The Lee Harvey Oswald Moment of Julian Assange approaches apace as the SAS plans to storm the Embassy and inadvertently kill him as he resists arrest. I predicted this two months ago.
If it happens it will be a stinking albatross about the neck of my friend Bob Carr for all of his notable posterity: an Australian hero guiltless of any crime gunned down in public whom he could have saved.
I urge him, as I have in private, to go to the Embassy and ask there the questions the Swedes want asked of Assange and grant him asylum here, or not.
Infamy awaits, or glory.
Seize the day.
Name:
What sort of image will this event send around the world, that an armed contingent of trigger-happy anti-terrorist adrenaline-fuelled state operatives would storm by force a sovereign nation’s embassy to capture a man wanted for… what… marginally consensual sex with a woman who’d previously willingly entertained the target of the crash and smash exercise?
What is the world coming to?
If I were you, I’d give up on your friend Bob Carr, as well as the entire Labor party. (I won’t include too many insults here, knowing how close you are to Carr and the party.) No Labor politician is going to do anything to help Assange. The Labor party lost my vote in 2010 because of its ruthless treatment of Rudd, and now Labor politicians are showing, yet again, what a bunch of pricks they are by their indifference to Assange. The Greens are the only party taking a moral stance on this issue. The trouble is, if you vote for the Greens, preferences will eventually go to Labor (or Liberal, which is an even worse alternative).
I do not believe you ever voted Labor in your life.
Who was the candidate you voted for? And the state candidate?
Bob, I have a Kevin 07 T-Shirt at home, but I doubt you would ever believe me!
Its true folks.
But like Bill Clinton – I never inhaled or wore it. My teenage daughter did with pride. Now its relegated to the junk pile like the rest of the Labor Party. A pile of broken dreams.
(Just give me a year though – with Tony Abbott – I might be reborn)
True Labor supporters don’t need to know the name of the local candidate. They just front up on election day, take the how-to-vote card and do the “right” thing, regardless of the personalities on offer. That’s what I did until 2010, when my eyes were opened about how the Labor machine really works. That’s not to say I don’t know the names of my state and federal candidates, but I don’t see why anyone needs to know where I live.
Why is no member of this government willing to venture an opinion in public about the British Government’s threat to the Ecuadorean embassy?
Why? Gutless is the right word here. Perhaps shameful too, though shaming seems to be a forlorn hope when heads rule the day.
Shame would presuppose guilt for not doing anything in the first place. Gillard came down on the side of the USA in about 7 seconds flat, Howard would have ummed and rrrd for at least a minute.
Bob Carr in full Bob Carr mode (a content-free zone, as usual) in Senate today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQbNQxI23mA&feature=youtu.be
Australian citizenship continues to take a battering. Remember the three hostages in Cambodia who were murdered as a result of advice from Garth Evans(Mr Biggles)the then Labor foreign minister. Now we shall see if Carr has the balls to offer protection to one of his own. Lest We Wait. We Will Remember Him Too. Pathetic sycophantary(sp)
Remember Evans sipping champagne with the Indonesian foreign minister whilst flying over the spoils of oil before the Timorese were butchered. Pathetic
I suppose we could declare war on Britain, now that our athletes are clear of the place.
LOL. I like a man with his priorities straight.
There must be plenty in this rape allegation. Assange is scared to death of facing up to the charges.
@ M Ryutin: what there is “plenty” of in this rape allegation is highly sinister machinations by covert agencies which have nothing to do with any of the bedroom behaviour of Assange and the two willing women who have hardly been heard of since. Read a few facts at before deciding what there “must” be.
Get a life please. A lighter tone was necessary after the completely-over-the-top earlier responses (yours included now that I see it).
whoops –
It was a consensual and condoned non condom interaction amongst two adults
or was it three
And Fatty O’Barrell thinks the current English assault on the rights and freedoms is worth following.
England is erring towards a police state all on the justification of security – security from their own people that is.
Destroying the right to silence is exactly the wrong way to be going.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance; vigilance against one’s own government mostly.
Don’t do it Fatty.
“England is erring towards a police state”
Well I hope that even if it is only temporary that same British ‘police state’ will send all those Islamists wanted for terrorist bombings back to their middle eastern countries for appropriate punishment.
As for Barry O’Farrell ‘Destroying the right to silence’ far from it. As usual the UK leads the way in sensible modernization to the criminal justice system. NSW is usually the last to follow. Unsworn statements from the dock (that’s when rapists like Assange could say what they liked without having to be cross-examined on it) were still in NSW courts until very recently and they were about the last to go with majority jury verdicts (in Britain since 1962).
Now a criminal who has an alibi or something to say to show his innocence can still wait until he knows what the whole of the opposition case is and can then fit his lies to get around it but the jury will be warned about it and that he or she had their chances at the time of arrest if they chose to do so..
“rapists like Assange”??? Can you cite any source which describes Assange as a rapist? Do you equate “a lighter tone” with “a fact-free zone”?
Well said Dali.
MRyutin, it is most unlike you to lead with the chin this way.
“Now” you say, as if it has not been the law for over 400 years!
As if the police need more powers. All I can say is if you yourself fall foul of a policeman’s malice, best of luck to you.
After you get maced and tasered, charged with resisting arrest on whatever minor lack of obedience, (“are you a terrorist?”) remanded in custody and questioned for several days without access to assistance, and hounded throughout by questioning little short of torture, you tell them just what they want to know.
Innocent until proven guilty? That is probably the next to go.
Doug I appreciate that most people do not have a direct involvement with the criminal justice system, most people would never ever come in contact with it personally and rely on what they read (sometimes even in those dreaded things called ‘tabloids’ or from ‘shock jocks’). But the great thing about British Justice is that it has evolved wonderfully for 900 years, ever-adding equity and common sense. Magna Carta, juries, end of the Star Chamber and so it goes.
‘400 years’ means nothing. It was only 150-200 years ago (1820’s) that trial by battle was abolished, or since accused people had NO right to legal defence at all and even murder trials lasted a single day – usually on Fridays so that an accused would have a weekend prior to execution (I have a great book about historical Newgate trials) – and it was THIS lack of representation that led to the unsworn statement from the dock as a means of throwing a bone at an accused to allow him or her something to say in their own defence.
There was no fraud 150 years ago. You gave away something to a conman and your bad luck etc. The law had to change to adapt to circumstances. Caveat emptor (Let the buyer beware) was once the only rule, no such thing as consumer protection as recently as 100 or so years ago etc.
The unsworn statement from the dock went out when instead of it being retained for the ‘less-educated’ or ‘the poor’ (to use the lies given by lawyers for its retention) it was abused by a high court judge Lionel Murphy when he tried to get away from his use of the words “what about my little mate”. The killing blow was the use in rapes (funny that) rape victims were used and abused all over the legal system and the womens groups finally got it abolished.
So, don’t get too hasty about the new ‘injustice’ by this amending of the right to silence. It has been in Britain for over a decade and we do not hear horror stories coming from there, so it is non-controversial in all legal circles except those which rake in the money from defending criminals.
Thanks for the potted history, but I think I know a little more about it than you. Your take on these matters is rather quaint; trial by battle indeed. Next you’ll no doubt tell me that witchcraft was still on the books until 1951. (It was, and in the NSW jurisdiction until 1969)
All quite irrelevant.
Thankfully we have severed ourselves from Imperial Acts and the “what Britain does we should do too” mentality.
O’Farrell had better think again about this one.
