I wish I could say I've spent the time wisely - catching up on study, writing my three outstanding legal essays - doing anything remotely useful.
Sadly that would be a lie.
Most of this week has been spent eating, curled in a ball under tonnes of blankets in a restless sleep or watching hours of reality tv and even worse - loving it.
I think it's safe to say I've now seen every episode of 'Keeping up with the Kardashians' and 'Kendra' they've ever made. I can't say I love either of these programs but I will admit there is something deliciously addictive about them & their ilk. It wasn't until I started reciting the lines alongside Kendra as she ooh-ed and aah-ed over her newborn son that I realised I had a bit of a problem.
As a result, I banned myself from the E! channel to save my sanity. Unfortunately I then found the crime network. Or rather refound. You see, I am a bit of a recovering addict when it comes to crime shows. There was a dark time two years ago when I got the chickenpox (as a 20 year old) and was confined to the depths of my room in self-directed isolation. It was then that I discovered I had a bit of an obsession.
To put it plainly, I love criminals. I'm not sure if it's the four years of law school or the saturation of CSI reruns on New Zealand late-night television or some unexpressed rebellion against 'the man' which forces me to reject boys that are good for me in favour of those who would turn my mother's hair grey - that have made me this way but as I've found, I'm a real prison junkie. Anything to do with prisons and gang brawls and I'm there all wide-eyed and affected.
I've yet to decide if it's pity or awe that makes me yearn to know their stories. But in between the arrogant swagger and the unapologetic street slang that drawls out of the screen and into the very depths of my conscience, something about them is invigorating. Addictive. Hopeful?
They make me wonder about where they came from. Where they're going. So I always feel like the show ended too soon. I want to know where inmate 54633 ended up. It's not enough to tell me in a little subtitle at the end that he was killed upon release. I want to know why. And how. And where. And if he made his peace before he did it. And if it was an ambush or an all-out gang massacre or if he accidently shot himself while cleaning his .22 with the safety off.
I'm not sure why I care. But for those 43 minutes (minus adverts) I do. I'm hurting with them, surviving alongside them. I'm doing it all and feeling it all. And then when it ends I feel a little bit cheated. As if my emotional investment wasn't worth it somehow because in the end, there they are in their world and here I am in mine. Only their lives go on unchanged while I feel different somehow. It doesn't seem right.
I can't say it quite as well as Jenni Diski did so I'll leave the final word to her.
I hate neat endings. I have an antipathy to finishing in general. The last page, the final strains of a chord, the curtain falling on the echo of a closing speech, living happily ever after; all that grates on me. The finality is false, because there you still are, the reader, the observer, the listener, with a gaping chasm in front of you, left out of the resolution of the story that seduced you into thinking yourself inside it. Then it’s done and gone, abandoning you to continuation, a con trick played out and you were the mark. An ending always leaves you standing in the whistling vacancy of a storyless landscape. Any ending exposes the impossible paradox – the desire for completion, the fear of termination – which like an open wound is too tender to uncover. But neat endings are the worst; the rounded closure that rings so true and so false, the harmonious conclusion that makes sense of the beginning and of all that happened in-between, and makes a lie of what you know about the conduct of your life, a lie of you.
Lesson Two: Live your own reality.
Enjoy your week xx
