Shouts Snatched In The Wind

*

Small Scenes In Sydney

It's when
the first bus
goes down
Oxford Street
with
the daylight
just
pinching the edge,
the rim
of
the night,
the noise
begins.

Someone whistles,
passes
this window,
quietly
whistling.

It's these
working days
and
the restless
cars and scooters
at the lights.

In the middle
of the
Messiaen concert,
suddenly,
I wanted
to be
outside the hall,
to have
stumbled across
this building
full of music
while walking
in the
winter night.

At dusk,
before
the storm
broke,
the bats
flew in
above
the
gigantic
fig trees.
It was
remarkable.

I get up
from
a chair
to watch
the rain
outside
and
stub my toe
on the
table leg.

Pam Brown

And so it was that criminal neglect came his way, that old emotions circled and his own sickness took full sway. He listened to the self-absorbed messages of the sick and the dying, the rabid justifications, the extensive cries for help. He didn't know what was happening, but knew change was afoot. Everything could alter in a moment, his job, his status, his house, his car, everything could just fall over, pass away, leaving him even more bereft. The black skeleton imprinted on the landscape, what was once a shadow. These voices called him. He knew there were other paths. Criminal gangs roamed the street, but he felt no responsibility. Slow train wrecks, slow moving disasters, everything we were shocked to hear, these voices could only calm him.

So it was that he came to find a new soul, that he recognised his own journey was just one of millions; that these tortured voices would redeem him. If that was true. If he could but tell the truth. He missed his children even before they were gone; and now they were old enough to live their own lives his primary purpose had been abandoned. He had fulfilled the biological urge. He had passed on his genes, his fortune, a wealth of chaos and mumbling discontent. He looked at piercing eyes in the faces of strangers, knew there was a deeper discontent, a deeper spirit behind it all. He smiled, but the smile was so thin, the shadows so darkened that there was no redemption, there was no saving himself from the cruelty of failure. And so it was he came to rest.

He was shocked now, daily shocked, that so much of the story was already over. That everything which had happened, all those strands which were meant to make a greater story, only came in whispers. The deliberate obscurity of the academics; the post-narrative post-modernist strictures which had danced on the outskirts of all their intellectual lives, this garbage, this pointless rubbish which had filled so many essays, occupied so many careers, it was all over. He hadn't understood it all. He hadn't been broken apart. He hadn't wished for ill amongst the blessed. He had known he was being selected. God was on the lookout. So that private desolation, the feelings he so feared, it was all gone. That's what he wanted.

He wanted the shame, guilt, regret and remorse to scurry away. He wanted to be a new person without doing the work. He wanted to be resuscitated, revived, risen up. He wanted to be a new person and he could but smile at their unshapely forms, the unprepossessing, unauthoritive shapes of ordinary people. The welfare mob. The land of methadonia. Of broken dreams and broken hearts, faces lined from cigarettes, weak eyes and weak hearts. He didn't want to be like them, living failures. He wanted to shout out: I am comfortable in my own skin. But of course it was not to be. He was sharp and he was shadowed, shallow. Why weren't they all shrieking out of their own skins? Why did they sit so calm? Why did they seem so happy?

The broken hearts spoke of a time far off; where shadows bent and bones ached, where new spirits like new star systems rose out of the great dust clouds of the universe. Beauty to the beholder, and he had eyes to see. But it was the pit of his stomach, the core of his belief, the hearts and the shadows, these things, they rose up from the breeding grounds. Only he had eyes to see; from these stark angles and falling masses, from their ancient place where worlds were born anew. We fell and we picked ourselves up again. Across the wall, through the wall in a sense, he could see other souls, ignorant souls, struggling for redemption. They could not understand their own failures, their own lack of success, despite their own good will and their own best intentions. And so he came full circle, and he sat and listened to the wisdom of others; the anecdotes. He even found himself laughing in unison with others. And joined again the toiling mass; took up the cudgels once again; and fulfilled his role.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8064754.stm

The UN secretary general is to press Sri Lanka for unrestricted access by aid agencies to civilians caught up in fighting against Tamil Tiger rebels.

Ban Ki-moon is the first senior world figure to arrive in Sri Lanka since the government said it had defeated the 26-year rebel insurgency this week.

About 275,000 Tamils are sheltering in camps in need of aid, but the army is still restricting access to the area.

Mr Ban is visiting an area in Vavuniya, where most of the displaced are held.

Aid groups have complained that their access to the displaced camps has been greatly restricted.

"There should be promotion and protection of human rights and there should be unimpeded access to the sites of the displaced by international, humanitarian organisations, including the United Nations," Mr Ban said when he arrived in the capital, Colombo.

Mr Ban said he would also appeal to the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to resolve the long-standing grievances of the Tamil minority.

"It's time for Sri Lankans to heal the wounds and unite without regards for religious and ethnic identity," he said.

Without a political settlement that gives Tamils real rights, UN officials believe the fighting will begin anew, says the BBC's Laura Trevelyan in Colombo.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/23/2578874.htm?section=justin

Residents in the northern New South Wales town of Kempsey have been ordered to evacuate, although the flood threat is easing on the far north coast.

While rainfall on the north coast will continue today, it is not expected to cause a renewal of flooding elsewhere.

Flooding in Maclean has also been revised down slightly to 3.2 metres. This is still very close to the top of the levee, which is 3.3 metres.

Grafton has escaped major flooding but 220 people have been evacuated from the city to Coffs Harbour.

The Clarence River at Grafton peaked at 7.3 metres, half a metre lower then expected.

The Bureau of Meteorology is predicting moderate rainfall in the north of the region today. It is predicting about 30 to 50mm of rain for the Northern Rivers.

The latest evacuation order is for residents in the Kempsey CBD, Smithtown, Gladstone and Jerseyville.

The SES says residents should leave their homes as soon as possible to risk congestion on roads.

Residents of Yamba and Maclean, north of Grafton, could also be asked to leave.

The SES says it has been a busy night in Kempsey for authorities.

Residents in Kempsey and surrounding areas are being evacuated to West Kempsey Public School.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25524807-5006788,00.html

A DECISION to upgrade the status of the Tasmanian devil to endangered casts further doubt on plans to build a $23 million tourist road through the Tarkine rainforest.

The change in status of the carnivorous marsupial from vulnerable to endangered will significantly increase the weight given to expert concern that the 133km road would hasten the demise of the species.

Devil experts and scientists have written to Environment Minister Peter Garrett warning that the road will hasten the spread of the deadly devil facial tumour disease (DFTD) into the last remaining disease-free habitat.

Mr Garrett, who has the final say on the project under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, yesterday declined to say what impact the federal endangered listing would have on his assessment of the road.

However, he confirmed it meant the species, reduced by DFTD to just 30 per cent of the wild population of only 13 years ago, had "additional protection under national environmental law".

"It means that we intensify our efforts to make sure that we can look after this important animal," he said. "I understand there will be a referral that will come through to me in relation to the Tarkine road. It will be the subject of an exhaustive evaluation."

The federal Coalition has called on Mr Garrett to reject the road proposal, which controversially includes a 5.4km section to be carved through part of the nation's largest tract of temperate rainforest.

Opposition environment spokesman Greg Hunt has backed the state Liberals in opposing the project, arguing that former prime minister John Howard did not protect the forest from logging "only to have it destroyed by ... aroad".

The Tasmanian Government argues that the plan, initiated by former premier Paul Lennon, will drive tourism to the state's often neglected northwest corner and that rainforest lost will be offset by additional reserves.

However, there are divisions within the ALP, with some key players hoping Mr Garrett will kill the project on environmental grounds.

Bondi Beach, dusk.