Alright DQ, this has to be said. Your penultimate paragraph of your entry on August 17, 2012 at 6:43 am showed the true depths of your ignorance on these matters and being polite to you obviously doesn’t work.
“quite irrelevant” Was that meant to an example of quirky humour or yet more of your obvious ignorance on this issue (and bluff – ‘I think I know a little more about it than you’ – I like that, when you show your lack of knowledge time and time again (tempered only by a Wikipedia reference every now and then). You obviously know nothing about legal history or the workings of our justice system.
For you to so easily bung on the ‘look over there’ ploy, you would, I suspect, know a whole lot less than, not only me, but virtually anyone who knows anything about the criminal justice system except, perhaps, for those dreamy-eyed people who think that everyone is innocent, all police prosecutions are accompanied by unlawful acts and that nobody confesses unless coerced or tricked. Quite a self-expose on your part. It is an obvious waste of time talking seriously to anyone who will flog the Edward De Vere dead horse like you do.
Hilarious.
Doug, the operative word in my post; the prime mover, the cardinal concept, was not the question as to who has the greater purchase on civil liberties, but on the word “careful”.
Anyway, you’ve got more important things to think about than being bitch slapped by me;
MRyutin, has just knocked-you-out!
Cold.
In the first round.
They’re taking out your mouth guard as I speak, and slapping lightly on your face.
The doctor is there, he’s pulling up your eyelids to register some flicker of consciousness.
You’ve taken so many of these hits it’s difficult to see how you can continue.
But I suppose you still have entertainment value.
I mean you gots to be real pro, a real badass slugger from the South side, to whip out a toothless smiley emoticon the way that you do.
Not just anyone can do that. I mean, you gots to be one tough mutherfucking nigga from da hood to whip dat shit out!
You keeping it real bro! Dey ain’t gonna mess with no young brother from da crew!
You up an whoop dat ass wit yo god damn smiley emoticons!
You know what I’m saying’?
Check it, it go like dis:
Yo brother Douggie, what you make of District of Columbia vs Heller 2008?
Ouch!!
And how about dat discrimination shit against us brothers in Rocco vs DeStefano 2009?
Pow!!
Yo, yo!! How bout dat muthafuckin’ Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States 19fucking64!!,??
Bamm!!
Yo! Take dat yo bitches!
My man Douggie bustin’ emoticons on your punk ass bitch asses!!
See what I’m sayin?
Dat shit is dyn-o-mite!!
You keepin it real,
You da boss man
Let all dese niggars round here know who dey fuckin” wit!!
Yeah!!
You tell that crazy Russian Ryutin if he come back here wit any of dat logic or argument bullshit you gonna get all emoticon on his ass!!
Yo Douggie in da house!!!
Yo Douggie INA DA HOUSE!!
Yo Dpouggie my man, let me try dat shit:
Dat feel good!!
Doug’s a fucking lawyer, you fucking psycho moron. That’s what he meant, what any normal person would pick up on, you arrogant piece of shit.
Reader, that was an incredibly sensitive post, full of “feeling”.
Pass on my kick in the head regards to Literary Delusions.
reader1!!!
You’ve
bounced back from your self-imposed and brief sabbatical only to sound as though you are channeling Marilyn!!!
Perhaps a little more time off might be just what the doctor ordered!!!
I will choose when and where I argue, and how I spend my precious time, F. No-one else, and certainly not a person whose relative in Britain who knows all about the illegal refugee flows there.
And certainly not you, whoever you are. Are you part of the United States of Tara as well? It seemed you might not be for a while.
Doug, you’re a man in your mid 50′s. If you use emoticons as an argument then you will be treated as an emoticon.
I thought my post made that clear.
Fedallah, absolutely hilarious!
Good job.
You forgot something U66.
Allow me to append.
Sweet Sorbet!
Append to your heart’s desire!
Good to see you again.
now that, my dear fedallah…is practically poetry!
Pick a name, pick a coherent set of values, put the mirror down.
Reader, I tried twice to communicate “values” to you. I think you responded with a “good on ya champ”.
You want to ask me again?!?!
Still the mirror talking, Gestalt Sybil. Circumstances surrounding Assange at the moment are of greater relevance to the world at large than the ins and outs of your own personal narcisstic psychosis. Your reflection is of no use to anyone but yourself. Values are supposed to support a purpose beyond the self, otherwise they can’t really be classified as anything other than attention seeking and vanity, not a value system as such.
I don’t think you understand how value systems operate, Gestalt Sybil. They are supposed to be a lived thing but being completely hollow you wouldn’t understand that. Things are supposed to hold meaning, real meaning, but disability comes in all forms. It’s unfortunate.
PS. Peter Singer is right. Down Syndrome kids are adorable but there will come a time when a simple brain scan will put the likes of you out of action within a month of birth.
That’s a sweet right hook MRyutin.
Very sweet.
Are you M Ryutin as well? Is there no end to your multitude?
That last reply was truly absurd.
I have broken my self-imposed rule to revisit this rot of yours because your ego is only exceeded by your paranoia.
Nobody impersonates Ryutin. Nobody.
Or is it?
You too MRyutin?
Join the club.
It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
I didn’t think you were; just wanted to shake the tree and see what fell out – and look what crashed to the ground!
I’m always here DQ.
You don’t have to shake a tree to know that.
Always, Untitled?
It wasn’t aimed at you, by the way.
Be nice of Mr Ellis if he spent a few dollars of the Shakespearean profits on a better blogger. I wanted to reply to the above reference to the ‘human as emoticon’ proposition, but there’s no Reply button.
Canguro, you can use the reply button of the poster preceding the one you wish to reply to.
Or, you can start a new comment.
I should have said trial by battle was ‘formally’ abolished. It hadn’t been used for hundreds of years but was still on the statutes and actually invoked in 1827 or so and then abolished once and for all.
And the story of how and why it was invoked is an interesting one. A young man rightfully acquitted of murder was hounded by the press who funded the ancient remedy by the alleged victims brother of “appeal of felony” against him.This bypassed the double jeopardy law “autrefois acquit” in England. He responded by invoking his equally ancient right of trial by battle….he was a hefty lad and the accuser backed down. A sad tale of the toxic press, the “victim” almost certainly accidentally drowned on the way home from a dance where she had lost her virginity to the accused. The popular press preyed on the grief and anger of her brother.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance; vigilance against one’s own government mostly.”
Careful there Doug – you’ve just articulated the Gospel according to the Tea Party.
Just because they are utter morons (best case) or economic vandals (worst case?) regarding most things does not mean they can’t be right on some things.
Civil liberties are not the exclusive preserve of right wing loonies, Fedallah!
Australia .Great Britain,USA and Sweden are rewriting the diplomatic rules which can only result in a less safe place for those seeking refuge in foreign embassies. Travel at your own peril.
The ongoing saga of —. Days of Julian Assange. The Evil Empire will never allow Assange to leave Great Britain to go anywhere other than Sweden. Alive. Is he The Messiah or is he Just A Naughty Boy? Or, as Ellis would have it, both?
In this possible plot twist mooted by Ellis, we get the opportunity to test The Messiah hypothesis courtesy of the SAS. He’s gunned down “accidentally” in an Embassy raid. But what happens On The Third Day after the Ecuadorians fly the body bag to his new home for “burial”?
The audience is on tenterhooks to have the case tried, but something always intervenes at the last moment.Go Ecuador. There’s plenty of value left in this melodrama.
