Two in Advance

*

I used to say I'd found in Steve's bar the fathers I needed, but this wasn't quite right. At some point the bar itself became my father, its dozens of men melding into one enormous male eye looking over my shoulder, providing that needed alternative to my mother, that Y chromosome to her X. My mother didn't know she was competing with the men of the bar, and the men didn't know they were vying with her. They all assumed that they were on the same page, because they all shared one antiquated idea about manhood. My mother and the men believed that being a good man is an art, and being a bad man is a tragedy, for the world as much as for those who depend on the tragic man in question. Though my mother first introduced me to this idea, Steve's bar was where I saw its truth demonstrated daily. Steve's bar attracted all kinds of women, a stunning array, but as a boy I noticed only its improbable assortment of good and bad men. Wandering freely among this unlikely fraternity of alphas, listening to the stories of the soldiers and ballplayers, poets and cops, millionaires and bookies, actors and crooks who leaned nightly against Steve's bar, I heard them say again and again that the differences among them were great, but the reasons they had come to be so different were slight.

J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar.

Like watching paint dry, the meeting moved by so slowly. There had been books lying in boxes at the top of Wilson Street, past where he walked each day. He grabbed A Writer's Life by Jan Morris, a couple of volumes of Paul Auster, a couple of volumes from people he had never heard of. When did anyone get the time to read all these books anymore? When was salvation going to come? It didn't matter that whole junks of memory were going to disappear. He would still remember the rickshaws in Calcutta, dance in a for off, foreign field. The truth was that life as a professional in this God forsaken town was dull; you got up, you went to work, you followed the same snail trails every day, intersecting but never speaking with people doing the same thing. Crowded lives in a crowded city. Yet no one had reached out, he remained untouched. Opportunities came and went. They laughed, at him rather than with him. Oh please, please, release me from this bondage.

The distracted thoughts and crumbling buildings, he could not be held account anymore. Books were made to be finished. The shattered path, it was the only way. High in the clouds, the airships. Nicole at the helm. Spirit beings everywhere. The dark forces of the physical planet so far beneath them as to be of no account. Whistling high, with clouds for company. It was his destiny to float, and throughout his childhood he could barely wait to slip into unconsciousness in order to go flying, flying, high above the suburb, the control of his disembodied spirit a matter of mental tricks. He had been so long about the issue, long term narcotic use, that not even the sight of the skinny little aboriginal girls selling $20 packets of pot at the top of the Block, 150 yards from the police station, bothered him anymore. Did we have to get rid of all human influence in order to gain some level of purity? Of decent motive?

He wanted to go back to Calcutta, as part of his destiny, but was afraid of dying there. The magic kingdoms had all been in his imagination, or derived from books. He couldn't work out how to get back there. He couldn't work out how to gain his former mental powers. Life was cruel; he couldn't find what he was searching for. A way back to former gifts; including the power to fly, the way he used to wait until his parents had gone to bed, and then go floating. He knew the courts didn't want ordinary people in them, that the views of the masses were not welcome. The masses and the mandarins, indeed. The legal caste thought they had it all sewn up; simply be there soaking up the energy, relearning old mental tricks. How much he longed for a happy place; and could never be satisfied with the here and now. We all knew the story of the boy who had been forced to dig his own grave, down there in the National Park. All because he had crossed the wrong person, stolen off a criminal queen, just like they stole off every one. They weren't sophisticated enough to pick their targets, they just robbed everyone they slept with.

He was blubbering. He wanted the police to turn down the volume, to set down the law for the teenagers filling his house, four girls and climbing in the front room at last check. They were all escaping boarding school, and Henrietta had the cool dad who let them do what they wanted to do, make a bit of noise in the middle of the night, giggle a lot. Which was so innocuous in comparison to what he got up to at their age he let them go straight ahead. It was better than many of the things they could be doing, scoring on the corner, bongs, collective outrage. But where was that these days? There was no spirit of revolution. Australia had descended into being virtually a communist country, Who's the aboriginal in the family, someone asked, noticing the paintings. Suzy, the kids mother, she identifies, he replied. And back out there on the plains where they all came from, he could feel the ancestors calling. Come back, come back, we will envelop you with love.

