THE HUNTING

Photograph Sydney ourtesy dreamtime.com

There was so much of the haunting that still ran through his brain; because he was here and not there; not where he felt he was meant to be. But the sense of dislocation was no worse than before; better perhaps. Things would go round in circles for a while, he knew that. He knew that things would sometimes be topsy turvy, that the haunting was over but his psyche was still readjusting; that the hurled abuse; or was it targetted abuse, of an election would wash over him, as it was washing over the nation, and sooner or later all would be well.
Or lost.
If there had been any fundamnetal psychological shifts, they hadn't come through his own doing. Geography changed everything, from crowded psychodramas and the constant haunting, the filfthy echoes which began and ended in over-heated lanes, which were swallowed almost as soon as they were emitted, which chirped just beyond the visual range and which he had studiously ignored.
Occasionally there had been a friendly echo, but they were rare.
Here the echoes didn't exist, or barely existed, and his brain searched for meaning when there was none. Sounds were just sounds. Traffic was just traffic. Friends were just friends, dampened in the cold.
He would always be scarred by what had happened, but stronger, wiser, too.
"Buffalo, buffalo," he heard it sometimes, but he knew it was no longer in the streets.
These walking machines, sterling examples of mob behaviour. Of the whipped up, deluded, manipulated masses. How far they could stoop he had never known. How low they could go had been beyond his comprehension.
And so he gathered his forces, and slept, strangely, in a way that was abnormal for him; as if he couldn't bear the long nights with his thoughts running in spirals; the encroaching dawn; the long walks.
As if Lumbini would always be with him; a place he would never have gone if he hadn't been through the scraifhying experience of Bangkok.
So there it was, a simple thing. One thing leads to another. One door closes and another opens.
All the old clices came true, at times of crisis and change. Do the best by the day. Corny things. When in crisis, deal with what's in front of your face.
All would be mounted and mounting; all would circle into scnees of loss and recovery.
The shadows would pass.
He would be whole again.
He did not have his enemies to thank, that pack of thieves from Soi Twilight, and their mafia cohorts throughout the Kingdom, but he did have the passing of time.
They were off hunting fresh meat. Easier, less consequence. Their stance was exposed, their actions there for anyone who wanted to see, and so they, in their simple classical way, ignored inconvenient truths, and moved on.
He sat next to the old mamasan or whatever he was, party promoter, from X-Size, at the bar outside a different bar in a different part of Patong, swapped pleasantries, never mentioned the go-go boy Aek who had robbed him so repeatedly, told so many lives, who had been the instrument the mafia used to stir up hatred against a foreigner, to discredit someone who dared to object to being robbed, and never even mentioned the things that had passed.
The times when he had shown up at X-Size demanding the money he had just been robbed of be returned.
They never mentioned the hundreds of other clients who had also, no doubt, been robbed. That foreigners, tourists only in town for a day or two, were easy targets. That the perpetrators would be dead if they targetted other Thais.
There was no explanation as to why the man had changed bars.
There would never be an explanation.
These things were not subjects that Thais shared with foreigners.
And that was that. The stream went unanswered. The swirl of victims aka customers continued on.
And no shape, no past, no future, tense or not, would ever be discussed.
They raised their glasses in a salute at nothing, and the night washed on.

THE BIGGER STORY

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/switch-of-leaders-creates-more-problems-than-labor-realises/story-e6frg74x-1226696603679

The moral is stark: despite the merits, switching prime ministers just before an election guarantees a pile of problems.

Rudd returned with a "fix it" plan on carbon pricing, boats and party reform. Now the truth is obvious: this doesn't constitute an election strategy. Rudd lacks a powerful narrative apart from jaw-boning about the future while running an anti-Abbott scare.

On the resources boom, Abbott said if it was finished then Labor had been pivotal in killing it. What else would he say? Rudd's line about the boom being over has dismayed the industry and provoked kickback from the opposition. Not smart.

It is true, of course, the reduction in resources investment demands the non-resource sectors seize the slack. It is equally true Australia would be mad to ignore escalating world energy demand over the coming 20 years including an expected doubling in global liquefied natural gas demand by 2030. If you want vision, why not talk about Australia as an expanding energy superpower? But such notions are not in Labor's political DNA, unlike same-sex marriage.

Labor must have a moral cause justified by voting demographics. Climate change once performed this role. Now it is unfashionable. Having just changed his mind on same-sex marriage, Rudd may be correct in judging this to be a voting plus, notably with the under-30s. But it is a risk. The risk is that Labor looks like a party that fails on the big issues but seeks to survive on progressive fashion. It will provoke much cynicism at a time when people feel Labor is failing on economic management, jobs and cost of living. Some will applaud Rudd; others will conclude this shows him as a phony.

The single most alarming aspect of Labor's campaign is the absence of any positive tactic to regain the lead from Abbott. Where are Rudd's policies to buttress his claim to best manage the economic transition? He rarely mentions them. Where does this leave his campaign?

The answer is heavily in negative territory. Rudd's resort lies in discrediting Abbott. It has been the default Labor position for years. The party remains in denial about its policy and intellectual failures. Such denials are rationalised by the delusion that Abbott is unelectable, and reinforced now by the sad reality that Labor probably has nothing else left.