What is called for immediately to expose the backroom shenanigans in train between the Swedes, Poms, Yanks and our mob is some brave individual or group to get their hands on e-mails between these bunch of government conspirators and put them on the internet… hold the phone…!
The Swedes have every right to pursue Assange if they think he has broken their laws. Just because you or I think the charges are ridiculous does not remove this right.
Assange has every right to do whatever he can to dispute or avoid the allegations, including seeking political asylum. Just because I think he is a self serving egotist does not remove this right.
Ecuador has very right to grant asylum if it thinks it is warranted. Just because it is a left wing government does not remove this right.
The Brits have every right to do what they can to carry out the extradition process but this does not include breaching the sanctity of diplomatic premises. They should just wait outside until he decides to move – he won’t stay there forever.
Other than assertions by Bob and others, I see no evidence that the US is behind Sweden’s prosecution or that a grassy knoll assassination is imminent. Show me some facts and convince me.
FOR EDIFICATION OF DOUBTERS:
‘FOUR CORNERS’ Sex, Lies, and Julian Assange – Monday 23 July 2012:
http://www.abc.net.au/4corner/stories
for full transcript. Just one snippet:JEFFREY L. BLEICH, US AMBASSADOR TO AUSTRALIA (May 2012): It’s not something that the US cares about, it’s not interested in it, it hasn’t been involved in it – and frankly, if he’s in Sweden, there’s a less robust extradition relationship than there is between the US and the UK, so I think it’s one of those narratives that has been made up – there’s nothing to it.
MICHAEL RATNER, U.S. LAWYER ASSANGE: There’s a Grand Jury currently sitting in Alexandria Virginia and the Grand Jury’s number – and it’s interesting the Grand Jury’s number is 10 standing for the year it began, GJ which is Grand Jury and then 3793. Three is the Conspiracy Statute in the United States. 793 is the Espionage Statute. So what they’re investigating is 3793: conspiracy to commit espionage.
So it might be rape AND conspiracy to commit espionage. So yet another court case Assange is trying to dodge eh?
And why would ‘conspiracy to commit espionage’ be such a problem for Assange? Why, the rumours might be true and Assange actually ASSISTED Manning to download US secrets which, apart from loads of useless gossip, actually put the lives of citizens assisting the USA in danger (the ones for whose potential assassinations Assange showed not one care in the world).
Because not many countries will allow extradition for death penalty cases the laughable scare campaigns about Assange being executed or tortured are just that – laughable. That said, why does Assange continually fear facing the courts of western democracies while working for a Soviet-style Pravda and seeking accommodation in a country for which free speech and open courts are continually at risk if not dead already?
re. your comment that Assange is also trying to dodge a potential conspiracy to commit espionage case, you’re standing on solid ground in your role as an unpaid shill for the USA’s Office of Payback and Revenge Against Those Who Expose Our Malfeasance.
Why does Assange fear this? American courts routinely bang away people or hundreds of years… does anyone else here ever experience a sense of absurdity about the justice system in the States… I don’t know of anyone who will remain alive for that long… nevertheless, you might term it ‘democracy’ in action, others have a different POV, as I’m sure Assange would. This is, after all, the same democracy that overthrows duly elected governments, assassinates its own citizens, starts numerous wars in numerous countries on some flimsy pretexts as a ponerological precursor to asset grabbing. It’s what they do, and as an avaricious materialistic black hole, poor frail humans who stand up and speak out are mere detail, collateral damage along the way.
I’m assuming you think your arguments are rational and appropriate, and they may well be, but there’s a whiff of the dirty socks about them, something’s not quite right in your overall position.
You’d throw Assange to the American jackals and let them have their day with him, as they are with Manning. (Do you agree with the way he was treated?)
Logically that implies that you’d also be ok with the legacy of the last ten years of American middle-eastern occupation and war-making. Why? It’s a puzzle, but as always, follow the money, the favours, the relationships, the who’s up who and who’s fucking the cook principle. Words have purpose, self-evidently. Shill, apologist, baked-on admirer, mouthpiece, lackey, and so on, and we’re very much judged by what we say or write.
Footnote to above: if you were Assange, what would you do?
Footnote to the previous footnote: The MSM are reporting on details of DFAT correspondence (today’s SMH), where’s it is acknowledged that this govt is fully aware of existence of a grand jury investigation into Wikileaks and its founder, despite the denials by the Fawnin’ Minister.
Extradition is their aim. The desired outcome would be incarceration.
Assange would know where the loyalties are, vis-a-vis these political and governmental apparatchiks, and they don’t lie with him.
The alleged crimes are palish by comparison with the litany of misdoings committed by the gorillas in this equation, and for those of you continue to defend the gorilla I’d ask why?
“and we’re very much judged by what we say or write.”
Amen.
As I guess the good nuns at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow may also have said, аминь, on hearing of the two years hard yakka sentence handed down to members of the fabulously named
Pussy Riot following their expression of protest and the testing of free speech in Putin’s democracy.
They probably do Canguro.
The same way I “judge” each post you have written; the same way you have just judged my post to you.
And so it goes….
I can’t seem to follow your point here re: the Pussy Riot verdict as a response to Fedallah’s post Canguro.
Which one are you leaning on here: sarcasm or irony?
Or neither?
Neither. Parallelism perhaps, if such a term exists. Fedallah said amen and it was a simple associative response. Knight’s move thinking is the term.
Paranoia amongst Assange believers knows no bounds, it seems. Even a schoolchild could find out about the suspected link between Assange and Manning’s downloads. A child could also ponder how in the world Assange could be charged with doing what the New York Times and others did with impunity.
For those without the reasoning abilities of a child there is this:-
“Among materials prosecutors are studying is an online chat log in which Private Manning is said to claim that he had been directly communicating with Mr. Assange using an encrypted Internet conferencing service as the soldier was downloading government files. Private Manning is also said to have claimed that Mr. Assange gave him access to a dedicated server for uploading some of them to WikiLeaks”.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/16wiki.html?_r=1
Ah, now I see the error of my thinking. The two-year old quote referring to the unfolding witch-hunt to get Assange because he offered server space and communicated with Manning clears it all up. Quite the conspirator, yes? And no other journalist has ever spoken to a source, ever.
re. the throwaway reference to paranoid supporters, well, ad hominem observations may be cute but they don’t cut the mustard. The paranoia would lie, most likely, not with those who support Assange but with those who attack him and the principles of the right to free and objective speech and dissemination of information that is of relevance not only to vested individuals, corporations or govts, but to the larger populace if they were to be adversely affected, screwed, cheated, robbed or otherwise done over by the pathocracy. Like Bechtel and the Cochabamba residents, for instance.
I wonder if the highly political US Justice Department under Obama would prosecute when it did nothing when the Obama White House itself has leaked classified secrets like a sieve? But then you can’t expect consistency from that particular white house.
I very much doubt the British will storm the embassy or kill Julian. I don’t see why they would do America’s dirty work for them. More likely they will arrest him on Sunday and send him to Sweden.
And in defence of Bob Carr, he’s provided more consular assistance to Julian than any other Australian has experienced. Carr is our best ever Foreign Minister and he is working very hard to have this resolved diplomatically.
Carr will do as he is told. Basically NOTHING
See today’s Sydney Morning herald for full item: a taste
- “AUSTRALIAN diplomats have no doubt the United States is intent on pursuing Julian Assange, Foreign Affairs and Trade Department documents obtained by the Herald show.
