Sunday, April 08, 2007

Remark with five a note of passion (4)

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud (Joni Mitchell)

There are no passages in the New Testament dealing with love between a man and a woman. (This is very sad and explains much about the modern Church's attitude to sex, marriage and teenagers)

I am in love. With the man. And he loves me. Or so he says. Dammit, I should try not to do that deprecation thing.

I thought I loved him before. Like an idiot I told him and was rewarded with an embarrassed silence and the desperate hope I might wake up from the bad dream. Perhaps in someone else's bed. Anything but the embarrassment and the silence.

At that time I wasn't in love. I was infatuated and frankly over-awed by the fact someone still wanted to go out with me nearly 2 months down the line.

It's difficult to admit to being wrong, especially when you confess to being in love

(example scenario 1: explaining to best friend why you are dating the 'bastard ex' again)
(example scenario 2: getting married and later regretting it)
(example scenario 3: all of the bad poetry written in adolescence)


I realised that I couldn't genuinely be in love with him if he didn't love me. It is difficult, if not impossible, to love in a vaccuum: over time it becomes obsession or desperation, or some other perversion of love, which feeds on its own excrement. Nice.

So now that he's confessed to loving me, I can explore my own feelings more freely. Reciprocate the words. Then sit back and consider their meaning. Try to understand if I am in love, or in love with saying the words.

To pursue a glib saying, Love is...
...exquisite joy in their company
...crippling fear that they will be lost
...endless thoughts of them in daydreams
...smiling despite their absence
...worrying in their presence
...extreme of emotion

...impossible to define.

Of course, I can't just enjoy the fact that I am loved and love back, I have to seek the bigger picture. One day this will end in heartbreak. Whether it’s next week after a disastrous row, or 70 years in the future, in a silk-lined coffin.

Oh dear. That’s not a happy thought. Can I really be in love if I can be that pessimistic about it? Shouldn’t I be listening to Lionel Richie and walking with a permanent smile on my face?

On a better note, the sex is better than ever. Is this because it has the seal of Love approval? Fuck knows.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Whose justice?

Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd. (Exodus 23:2)

I was in Bethnal Green police station the other day. First time I had ever been inside a police station. It was dingy, care-worn, relatively inhospitable, which every Daily Mail reader might expect from the nation’s prisons, havens of criminals and ne’er-do-wells as they are.

A few months ago I had my mobile nicked by a stereotypical Hackney hoody: just out of school and looking shifty. Bastard grabbed my phone and in a split second I looked a fool. Fortunately it was my work phone so I just had to tell the boss and sit tight while they paid the damage. It was also a several year old Nokia, its only redeeming feature an addictive golf game I missed sorely.

So two and a half months later I am surprised to hear that it’s been found and would I like to give a statement? Damn right I would; it took me off work for an hour or two, it meant an exciting sojourn into new anecdotal territory, not because I felt I needed justice

I’m sitting in a room with no curtains and gargantuan filing cabinets describing at length. “And how tall was he? How old did he seem? Can you tell the difference between different types of black?” Two thoughts spring to mind.

Does the boy they have in the cells look anything like the guy I’m describing? Since the charming police officer isn’t going to stop if I’m giving her a black boy with a hoody and she has a white kid with a sweatshirt… and

What if this statement sends him to prison? Since the stolen property is only part of the bigger case they’re building against him.

I miss my golf game, but I’ve just about got over it. I don’t feel any need for justice. I should not have left the mobile on the table. True, I was little further than a metre away from the sod when he nicked it, but I didn’t feel so wronged that I chased him down the street in my 4 inch heels. The poor kid probably couldn’t flog the vintage handset, it would certainly explain why he still had it nearly three months later.

There is an argument that says justice should be served as an example, that unless every thief is publicly reprimanded, other thieves will continue to take liberties. There is the argument that this boy, who has other charges against him, is a bad sort who needs discipline. There is the argument that the police are there to do their job and charging a Hackney minor with possession of stolen property is part of that.

However, there is also the argument that as long as there is envy and greed, there will be theft and punishment no disincentive. There is the argument that discipline should have been in his life long before puberty set in or the police got involved. There is the argument that if the victim (me) doesn’t need ‘justice’, it shouldn’t be sought.

Maybe I shouldn’t have given the statement. I forgive the kid. He’s bored, it’s a challenge. Ranulph Fiennes surely has similar motives for each expedition.

So if Bethnal Green police station ask me to give evidence in court, I will say no. Except I can’t, because I signed something that said I had to. Ooops. And bugger.

Many opinions are uninformed purely through lack of experience. As Socrates says: “Wise is the man who knows that he does not know/” I had abstract ideas of justice before. Now they are informed at least slightly through experience, but still nascent. If I craved justice would I still be so willing to forgive? If I felt apathetic, would I let someone else decide on the necessity for justice? If I felt entirely absolvent, would I fight for the person who had supposedly wronged me?

Forgiveness is, according to cliché, divine. But so is wrath and justice. Some Christians love to tell people that they’re going to fire-laden hell with God’s angry finger pointing the way, while hiding their own short-comings behind the words “For God so loved the world…”

Judgement is enshrined in justice: it is the culmination of justice, its working out. However in human courts it is not the victim who passes judgement. They seek justice on the victim’s behalf. I’m not sure that makes sense.

I’m going to think about this, because it’s too easy to run away with opinions of why this is and why this may be wrong. Is justice sought for the individual or for society, and can it ever be enough for either?