SHEETING HOME THE BLAME GAME

Protestors Falls

Here in the reaches, they avoided any possibility of conflict. All was well, those who sailed within her. A capacity for melancholy. Stoic. An entire circus on a pinhead. He gestured in recognition of the woman's trak marks. A whole heap of money went up there. Conquered, screaming. Dragged into the light. There were so many things to do. He was quaking in recognition of everything. Hollow laughs weren't the day's fare, a sentimental fright. He could be shadowed but not forever. 

So he stood naked in the market place, is that it? They were barely achieving what had to be done. A quaing fear of everything took flight. Sentimental fright indeed. The heat soaked beaches had finally reached the traditional definition of an Australian summer, and he was burnt, or coloured at least, in one walk. What, his feet were going to seize up and he could not go as he wanted to go, here, there, an awful lot of places. It only takes o
ne spark to light a bushfire, his hustler friend said. They were hustling in a wind storm. A crowded market. A million voices. We were shadows in contrast to what was out there.

This darting behind the lines, would it never end? All those veils had gone, the seven barriers, but in their place other things were building. In too bright colours in an empty place. "I last saw you in Chiang Mai, and then Bangkok," said a refugee from the cabin. Paying $11,000 a month for rest and reclamation. He could see the silicon mists mawing at his feet, and everythng in between. Lurching forward. A meditiation. A passing into eternity. He should have been demystified by then. "Change is what happens at the edge of your comfort zone," a jogger's singlet declared. In pink and black. The woman was short, dark, athletic. She stopped at the same rock as him and then turned. He watched her briefly.

They were all brief now, these places drenched in colour and heat. The Bridge across the Harbour. The Opera House at night. The last of the revellers spilling out into what the media were determined to paint as violence filled streets, but were rarely that. A young man pestered a young woman to go home with him, and their dancing altercation, his persistence, her reluctance, travelled through the emptying streets of the Rocks. During the day a contortionist had promised to put herself inside a clear plastic box. But her first trick, looking at your own asshole, destroyed something and a third of the parents with children drifted away. All else was free, to be here in triumph. To laugh at everything you had done. To enjoy the moment and be gone. 

THE BIGGER STORY:

The Post’s View

Thailand’s anti-democracy protests should provoke a harsh rebuke from the U.S.

By Editorial Board, Published: January 16

POPULAR DEMONSTRATIONS against democracy are becoming an unfortunate trend in developing countries where elections have challenged long-established elites. The latest case is Thailand, where thousands of people took to the streets Monday to demand that the country’s freely chosen government step down, that an unelected council take its place and that elections scheduled for next month be canceled. The protesters’ strategy appears to be to disrupt Bangkok to the point at which the government will feel compelled to resign or be removed by the military.

Similar tactics have succeeded in bringing down two previous governments led by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his supporters since 2006, while a third was forced out by a dubious court decision. This time, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, Mr. Thaksin’s sister, is standing firm, as she should. But she could use more support from the United States in rejecting an undemocratic outcome to the crisis.