This is at odds with comments by the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, who has dismissed suggestions the US plans to eventually extradite Assange on charges arising from WikiLeaks obtaining leaked US military and diplomatic documents.” – and -
“Briefings for the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and Senator Carr also suggest the Australian government has no in-principle objection to extradition.”
He’s just an old fart that wants a cushy job.
You are so right Lassa. You wouldn’t believe the corruption Carr was involved in and for that matter Griener and Carr and Co. as well. These F–KS deserve to be dropped into boiling oil. And for that matter the Labor Party which is imploding thanks to the likes of the lefties i.e. Bob Ellis and his literary intellectual elitist assholes, They will take the whole party down the gurgler because .they don’t like Rudd who is our only hope. Bob, you and your mates who are stupid enough to invest their hard earned money are total fuckwits. If you lot don’t put Rudd in the drivers seat we are all F__KED TIME WILL TELL. Am I right or am I right ! Wake up you intellectual morons
Sorry to be so blunt but Bob your hero is not on the same planet. Tine to get real before it is too late,
Not bad for a crazy, white-haired Aussie. The man has no charisma, he is of no consequence and has achieved nothing. Yet, his insignificance demanded that for a time he was classified as more urgently arrestable than Gaddafi. Now, an International diplomatic storm and all of this over a case of herpes. Herpes! A rash, as he is like a lizard and dislikes showering. What-a-psycho.
I wonder if John Howard will seek asylum in the US embassy? What’s Assange done? Acted the journalist, sorry that’s irrelevant; poor hygiene. What’s Gillard done? Sanctioned by two houses of parliament, she has broken international law. Howard gets a knighthood, for outstanding obscurantivity.
Oh, I don’t know William – he certainly achieved an upset in the US corridors of power. I don’t think Hillary likes him!
It would be meet if Howard were to stand trial along with Bush and Blair over the illegal invasion of Iraq.
Perhaps they could all hole up in the Ecuadorian Embassy with our Julian?
Poor Julia. The proverbial fan is about to spray her ugly past all over the mainstream pages of the media. The sequel to the Craig Thompson diaries should solidify any waverers thoughts on a change of leadership. Watch how nasty she gets when cornered
Reader1, this comment from you – “there will come a time when a simple brain scan will put the likes of you out of action within a month of birth” is the endgame.
Do you realise, with that single sentiment, you have annulled yourself?
You do see that, don’t you?
For all of your talk on “feelings”, for all of your platitudes on “meaning”, it really is nothing more to you than “putting the likes of me out of action”, is it?
“The likes of me”?
What is my “like”, you pitifully cretinous creature?
Is it this: My hope is that you suffered pain and torment, that you experienced “feeling” and “meaning” at the death of your dog. I hope it twisted your insides till your bowels spasmed, I hope it bruised your consciousness and stung your bitter heart and shamed you into “feeling” and “meaning”, I hope the loss opened a space in your heart that filled with “feeling” and “meaning”, I hope that a chord connecting you to this life snapped, just for a moment, and set you adrift of “feeling” and “meaning”.
I wish all of those things on you Reader.
All of them and more; whatever it takes to get you to understand what it means to say the words “put the likes of you out of action within a month of birth” to another human being.
Ok Reader, my third story to you, my last story to you. It’s my last because I have nothing more to give to you.
Anonymity loosens the tongue.
Instruction excites it.
And my white hot rage propels it.
Here we go, pour yourself a glass of wine.
On a Saturday in May 1994 I was in Sydney to interview some people who were presenting a Performance: Modernism + Post Modernism seminar at the Ivan Dougherty Galleries/ Cleveland Street Performance Space. It was a weekend thing – 2 days of performance plus seminars throughout the day. I was attending it as part of my Uni work – I had interviews arranged with directors and artists.
We were staying in the Criterion just off Oxford Street and it was about 5pm and I was sitting on the lounge….ready to go, cigarettes in my hand, a half empty bottle on the table, a pipe, a nickel bag.
S. was in the shower – I could see her stockings and dress and shoes and bag laid out on the bed.
I called to her…..”come on you, hurry……hurry up!”
I was happy.
As I sat a flush of heat and blood suddenly washed over me, through me.
My mind turned.
S. came rushing out of the shower.
I remember little else.
And so it began.
They put me into a “mental health facility”, they weren’t called clinics then, euphemisms had never been part of any language I knew.
………………
I shared a room with a young man who looked like Tony Curtis circa “Square Jungle”. He was quiet, delicate and frightened; his pleading blue eyes pierced my retina.
He thought I was going to kill him and so desperately sought to establish a friendship in an effort to push back what he thought inevitable.
I thought he was going to kill me. So I frowned a lot and wove my eyebrows and my forehead into a new shape.
……………
I tied my flannelette shirt to my ankle and tied the other end to the foot of my steel bed.
Tight.
I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want to kill.
…………….
I didn’t shower for almost 2 weeks – the water seemed foreign, unusual, immediate and painful.
…………….
A man in his 30’s lay on the floor outside my room with his back to a European style oil heater. I tried to avoid him but he just lay there, comfortable, like he was watching TV. But there wasn’t a TV, there was just an off white wall, 1.5 metres from his face.
He said to me: you’re gonna be here for ages, they’re gonna keep you here. Just like me.
I frowned and walked away quickly. I vomited in the hallway.
………………..
We sat in a large circle every Tuesday and Thursday to “share”.
I was too frightened to listen and went instead to the courtyard to catch some warmth from the winter sun. I remember brilliant blue, azure, skies. Snap cold and blue. The cigarette smoke scratched at each inhale.
But I never stayed long. There was a man from the other wing, directly opposite from where I sat, who thought himself an elephant and would let out a roar every 2 minutes or so. It cut through my mind like a scalpel and chilled my heart.
I walked away quickly, squinting at the horror of it.
……………….
The women chain smoked their cigarettes – they were Peter Jackson woman; a cup of coffee, pink shabby dressing gowns and dark circles under their eyes. They always looked anxious and their eyes moved too quickly. They were round, large, medicated eyes; darting and fearful. They talked all day outside the downstairs security door. And smoked packet after packet. The small tin ashtray had more butts than sand.
They never asked me for a cigarette. I think I frightened them. They in turn made me sad. I knew them, too well. I could read their lives on the suburban homemade and smudged tattoos that disfigured their arms. They in turn looked at the scars on my newly shaved head and the rings on my fingers. I was someone they knew.
………………
There was a young girl there, maybe 16 or 17 who wore red Doc Martens with multi coloured laces. They were always loose.
She was a sight; unwashed and smelling stale and musty like the pages of a wet book, and her hair was matted, but her face was clean alabaster. White pink like a Bouguereau. She would crawl under her bed and stay there. I never looked under to see what she was doing. I sat in her doorway. Sometimes she would peek out and smile at me.
We didn’t speak very much.
I don’t remember seeing her again.
……………..
When the flannelette ankle rash had cut too deep into my ankle I made my decision. Late one night in July I slung my bag over my shoulder and waited for the security guards to pass the back gate and stroll through to the car park. I passed the stunned faces of 2 of the Peter Jackson women and raced out through the back door. I wrapped my flanno around my fist and punched at the wire glass panel till the fucking thing cracked. The security alarm scared them and they screamed that horrible scream of the scared and confused.
And I was gone.
Into the shadows of that cold and clear July night in 1994.
……………….
I was released into the care of my parents.
They moved a double bed into my room and slept with me, their son, a grown man of 28, for the next 11 months.
