Self Seeking Will Disappear

*

There had been so much trouble. And yet now he walked past the dahling, dahrling, good night dahrling bars and went home cheap comfort; watched the English German match at the local English puib, The Duke of Windsor, sitting on iced water and wondering: where did it all go, how did it happened. He loved being out all night and suddenly he was sleeping an unheard of five hours a night and not getting up till 5am. It was all too crazy these chiming times, when he had shown up drunk as a skunk at AA meetings and could hear the weather men chanting: I'm coming for you, I'm coming for you. You are no longer protected. The divine hand has ruled you out. You are a very funny man and you destroyed yourself. Those will kill you faster than anything, James had said in Chiang Mai, pointing at the cigarettes. It was eight days since he had had one. Sometimes he didn't think about having one for an hour or more. Sometimes he could barely resist the pull. Sometimes, if he wasn't getting enough sex in the morning, he thought about popping down the boy massage parlour down the road, where the handsomest things would get you off for an extra 500 baht - $20 - and press their phone numbers on you as you left. Was anyone monogamous in this giant, transcendent place?

Not that he'd noticed but he wouldn't know. There was no catch, really. Shy, determined, things fractured overnight as he ran his hands across Aek's tight stomach, watched him dress for university in the morning; took the news that he had passed the mama test: "Mama telephone say John good", he said, grinning with some kind of relief. There didn't seem to be any way out; and for once he didn't want a way out. He was happily trapped in the physical world, disinclined to cavort in the heavens, even as the Falun Gong stretched not the truth but the sense of the possible; as clouds now and then echoed through the church at Richard Meale's funeral, the last of the men he had so revered, gone, John Bygate, Ian Farr, Harry Godolphin, these figures he had thought were the beginning and the end of everything; but their passing had opened up a different future; and he was no longer trapped in the ideologies of the past. I really did a number on myself this time, he said to someone and they replied: sounds like it. You can really f... yourself up in Bangkok, you can get truly messed up and nobody cares; the Thais don't care, you're just another crazy falung - foreigner - getting too drunk and making a fool of themselves. The Westerners don't care, they only cling here, to this difference place, by the grace of God and convenience.

I know you not happy, I don't know why, the previous boy had said. The Buddha will help you. I cannot. I am just a boy. A baby. And so he had watched as the handsome boy kicked a soccer ball along the beach, played cheerfully with his fellows, while he made mistake after mistake and recovered from a period of lost time, his body aching with the assault. Now, when he did not smoke or drink or stay up all night, time shadows were cavorting at the edges as he struggled to heal himself. The old woman on the street pulled on her plastic legs as he passed her each morning in the early dawn, on his way to Limpini Park. Catch as catch can was the old cry, now it was more: self seeking will slip away. They come, or they come back, only when they are in serious trouble: he could hear them think at the practice site. And none of that mattered because it was all in the day. The heavens were infinite in numbers and multitudes. We were a flash in a very giant pan. No matter how giant your troubles; these times were but echoes; shadows stalking the summit, and against these infinitely giant things his only troubles, anybody's troubles, were nothing but tiny inconveniences flickering on the surface of some remote planet. Lke life itself, pain was fleeting, only temporary, passing quickly. Once again he listened to the melodic tones of the Thai choir practising behind them: Do, a dear, a female deer, the only English he had heard all day, outside his own head.

The old woman put her legs on and the armless beggar looked up optimistically. Shadows cavorted at the edges. Being Monday morning, even the boy brothel seemed quiet after the handsome little crowd that would gather outside at 6am on the weekend, giving him the determined eye as he walked past on his way to and from the park. Everything was out of mind. Everyone could take care. Henrietta, his daughter, burst into tears when he spoke to her on the phone. Dad, it's time to come home. I'm happy here, he replied. What, with a Thai prostitute? she sneered. I hate Asians. They smell and take your money. That's ridiculous, he snapped, see, you should have come to Bangkok, not Pnom Penh, last time. This city has everything. Well maybe not... Well maybe yes. He saw the coollies on the building sites. He saw the workers streaming out of the crowded factories. He saw the quiet places that were everywhere, the go go bars with no customers, for there were still almost no tourists, even though the red shirts had now been cleared from the streets and without prior knowledge, without the embassy warnings, every thing would have seemed normal. Shoot to kill, the Prime Minister Abhisit had ordered, making himself a murderer despised by much of the country as he clung to power for his own ends; for the power; for power and presitge and money always won; and in winning got to rewrite history; to dismiss the red shirts as terrorists. The burnt out buildings still disfigured Bangkok. And he loved it here, despite or because of the many contradictions; the stories of the people applauding the soldiers and bringing them gifts at the same time as they followed out their orders: shoot to kill; shoot to kill your own citizens.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2938574.htm

A lot of the discussion of what happened on Thursday morning has been speculation about the kind of prime ministership we're likely to see from Julia Gillard.

