barricade

Fitzroy 1977

Not the 1871 Commune, not Paris 1968 or Belfast in 1969  ... but suburban Fitzroy in 1977

Barricade! the resident fight against the F19 freeway

    Anna hides in a shoebox somewhere, prancing in a photograph through flooded streets beneath a bright Chinese umbrella. I dig out all the albums and folders looking for the actual print, to no avail - but the real image is always in my mind. Never lost or missing, I still see her clearly even though half a century has slipped past.

    Alexandra Parade Fitzroy, late 70s, inner city Naarm. Melbourne they called it then. 

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    deepest noir

    film noir as political prophecy...

    Farewell My Lovely

    The HBO series True Detective fits the post-noir genre perfectly. Not visually so much - it's almost steam punk at times - but essentially, in it's essence, it meets most of Roger Ebert's criteria as listed later in this post. The characters are disfunctional and flawed, even when innocent in their hearts. There are no happy endings. Corruption, betrayal, disappointment and homage to the general theme of pulp fiction permeate the story lines.

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    before death ...

    A poem by Kabir, [1440-1518] a 15th-century Indian mystic poet, supposedly illiterate ...

    last days of the kuomintang

    the time before death

    Friend? hope for the Guest while you are alive. Jump into experience while you are alive! Think... and think... while you are alive. What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

    If you don't break your ropes while you're alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?

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