Spirits In The Political World
Harold Hark
17 February 2004

"The only way to discuss politics is on all fours"
Timothy Leary

I lost a good mate yesterday. No, he's not dead, he just won't talk politics any more. And since that's all we ever talked about--he's the barrista at a coffee shop on Lygon Street--I've become just another customer.

I haven't seen him since December and had no idea of his conversion to sanity. At least once a week throughout most of 2003, my latte would be half cold before we concluded our joint reprise of the recent asininities in Washington and Canberra. Now, I just sit quietly at the corner table (if some other bastard hasn't already taken it) marking articles in The Age with my little red Bic.

Before we mutely acknowledged that we had nothing else in common, I asked him how he managed to save himself from the temporal madness of being a political junkie.

He made sure no one else was within earshot as he whispered: "Dope. Late one evening not long before Christmas I was still wired so I smoked a joint to relax. Switched on Lateline, which I always devoured with gusto, and within minutes didn't know whether to vomit copiously or laugh uproariously. The sheer absurdity of it all was stunning. Tony Jones was interviewing these two politicians who were squabbling like pre-adolescent boys over whose method of incarcerating innocent people was more humane. Because I was stoned, and because I don't do it very often, my day-to-day robot mind was yoinked into one sizzling clarity. I could see these blokes for what they were: aliens! You know, not from another planet, but definitely not like the rest of us. They feast on our inattention and gullibility. They've conned us into taking them seriously when they're nothing more than rote manipulators without conscience or self-reflection. They're totally unreal and politics, I realised, is a ridiculous waste of time."

"What's taken the place of politics, then," I asked timidly.

"Real life," he said, laughing like a big white cloud in a clear blue sky. "You ought to try it."

Chastened by his remarks, I wandered around Carlton for a couple of hours trying to think of someone I knew who could sell me a baggy of pot. This drew a blank, so I considered stopping the intake of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine to better prepare myself for meditation and hatha yoga with intent to eventually spend three years standing on one leg in the Himalayas...no politician would find me there! However, passing Carltonians regarded with horror the brief St Vitus dance I displayed for them at the thought of the deprivation of alcohol, caffeine and nicotine. So that was out. I then considered other careerlets to replace the one that is currently driving me not only mad but to the poorhouse. Comparing outcomes with my barrista friend, I noted that after several years of feeding bits and bytes into the World Wide Web, I still drive a 1985 Holden Camira named Eigenvalue whose radiator is failing, not to mention the flat spot in the crankshaft which threatens to seize the engine any day now, while he drives a late model BMW.

As I was gobbling an entrée gnocchi at Il Gambero, a weird thought entered my mind: If I get a real job working ten hours a day like everyone else, I won't have time to worry about politics. And I'll be able to afford a Daewoo.

Too much trouble, I later reasoned, pouring a two litre bottle of water into Eigy's radiator in the hope that it wouldn't all leak out and blow the bonnet to Mars before I got off the freeway.

By the time I got home the robot mind was firmly in command again and I set to combing the Net for the latest news of the material world. Dubya and his Aussie sidekick, L'il Dubya, were still acting as if they were real, and so were the other power-wielding aliens. Trouble was, real people were being really disenfranchised or just plain killed because of them.

I suddenly felt trapped. "Fuck, I'm stuck," I wailed. "It's like I'm living in a Warsaw Ghetto of the mind. I can't leave!" I was hoping the representative of a baser self would pipe up to suggest a cunning plan of lucrative crime...or at least the rep of a higher self to respond with a cunning plan of spiritual escape, pragmatic preferably. Alas, no one forthcame.

The status quo rules, then. At least until John Howard is removed from office. After that, I'm gonna get high. And stay there.