I think one thing needs to be made clear from the outset. While it's wonderful that Australia now has a woman PM - and being the author of the only published biography of her has made me even happier to join in the celebrations - we can forget any women's-mag sentimentality about it.

Gillard herself rejects anything of the kind. She has said, 'Five or ten years ago people would have had the view, if only there were more women in politics somehow it would be a less adversarial, more caring and sharing environment. I have always thought that was bloody nonsense. … I am proof that a woman can thrive in an adversarial environment.'

In contrast to Kevin Rudd, she really understands the party and government she is leading. This is not just a matter of getting on well with her colleagues, which she mostly does, although that's part of it. Anybody who gets where she is - anybody who makes any headway at all within the ALP, come to that - bears the scars of a pretty tough political education, and hers was tougher than some.

Julia Gillard was a student activist and became a successful industrial lawyer, who became a partner in her firm after only three years. She was obviously bright and focused, she had learned about persuasion and making alliances, and she knew her way around the union movement. She decided she needed practical experience in politics, however, and left Slater and Gordon to become chief of staff to John Brumby, then Victoria's Leader of the Opposition. She successfully held that job for two years.

A high flyer, then - and someone who you would think would be an asset to any political party. Yet it took Julia Gillard five years to be preselected for a federal ALP seat - something that still bemuses many of her former colleagues.

That five years in limbo developed her qualities of persistence and determination. She kept turning up to branch meetings, she didn't give up, though she must have been tempted. And finally she got there, and there she has continued to stay.

Gillard lives, eats and breathes politics. The ALP is part of her political DNA, and she knows it as Rudd never did. She understands negotiation, and consultation, and compromise, and deal making, and all the other things that go with being a successful politician. Rudd dealt with the factional culture of his party by ignoring it, with the results we have now seen. Gillard would never have made that mistake.

At the same time, she is no factional puppet. While understanding the essential tribal nature of her party, she has achieved her successes by making alliances and networks of influence across the whole area, from Left to Right. She is too secure, both in herself and now in her position, to be anyone's creature.

The word often applied to her is 'pragmatic', as if this is a bad quality. But realism in politics is surely desirable. Gillard's focus has always been practical. She's a trained lawyer, she understands precedent, and analysis, and working for results. In her first speech as prime minister she specifically allied herself with the country's blue-collar and salaried workers, and as minister for education and industrial relations - running two huge and many-faceted programs -- her focus has been on using whatever practical tools are available to improve conditions for Australian workers and their families.

When she told Tony Abbott in Parliament on Thursday that it was game on, she meant it. For the first time in years, it looks as if we may see a genuine battle between two opposing views of this country, its possibilities and its future.

Julia Gillard is probably not into the 'vision thing', or not in so many words. But we have never been very kind to our political visionaries. Political survival depends on many qualities, not least flexibility and hard-headedness. Gillard has said that what excites her in politics is a sense of possibility. Perhaps, like John F. Kennedy, she would describe herself as an idealist without illusions.

Jacqueline Kent is the author of The Making of Julia Gillard.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/asia_pacific/10427064.stm

Some 40 people have been injured after two speedboats carrying tourists collided in the Gulf of Thailand.

They overturned a few kilometres out to sea while ferrying people to and from a party on Koh Pha Ngan island beach, throwing many revellers into the water.

At least two other people were said to be missing in the collision, which happened close to Koh Samui island.

The monthly event held on full-moon nights is well-known among party-goers, attracting thousands of tourists.
Koh Pha Ngan map Rough waters

One passenger, Ellie Hocken, 19, from Bristol in the UK, survived the crash after being thrown off deck into the sea.

She is in hospital with a fractured back. Her father, Dr David Hocken told the BBC she was "still terrified even now".

"When the crash happened, she was on the top deck of the boat. The sea was very rough. Suddenly someone screamed 'They're going to hit us'," he said.

"They tried to alert the captain but there was no time. There was a huge smash and everyone was thrown overboard. Ellie blacked out and when she woke up, she was alone in the water.

"She saw a boat and managed to swim to it and climb aboard. There were people being resuscitated and someone with an arm torn off. She was put on a stretcher and taken to hospital. Scans show she has a fractured back."

The boats collided late on Saturday, throwing passengers into rough waters just off the island, The Nation newspaper website said.

At least one other Briton and four Australians were said to be among the injured, as well as other foreign tourists.

Every month, it is estimated up to 25,000 revellers descend on Koh Pha Ngan for the all-night beach rave.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/13/1239653219171/Thailand-clashes--Bangkok-004.jpg