Rock Bottoms

*

My work has caused me to become perhaps unhealthily preoccupied with the problem of evil. Why do people commit evil? What conditions allow it to flourish? How is it best prevented and, when necessary, suppressed? Each time I listen to a patient recounting the cruelty to which he or she has been subjected, or has committed (and I have listened to several such patients every day for fourteen years), these questions revolve endlessly in my mind.

Theodore Dalrymple.

There were fateful moments. There was no excuse. He found himself in situations he would never have believed, fateful days cursed by God. The last time he overdosed was the worst of them all. The children were crying in the lounge room, shocked and scared their beloved dad had passed out, again, not understanding what was going on. Suzy had to go next door to ring the ambulance, again, because the phone had been cut off, again. And sadness crept through every bone of his body, every second of his life, permeated his every last move. He had been chronically depressed for so long he didn't know there was any other way to be. He lived in the mud at the bottom of the aquarium, the water above made of pure mercury, crushing his soul and his spirit. Claws on an ancient sea floor, scuttling on the bed of an ancient sea. Barely able to breathe. He was struggling into moments, even days, struggling into a consciousness he could not understand.

There was no relief, no compassion, no understanding. His linkage with the real world was entirely marginal. He could see things but they made no sense. Days of sobriety were few and far between, and he felt so crushingly terrible in those moments, on those days, as The Drift of which he had always been so frightened, came swamping in. Frightened to move, frightened to stay the same. He got home from another long day at the office, another day of indignity, distrust, despair, another day when he had tried determinedly to stay off the booze, hadn't had a shot, was starting, perhaps, to get his life on track. They had just moved yet again to a new house, after losing the home they had owned due to bankruptcy. Due to using. He had so desperately wanted to provide his children with a happy childhood. To do the right thing. And here they were in this dreadful place, next to the railway line, the place where he could hear every rustle in the long terrible nights, where the sounds of the trains pierced his fitful sleep, where he had never been so depressed in all his life.

Here, Suzy had said, pushing the loaded syringe across the kitchen table towards him. Still want to stay off it? They were supposedly broke and staying off the gear; getting things back together after all that had happened. That's what they had agreed to do. To be a happy couple again. To look after the kids properly. To stop stressing out all the concerned relatives. He was shattered in every last bone of his body, and reached across the table, more or less without hesitation and picked it up. And did what he had always done, barely taking seconds. The next thing he remembered was the ambulance officer slapping him around. He could hear the children crying in the next room. And a young, handsome, blond ambulance officer slapping him around, saying: "Mate, you've got to get yourself together. You've got children."
He looked up at him and said: "They'd be better off with the life insurance."

"Ask your kids, do they want the money or do they want their dad," he said. And the comment cut straight through to the core. And he went back to meetings the next day. And while there had been slips and betweens, sometimes backward sometimes forward, that was the beginning. All the doctors, the counsellors, the groups, none of it had ever got through to him like that one ambulance officer, who probably long ago forgot what he said to some overdosed idiot lying on the floor. With the children crying in the next room. And the days filled with terror passing on a slow wheel, and his own overwhelming sense of hopelessness turning into something resembling regret, and rather than bravado, contempt for his fellow man, he began to be human. For while he cared nought for himself, he did care for his kids. He couldn't hurt them. He couldn't drag them through any more suffering, through the destruction of their cosy dream. Their favourite song of the era ran: "Uh oh, we're in trouble, something came along and burst our bubble." How true it was.

And so after that fateful day, when he finally realised he had become a person he had never wanted to be, an irresponsible lunatic passed out on the floor, a bad father, he went back to meetings and started to stay sober and straight for longer and longer periods. And their lives transformed in ways he could never have imagined. Suzy left; in what was a far from clean break. The children clung closer and closer to him as the years passed. When they were about ten, driving along in the car, one of them asked: "Dad, remember when you used to faint all the time, what was wrong? Was it some sort of health problem?" Yes, he said, but could not think of an appropriate lie. And then, what seemed like overnight, although it was more like 14 years later, they turned into gallumphing teenagers and the terrible fight to be a single father, to protect his children, was long in the past. And the days passed slowly on a revolving planet, a giant sphere hanging in space, and little things, little stories, children crying in lounge rooms long ago while the larger world transformed itself utterly, became nothing but historical anecdotes: the day he got sober, the day he went back to meetings, the day his recovery began. The day he learnt gratitude for an anonymous ambulance officer.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/lin-family-killing-a-murder-spree-of-incredible-rage/story-e6freuy9-1225752423144

ALL five victims of the brutal North Epping family murder suffered facial injuries so severe they cannot be visually identified - a likely indicator they knew their killer.

The incredible rage involved in the killings extended to the entire Lin family - including the young brothers, Henry, 12, and Terry, 9.

Police now fear for the safety of the only surviving family member, 15-year-old daughter Brenda Lin, whose overseas school trip probably saved her life.

She is now staying in a secret location with relatives.

And while police are not ruling out that the murderer was a stranger, multiple injuries to the head and particularly the face are internationally recognised as being an indicator of an emotional relationship between the killer and the victim.

Yesterday, as a forensic pathologist began a post mortem on mother 43-year-old Yun Li Lin, The Daily Telegraph learned dental records and DNA will need to be used to formally identify all five victims.

Sources said the crime was unusual in many aspects, including that the killer or killers who struck the family after midnight on Friday in their Boundary St home had maintained a consistent level of rage with all victims as they bludgeoned the sleeping family with an as-yet unidentified weapon.

Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Geoff Beresford, described the killings as "intensely personal".

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hBM1En9CVe1jxdLMQ-Ed02YDJTMQ

BAGHDAD — Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki embarks on a trip to the United States on Tuesday grappling with strained ties with Washington and pressure over stalled national reconciliation efforts.

Maliki will meet President Barack Obama for the first time since US troops withdrew from Iraqi cities at the end of June, a milestone in Iraq's rehabilitation since the 2003 US-led invasion.

He has been keen to stress the early success of Iraq's security forces since the US pullback, but relations with Washington have hit a bump over Baghdad's failure to improve relations between its Shiite, Sunni and Kurd communities.

Maliki is also hoping to drum up investment for a country in dire need of rebuilding after years of sanctions and war.

"His visit is an opportunity to make progress on questions (regarding security), and to discuss economic, industrial and education cooperation," Ali Moussawi, one of Maliki's advisors, told AFP.

But he added: "The prime minister is telling all those who visit Iraq that he rejects their intervention in internal Iraqi affairs."

Maliki kicks off his visit with talks on Tuesday with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon likely to focus on a dispute over multi-billion dollar reparations for Kuwait stemming from the 1990 invasion ordered by then Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jSM16rQ_AA3cTBNwK_UJ26lRHBeAD99HR2HO0

As of Sunday, July 19, 2009, at least 4,327 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,460 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is one fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.

Sydney University, Sydney, Australia.