This is a wild cyberpunk 21st century world we live in but, for all that craziness, it's still an awesome challenge to stay alive. Sitting at the Piccolo we are told that Mark is dead, they found his body in his flat in Roslyn Street this morning, only 37 and a disaffected gay. I remembered his smiling wan face clearly, a big guy but pale and frail, he was on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals, anti-psychotics, anti-anxieties, anti-depressants, anti-epileptics, he even had a fistful of Ritalin the other day, and he had many grand mal seizures. I'll miss his enthusiasm for all things "movies", we used to swap DVDs, he wore great rock'n'roll T-shirts. Now his ghost will join the others swarming through the Cross, and I'll see him everywhere.
Otherwise nothing much but the usual is happening at the Piccolo Groundhog Cafe, Gregory the Kings Cross reigning Schitzo had to be taken away by therapeutic Police again for abusing the customers, shouting profanities into the air as if keeping the demons at bay. And a junkie crept into the Pic's Gelato Bar while Vitto was down in the dungeon toilets and somehow worked out the code for opening the till and made off with $100 but the ubiquitous CCTV caught his act in b/w clarity, his ugly mug greedy amongst the ice-creams, who then stupidly walked passed the Cafe the next day and was photographed by Richard Machine, then obviously found by the Cops on the Cross, (otherwise the workers get blamed for the missing cash.)
And all is quiet on the Northcott front too, Cursula rarely visits next door, whoever she lets crash at her flat is quiet like little mouseketeers, peace rules again, except for the fire alarm going off every day/night and the fire brigade rushing to the rescue, with only the Void to save, repeatedly, just when I fall asleep, and I'm in the Twilight Zone. The gay guys down the other end still argue like rabid pitbulls fit to kill each other and the sweet old lady who replaced Eric the Viking next door to me has terrible alcoholic binges once a month and brings drunks home from the Pub who raucously curses to bring the building tumbling down, "you cunts!" till dawn. But all this can be handled as the usual human drama.
The Cops have now got a No-go, No-warrant Needed Zone at infamous Northcott Estate and my front door is the only one in the whole complex that faces onto a public footpath, every deadbeat in the city marches past. I often find a mob of drug zombies having an injection confest on my doorstep, pre-dawn before the sunlight fries them, and I have to walk thru them, tentatively, like tigers and me the intrepid urban Jungle Jim.
What's really hard to handle are all the grudges and gripes that spin through my dysfunctional head, of bad turns done me in my turbulent Sydney experience. I've just got to get over it and break free. I got upset over a program I saw on SBS TV last night, "Every Family's Nightmare", how a fifteen year old boy got wrongly accused of rape but the Cops were incompetent and the Dept of Public Prosecutions ruthless in pursuing the flawed case till the defendants' parents had to sell their house to pay for all the legal costs. When the parents cried with relief at the end of the trial, when their son was found "not guilty", I cried also for I relived my own story of the early '90s when I was falsely accused of armed robbery, (of my local cake-shop!) The Cops in my case were too lazy/stupid to find the real culprit and verballed/framed me, later they were found to be criminally suss themselves, (believe those Underbelly urban myths.)
The Dept of Public Prosecutions pursued me like Nazi SS tho there was copious evidence to prove my innocence, why? Because there were jobs in it for all of them, lots of money to be drained while lives are ruined, and no compensation. (And not much later the Deputy Prosecutor got caught with kiddie porn on his laptop!) I eventually got acquitted of course, after three years of torture, I went mad, basically dropped out, who wants to contribute to such a fucked world?
And here in 2010 I'm still seething with fury, the Cops and Prosecutors will always tend to be powers unto themselves where the Almighty god of Money is concerned, when you see the number of drug busts across the country it's obvious there's too many jobs and too much money at stake, straight and illicit, for the Powers ever wanting to consider drug decriminalisation. While such fascists make sure their drug of choice is available every three doors, ALCOHOL, the deaths, the miseries, car crashes, fights on street corners and kitchen sinks, unconscious zombies pissing their pants in the gutters.
Yeah, real paradise, this cyberpunk Sydney is. But I have to chill, get relaxed, otherwise I'll have a heart attack. Let the shit go, find cathartic release in writing my Proustian chronicles, remembrance of things past and future, novels within novels, from my silent room. And one day I'll fly out of here, for a break.
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