Days Volume Two

* Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. Bertrand Russell http://www.smh.com.au/national/cross-off-the-drugs-into-binge-drinking-20090508-axzx.html While the driving forces behind Kings Cross's safe injecting room were this week celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Wayside Chapel's original "act of civil disobedience" in setting up its tolerance room, the area's new scourge was identified by police, the City of Sydney Council, and residents. The drug doing the damage is the legal one: alcohol. The face of Kings Cross has changed momentously in 10 years. Tourists have been replaced by thousands of middle-class residents occupying what were once the Top of the Town, the Hyatt, the Sebel, the Rex, the Gazebo, the Chevron and the Commodore hotels. But the Cross's increasing density as an "entertainment district", with new bars open to 3am and 6am, has collided w...

* ‘You say Mr. Quamby you left your pension money in the bank, which bank?’ ‘That one there,’ says Charlie pointing directly at the empty box clearly marked “Cooking Salt”. ‘Besides you Mr. Quamby, who else has knowledge that the wooden container marked cooking salt is actually where you prefer to hide your pension money?’ ‘Well for starters, Fred knows,’ says Charlie. ‘Anyone perchance,’ says Roberto, ‘with two legs and maybe answering to the description of being, a human being, Mr Quamby?’ ‘Struth, I reckon, just about everyone I know, being a pensioner I have most of my stuff delivered, need to have the cash handy to pay them you see. I am here most days anyway, except every second Thursday when I collect the pension and of course the very next day, if it is not raining, I play bowls and my two best mates Bountiful and Debonair bring me home from the club.’ A flash of lightning, a shuffling of molecules, and life for Franz Kafka Molekel will never be the same. His sudden metamorphos...

* The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? This ... government — what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country fr...

* Lay Your Sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm: Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's carnal ecstasy, Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost. All the dreaded cards foretell. Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought. Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking...

* Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts. Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison. Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger. Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot. Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes. Thanks for the American dream, To vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through. Thanks for the KKK. For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches. For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces. Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers. Thanks for laboratory AIDS. Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs. Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind the own business. Thanks for a nation of finks. Yes, thanks for all the memories-- all right let's see your arms! You always were a headache and you always were a bore. Thanks for the last and greatest betra...

* I can travel faster than light so can you the speed of thought the only trouble is at destinations our thought balloons are coated invisible no one there sees us and we can’t get out to be real or present phone and videophone are almost worse we don’t see a journey but stay in our space just talking and joking with those we reach but can never touch the nothing that can hurt us how lovely and terrible and lonely is this Les Murray His career was a shocking request for action, for love, to restore old memories, embrace young faces, to regret and move forward. He wasn't ashamed, just bewildered. The mark of the devil had been upon him. All was not lost, but he was shattered by the changes that had occurred, not just in his own physical form but in the way people related to him, for the activity that was being discouraged, for the shattered flints that made up each waking moment. The traffic jam was 20 miles long, he swore. Thankfully they were heading the other way, in a taxi comin...