The Cruel Times Were Over

*

Blue Bottle Stranded on Bondi Beach

And as I walked on Bondi's burnished sands
the Australian sun beating at my brow
my tender skin stepped upon a beating heart
blue-veined transparency
tendrils reaching for the unreachable sea
rounded body gelatinous and vulnerable
'Blue Bottle'
stranded pulsating jellyfish
lost and alienated from its shoal
when, in her fear
she whipped and stung and clung
numbing me into submission
but for a moment
then shivering as her strength depleted with the ebbing tide
her frightened eyes begged forgiveness
as I scratched and fumbled at the reddening wound
I left her lying there
then, turning back with towelled hands
I bent over her
clasped her greasy roundness
so small against my shadow
and within a wind's breath
my jellyfish tasted salty waters
while the white horses claimed their prodigal mermaid
as she vanished into their unfathomable watery stables
and I began to limp homeward on burnished sands

Bondi Beach,1986

Penny Hemans

The cruel times were over. The Australian Open had begun. Hours crawled by and all the token efforts, they were gone. He had spent a lifetime in servitude to a different person. These moments of deep rhythmic liquidity, the sky and the sand and the silhouettes of swimmers on the edge of the baths, the Icebergers hanging over the cliffs, drinkers spilling out on to the balconies. Everything was so comfortable. It was impossible to be depressed. The joggers moved past and he was gone, gone, into another time and place. Ridding himself of everything; even memory; as he passed through the eye of the needle and all else failed; he would be triumphant.

Those cruel sadists who had inhabited the hospital halls and bred their power from dysfunction of the sick, they, now, were nothing but powerless old men, their theories out of fashion and their client bases sinking. One too many professional squabble had left them as relics in a rapidly evolving scene. They clung to their past glory, their legendary status, but it was nothing. Nobody cared anymore. The glittering bodies of the future littered the sands and flash cars rolled down wealthy avenues; for this was a new and different era. He wasn't going to be free, not yet, but there was hope, because everything else was dying, dissolving, every attachment, every belief.

All he was left with was a dazzling perception, as he sat in the alcove high in the cliffs and puffed on a cigarette away from his children's prying eyes. They had been so close; a family; and now he was old and they were young and seizing the world. It was terribly different days. He had missed them before the were even gone and now the disentanglement was almost complete. The days crawled by and the decoupling, thread by painful thread, followed in the enduring hours. He couldn't be free, not yet, but he was close; and the road beckoned like never before. How could you be so deceitful, so treacherous, so low, he thought, as he listened to a woman talking about stealing single shallots from bunches in grocery stores. How could you do that to yourself, grubby your own soul.

Should he claim leadership? Do the right thing by the situation time and time again? Look up and wonder where it had all gone wrong? Hang around his old drinking haunts drinking lemon squash; talking to old mates. There had been so much fun. If only it could stay that way. It never stayed that way. Dark, dark, as he folded himself off the cliff and soared into the gutter, desperate, darting, a cruel and indifferent gap in the synapses, a shockingly brutal slap in the face. Old church halls loomed in his conscience. They had sat and listened to stories of Mary and Jesus and three wise men, of arks and old people, there in the cicada screeching heat of the Australian suburbs. The summers had crawled.

And now they crawled again; here in Bondi, 19 years after he had also briefly passed through here on, living in an apartment for several months; with their mother increasingly pregnant. It had been a lifetime ago. They had been different people. Time had not always been kind. There was plenty of cause for regret. He could flagellate himself forever; lost opportunities; failed parenthood, sneaking, crumby, scummy, lurking round corners and hiding, always hiding, while the fresh mask of charm flicked across his face as insincerely as he had ever been. He looked up at Withering Heights, to be called Gotham City by a later generation, and wondered: where were they all?

He knew the answer for a lot of them: dead.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.news.com.au/world/desperate-battle-for-life-in-haiti/story-e6frfkyi-1225820665322

An Australian man has been killed in Haiti, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.

The dual Australian-British citizen was a United Kingdom resident working in Haiti for the United Nations, Mr Rudd said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has spoken to the man's next of kin to pass on Australia's condolences.

Mr Rudd said said British authorities were providing consular assistance to the man's family in the UK and Australian authorities were on standby to help if required.

"This is obviously a very, very sad day for this man's family, his loved ones and his friends and I'm sure I speak on behalf of all Australians when I say that our thoughts and our prayers go out to his family and his loved ones on this tragic occasion," he said.

"Haiti, of course, reminds us of a tragedy which has been felt by tens of thousands of families around that country and of course more

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/18/leogane-a-lost-town-at-the-haiti-earthquake-epicentre-115875-21975452/

The town of Leogane is at the epicentre of Haiti’s disastrous earthquake – with up to 30,000 dead and almost all its buildings flattened.

A 40-strong British search and rescue team was the first to reach it yesterday – and the Mirror was with them.

Twelve miles west of capital Port-au-Prince, it used to have a population of 100,000 but now its centre is just a waste land with fallen twisted power cables threaded through rubble like spiders’ webs.

Two mass graves line the main road, a few yellowed bodies thrown in to start a third. Nearby, huddles of people beg for help. Armed men stand defiantly to defend a health clinic-turned-shelter against all comers.

This area had received no aid since last Tuesday’s cataclysm and the scene has been described as apocalyptic.

David Orr, of the UN World Food Programme, said: “It’s the very epicentre of the quake, and many, many thousands are dead. Nearly every house was destroyed. The military talk about 20,000 to 30,000 dead.”

People have fled to surrounding sugar cane fields or mangrove swamps to get away from the destruction. Tens of thousands are living in the open in church compounds, school playgrounds and market places.

Jean Ky Louis, a shop worker, said: “We have seen no rescues here, no help at all. People are dying of starvation, even the survivors. We have nothing, we need help. We welcome the British with open arms. We hoped they would come.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/17/haiti-earthquake-humanitarian-disaster

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said yesterday that the Haitian emergency was the "most serious humanitarian crisis faced by the United Nations" in decades, surpassing those caused by the Asian tsunami, the recent Pakistan earthquake and cyclone Nargis in Burma.

Its effects were greatly magnified, said the UN, because the earthquake hit a densely populated capital city rather than a remote rural area, devastating so many of the organisations and people who would normally lead a rescue effort. "It meant that the civil service, police, emergency services, all the organisations which would normally have key roles in responding to a major disaster were affected," said Stephanie Bunker, of the UN office for co-ordination of humanitarian affairs in New York.

"The Asian tsunami may have strained the emergency services of countries, but it did not disable capital cities like Jakarta or Colombo … Haiti is very poor. It just does not have the resources or the money to respond to an emergency. What capacity it did have to respond was completely knocked out. This earthquake hit a country which was already barely functional."

Factors specific to Haiti have made the emergency harder than usual to respond to. The UN already fed more than 1 million people in Haiti before the quake, which destroyed many of its warehouses as well as its Port-au-Prince headquarters. Key Haitian government officials and civil servants also died, making co-ordination between the emergency services and the international aid effort more complex.

Alison Evans, director of the Overseas Development Institute, said contact between citizens and the government was important for recovery efforts, and the lack of government institutions would slow down any legitimate relief.