I saw Dr. H, the psychiatrist, weekly for about 20 months.
I saw P., the psychologist, weekly for about 2 half -3 years.
And I came off medication after about 4 half years.
No-one knew where I was. No-one in my life before that Saturday knew what had become of me.
How do you tell someone that that person is no longer who you are?
And so in the company of my mum and dad I passed through those hellish seasons; drinking tea, and sitting under the tree in the eastern corner of our yard.
As I got better I would look up to the skies and wonder how our lives are constructed; how a red flannelette shirt can bind one to the Living, how an elephant man can pierce the membrane that separates this world from Hell, how the long loose laces on a pair of red Doc Martens can stay forever knotted, how my packet of Winnie Reds were like a shield from the bled out tatts of wrinkled arms and painful abortions and abuse and panel vans and motorbikes and dirty tracky pants.
“I stood at a door and watched while 3 fingers were cut with a pair of old garden secateurs.
I’ve driven a stolen Ford Fairlane 500 over the concrete traffic dividers at Pyrmont and pushed 240 km near the Hawkesbury River bridge.
I saw the sun rise over a village in Lebanon, saw 2 children in red parkhas ice skate on a pond in the mountains of Austria, I saw Byzantine frescos on church walls in Serbia as chickens pecked at the ground and old woman in black sweep the dirt with straw brooms, and looked at the mountains outside Fairbanks, Alaska wondering how young Christopher McCandless thought to do what he did.
I’ve bought drugs from police and have pushed ice cubes into the bums of overdosed friends.
I’ve helped a drunken man in a car crash and knocked on his wife’s door at 1am.
I’ve run from Turkish gangs in Berlin and stared in wonder at the contents of Frogner Park.
I saw Fa Fa drop the Irishman with a knife.
I raised the gun to keep the bloodied man’s friend’s back.”
And so I sat for years, under that tree, wondering about the pieces that go to construct a life; I thought about the architectonics. I had once thought that the scaffold was simply an agglomeration of random empirical detritus, an overflow of experiential fact – loose and without purpose – that over time coalesced into some sort of “meaning”, some sort of “account”.
But it was an incomplete analysis,
incomplete, that is, until I got sick.
For it was only then that I saw what the beating heart of those words you bandy about so casually really mean TO ME – value, feeling, meaning, and experience.
I have my registers for those words Reader1. I have them because I have lived them, I have seen them etched on people’s faces, I have imposed them, I have suffered under their imposition, I have punished others for them and been duly punished myself, I have paid dearly for them, and exacted mercilessly.
And you will find, or may have already found, your own account.
This is simply mine.
My experiences are no different to anyone here.
No different at all; from FI Kendall, allthumbs, Canguro , you, shad, Bananaman, Helvi, Fedallah, dawson, spleenblatt, all of them, all of us.
They may vary in kind, but not in feeling or meaning or value.
For that would be an impossibility.
My last reminder to you reader,
Do not assume anything about the lives of others.
I still sit under a tree sometimes.
Despite my revulsion at your words which prompted this confessional,
I send this post to you now with great care – each word has been purchased at terrific cost.
U’66, Nick
Labels are useful to some extent, but they have their limits. If it’s not a rude question, what was the tag attached to your breakdown?
Were you burned out through living a high intensity lifestyle, or carrying deep psychic conflicts like some sort of inner battlescape, or was it something to do with the chemistry of your neurological landscape?
It’s not my business so don’t answer if you don’t want to, but just as you said above we’ve all been through the same experiences; like the first time I went to China and ended up in after a week as a patient in the neurology ward of a Shanghai hospital, diagnosed with an acohol-induced brain bleed plus cardiac arrhythmia. Not the same as yours, but in terms of bringing one to a point of reflection, reevaluation and so on, consonant.
What brings a young man to the point of collapse like that experience of yours? You’ve had some dramatic times, clearly, and thanks for sharing… most interesting; if I can digress for a moment, I wondered as I read the above what stories would be told if for a day all of the regular punters opened up as you have, for surely we’re not all a retinue of grey suits behind office computers, however, re. the question as to what happened to you, I’m curious. I don’t know where you sit on the Bell Curve of life, mainstream or marginal or way out at the asymptotes, never will, again not my business, but I know in my own case that my almost six decades have been a life lived most unusual, and for that I have deep gratitude but more so, much deeper regret and remorse.
We can carry enormous psychic burden as consequence of behaviour. It can send us mad. Or worse, perhaps, lead us to suicide.
I worked for some years as a psych nurse, back in the seventies in Adelaide. It was a world of locked away people, often desperately sad and beaten by life’s forces. I do believe though that our behaviour invokes karma, but we’re also impinged by other things we’ve no control over, like genetics in the context of mental health – bipolar disorder or schizophrenia for example.
Like to hear your thoughts on this. Also, if you were to characterise the circumstances that you found yourself in as you’ve described them, and tried to fit that characterisation into some sort of well-known dramatic persona, would you say that you were a sort of three-rolled-into-one guy, like say, Chopper Read, Hunter S Thompson and Dylan Thomas? Or the Byronesque version of Camus’ ‘Outsider’?
Canguro, you are indeed a sensitive and respectful man. You can be sure I will be reading to see if you, if we, receive any answers to those questions you’ve asked.
Perhaps in the spirit of goodwill you should lead in with a chapter from the life of one, Canguro.
Just a thought!
I was in the shower and thinking about going mad, the ‘how to’, the ‘how many ways can a man go mad’ question, and whether it’s moot or not, the realm of drug-induced madnesses occurred.
I thought DMT might do it, given that it flips the reality matrix fundamentally. A 1000mcg Sandoz LSD hit or 10g of psilocybin mushrooms will do the same. An addiction to ketamine, or a bad experiment with datura.
There’s many reasons for going mad though, and it’s not just drugs that’ll do it, even though they’ll take you to places you never imagined, other worlds so attractive that some of the psychonauts will crash through exhaustion.
Canguro, I took a trip once.
Never again.
2 hours of an intensity I’d never experienced before followed by about 5 lost hours.
I found myself sitting on a mall bench with sand in the cuffs of my jeans talking to two Christians!!
At 5am!!!!
Separation from reality wasn’t what I thought it would be.
But then, what is?
Insert long post here concerning psychedelics and genetics.
Walking through Belanglo in the dark singing Johnny Cash, walking back to the car past the ice freaks… driving back to Sydney watching the pebbles dance and trying to ignore the alien driver morphing in my peripherals. Trying not to laugh at the Ukrainian backpackers trying to rally a Hyundai Excel through the bush after a 4×4, fearing getting lost, making it all the way out of the bush, somehow, only to run into the roundabout at the end of the off-ramp at the servo. Walking home from the lookout on Easter Sunday covered in mud, eyes popping. ‘Tut, tut’ say the old couple walking the dog. “I KNOW, I KNOW!” says I. Snuck in through the backdoor, jumped in the shower and headed for bed. I woke up with my very Christian female friend hovering over me, she had returned from America where she had gone to be rid of her literal demons. Not the end.
Canguro, your questions are neither rude nor inappropriate in light of what I’ve written. I would ask the same had it been your piece.
I shall answer them as soon as I can.
Thanks,
To Untitled,1966: your three stories sit as a Rousseauean triptych without peer on this blog.
Simply astounding.
Thank you.
F.
Thanks mate.
I would very much enjoy a beer with you.
This is as good a place as any.
To those of you here that read my post in the spirit with which it was composed – thanks.
