power in 2005 and presided over the defeat of the Tamil Tiger rebels in May, won 57.8 per cent of 10.4 million votes in the first peacetime presidential poll in almost three decades, according to the final results.

General Fonseka, the former army chief who led the campaign against the Tigers before falling out with the President and joining the opposition, won 40.2 per cent of the vote on the Indian Ocean island.

"I announce that Mahinda Rajapaksa has won this presidential election," Dayananda Dissanayake, the independent Elections Commissioner, told reporters as the President’s supporters cheered and let off firecrackers in the streets.

The emphatic result dashed opposition hopes that General Fonseka could split the vote of the ethnic Sinhalese majority and win enough support from minority Tamils and Muslims to unseat Mr Rajapaksa.

It came amid high melodrama in Colombo, the seaside capital, with heavily armed soldiers surrounding the Cinnamon Lakeside Hotel, where the General and his team are staying, since the early hours of the morning.

Even as the results were being announced, General Fonseka told reporters in the hotel that he rejected them and had sent a letter to Mr Dissanayake asking him to nullify the election because of vote-rigging and abuse of government resources.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article7001488.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr=6986833

Angela Merkel, once billed as a kind of Iron Lady, has become the Invisible Chancellor. Even Germans who are usually quite happy to have a non-intrusive, modest head of government, are astonished. There is trouble brewing at home and abroad but the leader of Europe's biggest economy is distinguished by her absence.

One of her coalition partners, the Bavarian Christian Social Union, is bracing for embarrassing revelations from the trial of an arms dealer: he is expected to spill the beans about how illicit funds flowed into party coffers. Ms Merkel’s other coalition partner, the Free Democrats, are under fire for cutting value-added-tax for the hotel trade – and receiving hefty contributions from grateful hoteliers. Clearly party funding reform should be on the government agenda. Equally clearly, Ms Merkel does not intend to touch the issue: it is too dangerous, and she is adept at stepping out of the firing line.

At home, she suddenly looks weak. And abroad, there is a sense that her attention is flagging. The failure of the Copenhagen summit was partly her failure. Nothing much has been heard about the grand re-launch of the France-German relationship. For the past half year Germany has had no policy on Afghanistan. It was waiting to see what President Obama would come up with. Now it is waiting to see what will be demanded of it. That’s not exactly distinguished leadership.

An explanation offered by someone who knows her well is: exhaustion. The twin burden of dealing with the economic crisis and of fighting and winning a general election has left her drained. She loses concentration more quickly than three or four years ago; she is said to be sleeping badly. Ms Merkel took a two week mountain holiday at the outset of last year’s election campaign and this set a pattern of absent or remote leadership. Her Christmas break was unusually long. She was spotted reading a biography of Emil Zatopek, the remarkable Czech long distance runner who despite his oddly clumsy gait managed to win Olympic medals in advanced age. Germans see, in this choice of reading, the signs of a leader searching for her second wind.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/violated-by-hypocrisy/story-e6frf7jo-1225824126491

Violated by hypocrisy

* Jill Singer
* From: Herald Sun
* January 28, 2010 12:00AM

TONY Abbott's hairy-chested stance on female sexual behaviour is a boon for nostalgia buffs.

His latest pronouncements on the value of female virginity (it's a gift, presumably for husbands) place him firmly in the mid-20th century - an era that continues to inspire wistful longing for a simpler life, solid moral values and tailfinned automobiles.

It's an era I've been immersing myself in over the holiday season, courtesy of a boxed DVD set of Mad Men, the hit TV series focusing on 1960s advertising executives and their alpha-male lifestyles.

How it takes you back to that cosy time when a woman's place was in the home, daddy knew best, girls who "did it" were sluts and boys were left blissfully free to "sow their wild oats".

The Mad Monk's views on women and sex dovetail perfectly with those of the Mad Men - as the story goes, women must retain their virginity until they are married, otherwise men will view them as devalued, second-hand or shop-soiled goods.

One might also add that Abbott's tender appreciation of female chastity would sit happily alongside that of an unreconstructed cave-dweller such as, say, Osama bin Laden.

How that heady combination of political leadership and religious worship can facilitate male bonding, transporting them far beyond any constraints of time, culture or reason!

Now that he has nailed female virginity as a commodity that can be exchanged for a wedding ring, Abbott might further plunder the historical archive in his quest to restore respect for it.

If we zip back to the Middle Ages, for example, women were convinced that their virginity was worth dying for.

Lest she be rendered imperfect in God's eyes, a good and godly nun would rather kill herself when threatened with rape than allow herself to be soiled. Now, that's self-respect for you.