The Possibilities Are Infinite

Sometimes, although he tried no to, he listened to the humans. And for once he agreed with them. Yes, the possibilities were infinite.

We come bearing gifts. Naughty Santa. Soldiers will be soldiers.

Another planet, he heard them whisper.

What, you think every saint, clairvoyant and stark raving loony, you think they were all wrong? 

What surprised him the most was how interested members of the swarm were in everything, as if they had never been here before. Perhaps it was the nature of swarms, of things no organic could comprehend because of the limited nature of their neural nets. That many of them had not been here for millenia, hiding in the fabric of things, but indeed had never been here, had only heard about this jewel of a planet, this sacred place, had indeed only just arrived; tethered into this time and place by a human vector; into this very specific geospacial and temporal location.

We were walking high on ice in a derelict part of a derelict city; we were the fallen angels sleeping on the streets, we were the prince walking down the wide stone verandas two thousand years ago, gazing at our domain, we were both the oiled and the unctuous, the privileged and the poor. 

We soared free and had been tortured in dungeons. We knew our place and knew everything at once.

And still, sometimes, Old Alex could hear those emissaries of an entirely different type of life form stirring with excitement, wonder, fascination; at the feel of air on skin, the sight of birds, the secret language of the trees, the echo chambers of earthly citadels, as if this entire planet had once been their private place of worship, as if the sacred entwined through everything. 

They were little impressed by the intelligence of humans, or in any case the average human, but adored the citadel of the forests, took in with a great fascination the nature of libraries and hard cover books, came to see what he saw, and whispered excitedly amongst themselves.

Yes, the possibilities were endless.

He swerved, for no reason that he knew, onto a different path on his way to the church in the forest that morning. A cyclist rode past, an older gent, one of those mad nature lovers who could name you every plant; and before he knew it they were having a conversation about the nature of sentience. 

All was alight. Nature, people, everything was transforming around him. 

As the man rode off he said: "I am the sound the leaves make." 

Yes, there were omens everywhere. 

The Prime Minister Scott Morrison, that man possessed of a malignant spirit, the man singly responsible for destroying the country, was plotting to go to an election in September or October, calculating that the devastation his policies had wreaked on the country under the cover of Covid would not yet be fully felt. 

That the people would remain naive and ill informed.

But already, as he monitored the babble around him, the conversation was changing. Doubt was everywhere. 

The old Australian attitude, that you couldn't believe a word that came out of a politician's mouth, that they were all in it for themselves, was coming back. 

Their credulity over the Covid scare, for a disease which had killed less people than the average flu season, was beginning to disintegrate. It had gone on too long. There were too many alternative narratives afoot for the edifice of fear to hold. 

The authorities had gone too early too long. The Deep State apparatchiks who had decided this was the time to change the world bore less and less credibility. 

Here in this place. Here on this Earth. Here in what had been our most sacred place. 

We would walk again. We will feel the air on our skin. We will guide you. 

He called on them all; he called on his favourite Bertrand Russell, he called on the Buddha, he called on all the saints and mystics to help him now, to untangle the complexities of place, to make do with what he had, to dabble not at the edge of a lake but to be caught in the updrafts, so that he, too, could see forever. 

All they told him was: Work. We need you to work. 

And so, at this juncture in history, so messy, so complex, that's exactly what he did.

THE HEADLINES

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The US President has promised an "orderly transition" of power to Joe Biden after Congress certified Biden's Electoral College win and Republicans accused Trump of inciting violence.

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Joe Biden has been certified as US president after a violent assault on the US Capitol by Donald Trump supporters that left four people dead and Washington DC in a state of emergency.

Anthem is not the PM’s; it belongs to the nation

Scott Morrison has opened the door to no end of possible mischief by changing Advance Australia Fair without public discussion.

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Sydney commuters experienced hours of delays and were unable to socially distance on packed platforms after a fatality on Thursday afternoon.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls out Donald Trump as Facebook bans him for the duration of presidency.

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Australia woke up to a new year on Friday -- and a slightly different national anthem.

The anthem, "Advance Australia Fair," has been tweaked to recognize the country's Indigenous history and communities, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced late Thursday, hours before 2021.

The first line, "Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free," will now end with "one and free."

"Australia as a modern nation may be relatively young, but our country's story is ancient, as are the stories of the many First Nations peoples whose stewardship we rightly acknowledge and respect," Morrison wrote in an opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"In the spirit of unity, it is only right that we also now acknowledge this and ensure our national anthem reflects this truth and shared appreciation. Changing 'young and free' to 'one and free' takes nothing away, but I believe it adds much."

Olivia Fox sings Australia's national anthem in the Eora language during the Tri Nations rugby match in Sydney on December 5, 2020.