So very much.
I think you struck a nerve Reader. I think Untitled really likes you.
I’m expected to read all that shit? What an idiot.
You, Reader 1, are a disgrace!
I would give up twenty five years worth of personal growth to alleviate ten minutes of my dog’s suffering. I would not wish for any amount of personal growth if it came on the back of even a strange dog’s suffering. These things aren’t linear anyway as you would know if… etc. etc. “Now that I’m six I’m as clever as clever so I think I’ll stay six now for ever and ever” was once my motto and it still holds good.
Hudson reckons he doesn’t read me. It hurt, but I got over it. Jesus Christ.
Read your response to shad, just above, again.
Read it.
And stop this post facto gibberish of lies, rationalisations, and absurdities.
Make a point, make it. What is personal growth worth exactly?
You’re a knob.
and shelf it.
The question shows that you are still at the level of subjective understanding regarding the potential of psychological evolution.
You might want to ask why it is that born awake, we fall asleep, and why the acquisition of language and the formation of a constellated psychic complex that calls itself “I” leads to a state of inner fragmentation.
You might want to consider the payoff that comes from spending the whole of one’s life unaware of the magnitude of the loss and the unactualized potential.
And if knowledge is essential, why is it that there is no relationship between more of it and growth?
Great Nature is entirely unconcerned about our growth, She doesn’t need it, She doesn’t promote it, and it won’t happen without personal effort of the right kind. Fakirs, yogis and monks were the traditional paths to actualization or individuation. Contemporarise those disciplines and see what the modern corollaries could be.
Life as it’s arranged means very few individuals reach maturity in this context. But it’s also said that real seekers will always find the path and that the opportunities always exist.
The “I”, and I mean that in every sense of the word, is just a rhetorical device. A person’s lived history can be employed to lend colour and weight to an argument or provide anecdotal evidence but it is not an argument in its own right. This same concept is also applicable on a life scale. Personal growth needs to be worth something beyond your own personal growth for it to become a political or intellectual exercise.
Yes, Reader1, I think you should.
Yes you are Reader. You have for some reason, I can only imagine that from earlier conversations have struck a deep inner cord with this Untitled being. Read it and weep. Get your Fabbott and take it for long walks and reflect on whatit is about you that causes these bloggers to care and react so much on what you think.
Oh, and in 3000 words or more what is it that you think?
Thank you Untitled. I said before I had misread you, and this last effort confirms it. I’m grateful to say that my life has not had such incidents as yours. They say that confession is good for the soul; I hope you feel some catharsis as a result of that account.
Thank you.
I like trees
I know you do. Will Soil’s already pointed out your affinity for the herbaceous.
Me too. An old man of the trees, that’s me.
From J.G.Cole to Untitled, 1966
What an extraordinary post.
I can’t remember the last time I read such candour.
Allow me this (Canguro inspired) corollary:
We all have our “red flannelette’s”.
And they all cut into our skin at some point.
Mine was Eno’s “Music for Airports”.
And for the better part of 1996 it soundtracked my passage from illness to recovery.
I’ve spent most of the evening considering your post and the manner of my response, and even after a morning coffee discussion with Fedallah all I can do is offer this:
Reader 1, like everyone else here, understands every word you’ve written. Make no mistake of that. She has chosen, and for all of the usual reasons, to deny acknowledgement, finding instead comfort in Sartre’s “bad faith” or Nietzsche’s “ressentiment”.
Her post to Fedallah (Reader1 August 19, 2012 at 9:18 pm) offers ample proof of that.
Again Untitled66, an extraordinary series of posts.
Thank you for taking the time to write them.
Sincerely,
I have bad faith alright. It is horror in action I am witnessing as far as I’m concerned. I just follow the love these days and rule one is that it’s not always in the place its supposed to be. You can find it in a mining executive, you can find it in an Alan Jones listener. But the only reason I’m in the game is to destroy the forces of evil. Post grief, I’m not one for being distracted by tartuffery. I have more than enough evidence of craziness, violence and consistency of person. The JG Cole coterie can take their ah hah’s and shove it. What a fatheaded ego.
Reader, it’s me, Cole.
Every word you now write is simply an example of bad faith and ressentiment.
Every fucking word.
You talk of “following the love” – Is that “love” defined by:
the eugenics of your: “there will come a time when a simple brain scan will put the likes of you out of action within a month of birth”,
Or the sensitivity of your response to Untitled66′s unprecedented confession: “I’m expected to read all that shit? What an idiot.”,
Or your retreat into what Fedallah correctly labelled “lies, rationalisations, and absurdities: your entire post of August 19, 2012 at 9:18 pm??
Where’s the “love” Reader????
Show it to me.
You’re in way over your head…and every word you say now serves as dead weight; dragging you deeper into the horror of your recent posts.
Just ask for Untitled’s forgiveness and pray that those that have seen this thread don’t linger too long on your malevolence, bitterness, and hypocrisy.
And say nothing else.
Fucking appalling.
Commune with kookaburra. You will learn something.
Idiot.
oh my reader1!
what is one to say!?!
in the blink of an eye you have alienated almost every being on the entire blog!
even so it seems that most perceptive of bush lawyers, mr. quixote.
quite the accomplishment!
well done!!
time now for your next sabbatical.
peering out on this cloudy, crisp and slightly breezy afternoon from my window I can see the sorrento ferry pulling in.
there is a spot on it just for you.
but i hear they will take a detour.
it is to an isolated inlet on marginalised island.
but you won’t be alone dear reader1…..for you will recognize some faces that a short while back you yourself banished to that very spot!!
adieu adieu!!!
Hello sweet sorbet!
Still friends?
….of course U66!
good job, btw
Back on home turf; my own computer, my own avatar.
Good!
Bob, let this post stand.
No Reader, not that easy. I’m not finished with you yet, my Beckettian Dog!
I plan to tear at your false barricades and buttresses and,
push that puckered face of yours back into your bowl of vomit.
Again,
Until the stench of your bad faith makes you acknowledge the words, the meaning and the life, of another human being.
Untitled66, despite his “revulsion” for your words, sent you a post the likes of which, I’m guessing, none of us have seen before. He then took the leap of faith and trust and courage and declared that he was sending his post “to you with great care”.
“To you”, Reader.
“With great care”.
Do you have that Reader?
Are you inhaling deeply?
Are the deepest alveoli stretching?
Good!
Furthermore, as a gentle reminder of the “value” of those words he hints at their “terrific cost”. Now we can only speculate as to what those true costs are, but can glean enough from his story to make credible guesses as to what’s been thrown into middle of the table.
And your reply to Untitled66?
“I’m expected to read all that shit? What an idiot.”
Look at it Reader.
Take a deep breath.
Suck it in!
The chunky bits shouldn’t be a problem.
Inhale!
Again, ask for forgiveness at your preposterous insensitivity and hope that it shall be forthcoming.
And keep your fucking mouth shut!
I’ve known you for over 2 years now, almost 3,
what’s happened to you that you should have forfeited your humanity, your dignity, your intelligence???
I mean it Reader, keep your mouth closed.
I will cauterise ever word, syllable, phoneme, of your rationalising babble I see.
Untitled, Fedallah, Eleanor, JG Cole, whoever the fuck you are at this particular moment in your ongoing psychotic episode – seek help, you sad mockery of a human being.
Seek. Help.
Fuck. You. And. The. Single. Brain. Cell. You. Rode. In. On.
Hey Reader!
Reader!
