January 28, 2007

Like watching out the window from inside a speeding train

On Monday, I went back to that flat to see if I was allergic to the fluffy, snowy cat Vinnie that lives there. I decided that my puffed up eye from the afternoon before must have been a one off, and agreed to move in. There is a huge back lawn. I want to mow lawns and make a garden.

On Tuesday I drove 5 hours and went to prison and shook hands with a convicted paedophile. I'm so small and fresh and sweet looking I didn't even get checked by security. Had my boss cracking up when I called her from inside the visiting cell on my cellphone.

On Friday we won another sex-offence related case. The content has already become distressingly familiar. The juries all look the same. I correctly guessed the verdict by their demeanour when they came into court. They sought out our client across the room, perhaps asking themselves if they had come to the right conclusion? I am adopting a belief system, that I believe at some stage will prove incongruent with honour and integrity and compassion. But I know damn sure what I'll give up on first.

On Saturday I floated on a lilo in a heated mineral pool under a cloudless sky and pretended I knew what it felt like to be at peace. I felt my lungs inflate to full capacity and appreciated the treat. I let unfamiliar hands knead my knotted muscles and wished that I could give myself over to it completely.

Today I watched a film about a 23 year old with daughters aged six and four who lives in a trailer with her husband who is the only boy she has ever kissed. She finds out she has a tumour, a couple of months to live, and writes a list of everything she wants, must, do in that time. She finds a new wife for her husband, makes taped messages for her girls' birthdays until they turn 18, and makes a strange man fall in love with her. At the end of it, I wanted my own mother.

I also found my child-hood diary today. Well, extracts that had survived several vettings to weed out the most tortured. I found letters I wrote to my mother and father, and for my future husband and children. I was 12 or 13 at the time of writing. My achingly naive and idealistic 12 year old self wrote that the letters probably wouldn't be read until at least 2003. I was surprised to see how I apparently had very little in the way of career aspirations at that tender age. I thought I would grow up to be like my mum, who was pregnant with me when she was 21. As cheesy as they were, I was moved to tears. I believe they were written during the dismantling of my family unit as I knew it, and as an attempt to reconstruct some certainty, some security for myself.

I am reading about soul mates at the moment.

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