Freedom of Expression

 



Now is the time, they said, in that cascade of messages he tried his best to block out. The river of crystalline marbles, millions of them, flooded down the escarpment for days, each an infinite universe within itself. 

He had fallen off the cliff and was only slowly regrouping. War was breaking out in the Middle East. There were a number of expats in Saigon, but few of them were complimentary about their homeland.

"It's sensory deprivation," Robin said. They had communicated during the lockdowns back in Australia, in those darkest most impossible days, most outrageous flights of government mismanagement and malfeasance, while in the aftermath many continued to suffer the consequence. 

Bui Vien remained a colourful cavalcade, although it was clearly not tourist season, with many of the streets, bars and restaurants all quiet.

He was glad to be away. Iran and Israel played constantly in the background. 

A Tucker Trump feud broke out, which interested him greatly. Many Australians knew more about American politics than they did about their own. And that was it, for one quiet day. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It Began

Image
  It began in cyclonic circumstance, with the wind whipping off Bondi Beach as he struggled through a gale up and down the beachfront. There was no life. The bars were all closed or closing. There were few people about. The gale was a dark force, or remained dark within him, as he fled sanity and constellations of connected intelligences and instead buried himself in the ordinary, a collapsed individual seeking abnegation.  It was hard to know what brought it on; although the Sense8 style hiding from other operatives was always a part of it.  He could hear them echoing in the land beneath the escarpment, propelled from the deep spirits of the forest, caring for what he did not know.  He really did not know. He moped around the house and lamented getting older, more ordinary, more convinced of deceit and abnegation and ordinary things; longing for purpose or confidence or identity, or just youthful determination. He prayed for courage, strength and determination, and ...
Read more

Fraud: Clamouring Dissent

Image
  Foul beasts stalked the Earth. Australia became the kingdom of liars. Dissent was quashed. Fraud was everywhere. The government lied, the politicians lied, the intelligence agencies lied, and deceit permeated every aspect of everybody's life. Taxed into oblivion, taxed into servitude, modern day slavery, overwhelmed by strangers, forced out of affordable accommodation, he'll be lucky to afford a van by the time we're finished with him, the cruel hoax these people represented was literally everywhere. A sharp dagger rammed up through their guts and disembowelled them. A sharp bird flew overhead, squawking with piercing eyes, knowing too much and avenging strangers.  The sacred and the profane. We are all guilty, chanted the Christians, while the spirits swirled in indifference, and time flowed over all of them. It was the injustice, and it was the dishonesty, it was the deceit, and it was the blatant fraud perpetuated by taxpayer entities, that's what got to him. MAINS...
Read more

Alone in a Front Row Seat On History

Image
  They had been and they had gone. That cluster. Imploring. Imagine you could abandon your youth, when you had scribbled repeatedly, "I am the only one", "I am the only one". But it was not so. There are millions of us now, they told him.  And he pretended not to hear.  No one had the decency to come and speak to him. They just watched. They were not there for his benefit.  They were there for the evolution of man, the theft of technology, the arbitrary growth of a destiny they did not understand.  And so, he had resisted their blandishments, drowned his own talents, pretended to be madder, more deranged, more dissolute than he was. And in the meantime, an ever sinking Albo, faced his own stinking, putrid, stale demise at the hands of the electorate, the country, he had so profoundly betrayed. A weak man made weaker still by the blandishments of office.  And so here's Grok's summary of his chances.  The statistical chances of Anthony Albanese losing at...
Read more