Tunnels Through Time

Haven't done this for awhile. To be very boring, I've been ill with a urinary tract infection that won't go away, on two different antibiotics, feeling drained, fantasing about living in the country, just wanted to escape the pressure of my own head, of feeling ill, of walking out the front door and not being able to cross the road because of the traffic. Financially nothing adds up in Sydney. The politicians, the commentators, they all talk about the boom times in Australia. But those boom times are poorly distributed, and for most people life is a struggle to pay bills, mortgages, credit cards, school fees. There's stunning amounts of money in Sydney, dripping wealth, but at the same time kilometre after kilometre of suburbs, of locked rooms, of staring voices and crazed eyes and introspective tunnels curling through the mud.

We don't know why things dived and escaped, why regular patterns suddenly became disrupted, why success vaulted into failure and why a longing for peace translated into disappearance. Sometimes I fantasise about sitting in a bar on the Amsterdam docks, the smoke curling through the morning cigarette, the weak European sunshine forming atmospheric patterns as the die hards settled into the first drink of the day. When intoxication took you into streams of knowing others. When he wrote not for others but for a deeper truth. Or if not Amsterdam, perhaps the streets of Calcutta. Hey, I remember you, the man who sold books would say. He did wierd things for personal gain, like taking us to the leper colony; as if it was a standard tourist site, outraging the doctors at the hospital.

We apologised, we left, he seemed nonplussed and wanted his 50 rupees anyway. What was that, a $1.50, we gave it to him, who cared. The cruelty of that city, the cruelty of his own torments and displaced brain, they didn't work except in streams of words and images and angst which portrayed a dislocated sensibility, nothing more, nothing less. Tears welled up and washed into headaches that wouldn't go away, he wasn't sure what this was about, what the past few weeks had been about. Sometimes he slumped into his chair at work, under flourescent lights, staring at a computer screen, reading crossed wires and other blogs, other lives; just wishing he wasn't 54 and heading into the dark, with old friends fizzling out, the ones that hadn't died young; and feeling in himself, too, the strands of hope and pessimism and resignation. It was good to be free.

NEWS:
DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group led by al Qaeda vowed a war against the "worshippers of the cross" in response to a recent speech by Pope Benedict on Islam that sparked anger across the Muslim world.
"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya," said an Internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq's branch of al Qaeda.
"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... God will (help) Muslims to conquer Rome. ... God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the mujahideen," said the statement.
It was posted on Sunday on an Internet site often used by al Qaeda and other militant groups.
Pope Benedict said on Sunday he was deeply sorry Muslims had been offended by his use of a Medieval quotation on Islam and violence. The remarks outraged Muslims and triggered protests and attacks on churches in several Arab towns.
Another militant group in Iraq, Ansar al-Sunnah, also vowed to fight Christians in retaliation.
"You will only see our swords until you go back to God's true faith Islam," it said in a separate Internet statement.
Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militant groups have staged suicide bombings and killings of foreign forces and members of the U.S.-allied government and security forces.

ABC:
The Catholic Archbishop of Sydney has backed the controversial speech Pope Benedict XVI made in Germany last week that linked Islam to violence.
The Pontiff has apologised saying he is deeply sorry about angering so many Muslims, and that the 14th Century passages that he referred to in no way reflect his views.
Some Muslim groups have accepted the apology.
Cardinal George Pell says the Pope did nothing wrong in making the speech.
"I think he's trying to move the dialogue on a bit so that we can agree without resorting to the use of weapons," he said.
"I think what he feared has been established and that is that if there is some sort of criticisms, even mild, there are elements among the Muslims who will resort to violence or threaten violence."

AFP
DUBAI: Gulf newspapers continued to criticise Pope Benedict XVI on Monday, with one Saudi daily saying his remarks linking Islam to violence were beating the drum of war for the far right in the United States.

The Pope's comments, made Tuesday in a university address in his native Germany, were not "an ordinary blunder requiring an apology", the Saudi Arabian Al-Yom wrote in its Monday edition one day after the pontiff said he was "deeply sorry" for the outrage caused.

"These remarks belong in a current of thought that is in total accord with the ideas of the extreme right in the United States on the conflict between civilisations," it said.

"This ideology beats the drum of war even more."

Benedict had sought to mollify Muslim anger on Sunday, saying he was "deeply sorry" for the outrage sparked by his remarks on Islam and stressing that they did not reflect his personal opinion.

But the Qatari daily Ash-Sharq rejected his public statement of regrets and demanded that he issue a full apology.

Under the headline "Regrets... less than an apology", the paper said the pope "must absolutely apologise for his prejudiced remarks, thus soothing the anger of Muslims".