Your “Consistency of Person” has got off its chain again!
You gonna get a stronger a chain or am I gonna have to shoot the thing?
Everyone needs a Reader,
Are you still with us Untitled
The Peter Singer method – it’s the only way. There has already been talk of it in the States. They have camps there for psychopathic children, though they came to realise early it is only for observational purposes. There is no improvement to be had. Apparently, and this is scientifically supposedly true, psychopaths can recognise each other in a crowd and wordlessly and automatically work together to achieve whatever discordant purpose. I’m just pointing it out. Don’t shoot the messenger, as Assange might say.
I believe that to be very true. Seen it in action and work repeatedly. I’m a watcher.
With so many aspects of the Birds of a feather flock together matter that does work the same, I wonder why love does not?
The Angelina’s will always find the Brad’s at a party etc but real, true, THE one, the one for me ,perfect match,a life of bliss and see no other, so elusive and has to be tasted and tested for so much.
Then again, perfect matches can repel each other in seconds just over nerves or wrong way of putting something or not see each other.
Heading into 50′s and thinking of youth, I know a couple of girls that life would have been that for us.
I can see them and that now. The times of knowing them, one for only weeks, another months, one years and intimate for an hour. Of knowing them, maybe that’s all we get of that bit of heaven. We had it and let it pass in youth.
It takes a lifetime for some to get over troubles, sometimes it takes death.
Some of us carry the most minute troubles that effect so much of existance for so long.
I don’t take any of it for granted but there are regrets. What could of been and the peace now is a longing.
I’ve been on deaths door a couple of times and I’ve had that love, even if only for those short times, I know the lifetime of it.
I knew this was going to happen. I swear to god almighty that I am not literary delusions. I don’t lie except on the odd occasion in real life if the need arises. Others do however and if that person is an ardent moralist and known liar who is waging a bitter campaign against a non moralist who doesn’t lie and has never been known to, what is a moralistic manipulator to do? The thought occurs to me that one invents “literary delusions” with the express intent of both courting controversy (being dependent on others engaging even when they expressly have no desire to do so) and nullifying their own gaping weaknesses, or at least one of them, by accusing said others of stooping to the same level. Either it’s that or it’s Doug’s alter ego or it’s Shaun Micallef or it’s a whole new person. It’s not me, though. I swear by the heavens.
Keep swearing, it seems to come naturally to you.
So does telling the truth.
Tell it to someone who believes you.
I believe R1 Helvi.
Which bit do you believe allthumbs?
Which bit exactly?
Because from where I’m standing it looks like this, and just tell me if I’ve got this right,
When I said in a specific rebuttal that I was happy that Reader’s dog had died you chastised me for renting open the 2dimensional skin between the blog world and the real world, that I had somehow transgressed the rules of engagement and that I should apologise.
Reader here states that “my like” should be out of action a month from birth, and you let it pass. You let that fissure, that fracture, that gash, pass without so much as a syllable, without so much as a breath?!?!
I don’t know what you would call that in your world, but in mine allthumbs it’s called cowardice and hypocrisy.
For all of your abundant intelligence and your effervescent wit, you are deficient in moral courage.
And that’s a shame.
So, what do you believe?
You think that I’m “LiteraryDelusions”?
Or that it simply isn’t Reader and just someone who has ONLY ever posted (4 times exactly) in her defense, never passing comment on any other topic or thread. Ever.
Which is it allthumbs?
I believe R1 when she says she is not “literary delusions”
Just as an extra note, I find it somewhat odd, Untitled, that you accuse me of hypocrisy,cowardice and deficiency of moral courage. You know nothing of me, I see no difference in the assumptions you make or Reader or Doug make about me or each other.
good evening allthumbs and it is indeed an unquestionable treat to meet you.
no doubt you are charmed i am sure.
you hold a formidable confidence in the self-proclaimed occasional liar that is reader1.
quite why this might be you do not say.
but let us ignore the curious character assessments you proffer and raise a meatier issue
you claim you find it odd to be accused of hypocrisy by the sagacious and enigmatic U66
now let us look a little closer at this:
if a chastises b but not c for a similar sin then what might it be called?
consistency? equity? impartiality? evenhandedness? or…..perhaps…….neutrality?
what might it be allthumbs?!?
If it is not the most clear-cut example of rank hypocrisy please enlighten me as to why.
at this point in the juncture I remain incredibly confused.
Yeah Reader you are right. Half of these moralistic egocentric wanabee literary beacons of dribble with their flowery verbatim are trying to associate with you because they know you are on a higher plane
doug?
as in doug quixote?!!
doug may be many things reader1, but he is not a man of duplicity or tricks.
you and literary delusions “both” know that.
Has anyone been to Equador? I know it has about 15 million people and an enormous defence budget; it likes a border skirmish with Columbia and the food it allegedly rather spicey. They make a good coffee brew too – but would you like to spend your life there?
Is there a multi-plex or cable TV with European football? Does Amazon.com deliver? Can you download The Footy Show?
Things for Julian to consider. He should have chosen Peru.
Considering President Correa’s history of attempting to control the press and suppress indigenous protests, Assange may find himself in an interesting position. But perhaps it won’t matter. He appears to be flexible on these matters.
After all, Wikileaks was about to release a whole lot of Russian diplomatic cables. Then Assange got his gig with RT, the state-owned Russian TV station, and the matter of the cables was quietly dropped.
I have always been willing to help people with less than I have. I once employed an Equadorian cleaing lady. She did not do much cleaning, she got her kids to come in as well and they raided (emptied) my fridge…
One swallow does not a summer make, much better experiences with Peruvians, all anecdotal of course
I think when your eyes met untitled would know you Reader
If Ecuador is struggling it is because of the damage wrought of 500 years of colonialism and neo colonialism, violence, poverty and exploitation.
For the last century at least its colonial overlord, succeeding the Conquistadores, has been the USA. It is noted as the original “Banana Republic”, because of the grip United Fruit, a big US TNC which also now has a hold on the Australian Banana industry, once had on its politics and economy.
One for bananaman…
Would Julian be safe in Equador?
Intelligence services would laugh at the fuss at what’s been exposed in w-leaks. Like the majority does and classes as no surprise.
I think the world has been made a lot closer. People and governments. Take a deep breath, we’re all human sort of stuff.
There seems to be that shock like when you have “THOSE” friends.
The ones that when you confide quietly with something like ” oh god this guys a prick” and your friend says ” Jim reckons your a prick ” to Mr 7 ft tall,drunk, red haired with one bottom canine jutting out over the top of the upper lip.
There has to be a limit to it all.
300 million psychotics in the world and one Julian.
I think his embassy speech really confronted fear.
To Canguro – from August 19, 2012 at 5:16 pm
Hello Canguro,
Dr H’s armchair was an ugly thing, it repulsed both the eye and unsettled one’s sense of the decorum of objects. It played an awful havoc with one’s aesthetics; brutalising each sublime mental picture I had of an “armchair”. I date its birth somewhere in the early to mid 70′s. Its shape was that of a deco club chair but instead of a civilised leather it was covered in woven fabric not that dissimilar to carpet. Its colouring appeared green; mottled between about 3 or 4 noticeable shades. Upon closer inspection however one could discern every colour of the rainbow woven into its faint striping pattern.
It was also tattered in the places where one would expect wear; frayed ends of armrests where thousands of nervous, anxious, neurotic, psychotic, depressed and suicidal fingers had picked and scratched and scoured the fabric, removing the covering pile and peeking into the guts of the damn thing in an eerie symbolic parallel to their their own unpicking at the hands of Dr H.