But he wasn't ready to leave the physical world yet. There was too much work to be done. Books to be written. Thoughts to be stored. Are you happy? I don't care mate, survival is the key. The skinny little drug dealers followed his every move, keeping a beady eye out as he crossed the road. They lost interest when they saw the dog - and his grey hair. The bar was his refuge and his destroyer; like the character in The Tender Bar he had gone there so early, to the Rex. Kind of like it now, he had told the librarian, he wanted his own thoughts back. He had been the subject of identity theft yet again. I don't know who I am, I can't be seen to be making these same mistakes all over again. He was conscious of an altered planet, of lost opportunities, of a past so long ago his memories of those grand events was beginning to fade; those years he thought he would always remember, those moments high above the suburbs; a return to the form of 2006. They had been so utterly betrayed; but above all had betrayed themselves. The daily grinding routine, the gross physicality of his wretched body, he was going to climb back to his former clairvoyance; he was going to become the person he was always meant to be.

THE BIGGER STORY:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/24/2635902.htm?section=australia

Police investigating the murder of a Sydney family say post-mortem examinations on the five victims have given them valuable information but it will be weeks before the results of some forensic tests are known.

Forty-three-year-old Min Lin, his wife, two sons and his sister-in-law were bludgeoned to death in the family's North Epping home, in Sydney's north west, last weekend.

Detective Inspector Geoff Beresford says police have now spoken to all the family members in Sydney, including relatives visiting from China.

He says toxicology tests from the post-mortems will not be available for some time but he is confident a suspect will be identified.

"I am as confident as I have been throughout this week, I am very pleased with the progress so far as the forensic results that are coming in," he said.

"But again I repeat there's an enormous amount of work to be done, it's not a process that can be hurried, nor will it be hurried.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/expect-more-blowups-before-november-20090724-dw68.html

THE ink was barely dry on Malcolm Turnbull's press release yesterday when Wilson Tuckey was out slamming the new offer as a time-buying exercise cooked up by the arrogant leader and his "sycophantic" shadow cabinet.

Safe to say, therefore, that Turnbull and senior Liberals have given up on wooing Tuckey and his band of supporters - not to mention the Nationals - as they sort out the climate dilemma.

Turnbull and Co are prepared to negotiate on the basis of being able deliver a majority view inside the Liberal Party, not a unanimous one. They - at least, for now - have a position by which they can stand and all sound like they are saying the same thing. After this week, that is an achievement.

The nine amendments devised by the shadow cabinet will not be accepted by the Government before August 13, when the vote is scheduled, if at all.

Penny Wong suggested cheekily she would consider them "once Mr Turnbull has agreed amendments with his party".

In this sense, it does buy time because the Coalition will, as one, vote down the scheme next month.

But afterwards, unless the Government folds and accepts them, or the Coalition blinks and softens its demands, we are none the wiser as to what may happen the second time around in November when the Government reintroduces the bill as a double dissolution trigger.

One gets the feeling there will be more blow-ups between now and then.

Mr Turnbull's personal support in Newspoll has recently taken the biggest plunge of any opposition leader and his position has been described as "terminal" by some Liberal MPs, although there is no-one to replace him.

Mr Abbott, who is releasing his own book next week on conservative politics, is not regarded as a leadership candidate in the short term and he has been strongly aiding Mr Turnbull in parliament when the Liberals have been under pressure.

"Opposing the legislation in the Senate could ultimately make poor policy even worse because the government could negotiate a deal with the Greens," Mr Abbott says in an article published in The Australian today.

"Alternatively, after several months in which political debate focuses on climate change and opposition obstructionism, the government could call a double-dissolution election on the issue of who's fair dinkum about trying to save the planet."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25826885-601,00.html

Mr Turnbull was attacked from within his own party this week when he suggested overturning the Coalition's current position on emissions trading and agreeing to pass the scheme with business-friendly amendments.
Liberal backbencher Wilson Tuckey accused his leader of arrogance and inexperience in contradicting the Coalition position, sparking an internal party battle. Mr Tuckey also suggested Mr Turnbull was scared of facing a double-dissolution election over the issue.

But Mr Abbott said Mr Turnbull was being "far from arrogant" and knew "voters are unlikely to be argued into changing their minds" on an ETS.

"Oppositions, after all, can't save the country from the wrong side of the parliament and can't be expected to protect people from the consequences of changing government," he said. "It will be the cost and complexity of emissions trading and the absence of anything much out of the ordinary about climate that will slowly engender second thoughts."

Mr Abbott also said the Coalition was in a political bind climate change. "The problem, at least for politicians who prefer rational debate to following fads, is the public's current perception that climate change is uniquely dangerous and particularly associated with man-made carbon dioxide emissions," he said.