The backrest and the seat cushion were worn concave and dark with the sweat and the farts that came with a thousand terrified people learning their fate, each listening to their lives discussed in the third person,
each about to step through their own looking glass.
It was an incredibly ugly chair Canguro, and that such ugliness could be imbued with a profound and overwhelming pathos did little to reconcile it with my aesthetic sensibilities.
But once you sat in the damn thing you realized why Dr H. kept it.
My body sank into the shape of those thousands of bodies before me. I was returned back into the fold of a humanity I had long rejected all those years ago.
My shape was theirs, and theirs mine.
My pain, my torment, my tears and my hopes, the same as theirs.
We are no different from any one else who lives and breathes and tries to find their way in this world.
No different at all.
I looked up at Dr H., gripped in a sweat soaked epiphany.
He smiled broadly, passed me a tissue, and scratched at his salt and pepper beard.
He then stroked it downward, quite chuffed with himself,
And he began to talk…..
And this is what he said:
The breakdown was the result of two pressing factors: lifestyle and uni.
Lying directly under these, immediate and rectifiable factors, was the more complex question of the movement from one life (drugs, men, violence) to another (literature, academia).
And under that still?
I never made it that far Canguro. I had neither desire nor strength nor courage to investigate further.
From the first: I needed sleep and food. I was 63 kilo and the dark bags under my eyes were an affront.
I was told to abandon my studies. This was a profoundly devastating blow. I can barely describe to you now the impact it had on my already battered psyche.
It was Godawful,
Indescribable.
And it sucked me back into that complex, fearful, and threatening passage: from one life to another Canguro.
From one life into another.
No map, no knowledge of the topography, no compass, not even a sun by which to navigate a course.
It was my, forgive the cliche, Night Journey.
But enough for now. If you ask I shall tell more. If you decide not to, then thank you for the questions already asked.
…………………
To allthumbs, from August 21, 2012 at 9:04 am
Hi allthumbs,
I base my assumptions on the words that sit under your name. I can piece together a personality, however provisional, that has some semblance, and I would be willing to bet a considerable semblance, to the person you are; to the person you wish to present to the world.
Let me be perfectly frank on this point; you may very well have exhibited moral courage 47 times today; you may have demonstrated a distaste for hypocrisy that saw you pit your honour against the deceit and bias of a thousand foes this last week.
All of that may very well be true.
But I bore no witness to it.
What I did witness where your words here. And on those I stake my claim.
I accuse you of those things because, for me, it is an accurate assessment of your role in this particular debate. To wit: you enter it now, offering an opinion only on the marginalia, and when prompted (by my post) to the core of the argument between Reader and myself, you stay silent.
It is of course your right to stay silent on anything that you wish, but it is also my right to draw conclusions from that silence, especially when it points to, how should we say, a incongruity of views.
You may call what I’ve written an “assumption”, but I would call it something else entirely.
And the questions still stand; whether you choose to address them or not:
Why did you stay silent on Reader’s malice?
What is your view on her words? By your silence should I assume an accordance?
Do you see parallels between her words and mine?
If so, name them.
It has been my experience allthumbs that the space left by an unanswered question will soon fill; whether it be with the truth or some variety of fiction.
Questions, like nature, abhor voids.
It has also been my experience that it is unwise to leave questions unanswered; forfeiting the privilege of your own response is the first sign of an approaching calamity.
Respectfully,
……………………..
To sorbet,
where’s the emoticon for a kiss???
By god this is ponderous, and so utterly, painfully, fucking pretentious. You are a champion narcissist, and clearly in need of high level psychiatric attention. You are right to stay silent allthumbs. Please, everyone, stop encouraging her.
What was it dearie? Too many syllables, are the concepts too difficult?
If Untitled’s stories are too human for you, you could always look away.
Give it try.
Oh, Untitled?
Please keep writing if you wish.
I know you,
I’ve seen you a 100 times in my life.
You are a vulgarity,
who, in another time, would have raised your blood pulp face to me and begged for mortal mercy – you would have called on your mother, your father, and your God, to deliver you from my hands.
Another time, Consistency of Person, another time…
Untitled66,
Again you present us with a poignant tale.
And again I say thank you.
Your frankness is most welcome.
As an aside let me just mention that the “ academic exhaustion” I think you’re referring to, whilst not common, is certainly an issue. I see it several times a year, in varying degrees of seriousness.
F.
I for one am enjoying your stories, Untitled. If you’d care to write more, I’d like to read it.
doug gobbled them all up U66!
I don’t care if it is truth or fiction.
that dear doug was merely a veiled reference concerning your debauched emoticon excesses
I do fancy a debauched emoticon.
Thank you, Untitled, 1966. I’m not sure if the expression ‘Night Journey’ is cliched. It doesn’t seem so.
About your experience of therapy and the reasons behind it, well, personally I’m not that surprised. Having been in the wilderness at different stages I understand a little about stress. We can invest a lot of energy, whether consciously or not, in avoiding reflection on lifestyle choice and consequence, and especially so if we’re in the middle of it all… and particularly if we’ve rationalised that what we’re up to is within acceptable boundaries of behaviour.
So there’s a meta-reality that has to be believed in and reinforced while that behaviour continues, and that in itself, the meta-reality, invokes a raft of consequences in time, most of them negative. It’s the devil’s sting, where you’ll lose every time.
Regarding drugs; we decide to do the drug, we’re aware of the risks – the illegality, the druggy milieu, the danger, the fear and paranoia at greater levels than in standard settings, yet we choose to do.
We do because we like the experience. Let’s be frank, some drug experiences are great, and we identify with and enjoy relationships with our peer group. It’s cool, and it’s who I am, for now at least. And the money to be made, well, many are tempted, as I’d expect you know. But it’s paranoia territory also.
There’ve been a couple of times in my life, separated by cities and tens of years, when my circumstances have perhaps been similar; up to my neck and a locked-in lifestyle. The second time around because of the antecedents was a trip through hell, my own night journey where I didn’t even have to leave town. I lost everything, home, family, friends, job. Think about that for a moment, it’s as if you are plucked up out of the place where you’ve made a life at all levels and dropped into another city where you know no-one, except that it’s identical to the place you came from. It’s stressful, and it eventually pushes you to either annihilate the stress through suppression, like more drugs and drink for example, or get help, or both. The ‘both’ option doesn’t work. I can attest to that having consulted three different analysts over a period of two years without changing my underlying behaviour. The condition of deep inner dissatisfaction persisted. It could not have been otherwise. Eventually, distance was the healer, seven years overseas.
There’s a strong consonance between the inner and outer. What we tend to dwell on, reflect on, hold on to dearly in our inner life is a powerful shaper of our life’s experiences, so I hope you’re ok with where you’re at these days. Take care.
Thanks Canguro. You have traveled your own journey it seems.
Tell some of it if you want. Anonymity is a great persuader
I’ll certainly read it.
And yes, I am in a wonderful place now, thank you.
I wish the same to you.
To Fedallah & sorbet – thanks.
To DQ – I can’t believe I’m saying this, thanks.
I think there is nothing quite so wonderful than to turn an enemy into a friend – thank you Untitled. Keep writing.
your admissions above simultaneously saddened and uplifted canguro
the two of you with your candour have etched a special kind of humanity into this blog
you both are to be commended
Thank you to both Canguro and Untitled ’66.