My Underwear, My Muse

Crumpled, grey pair of briefs,

Sharing the hanger with a riotous burst of color.

The lacy intimates of a lady’s boudoir.

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How do you like the company?

Are the hours passed muted, as underwear often is?

Or is this a heaven most silky?

Hakodate in 15 minutes

In about 15 minutes time, Eunice is going to come charging out of the shower, morning sleepiness washed away. Then we’re going to start off the day as we have done for the past 5 days here in Hakodate – flipping on the television. I mentally cringe at the fact, that despite the often generous weather, copious scenery, the quaint sleepy charm of a city perched precariously on the southern tip of Hokkaido; and most alarmingly, that despite not understanding a good majority of what the hell is being said on the local, totally Japanese television – we still begin the day, almost as a matter of protocol, with the telly. Just yesterday I could have imagined that this lazy routine stretched all the way into the foreseeable future, but now things draw to a close.

How do you describe anything of worth with accuracy? Words seem like all too coarse a brush with which we try and mould the hazy, grey ink of memory. Hakodate is very much such an experience. It was far from perfect – to be candid there were times when the inevitable abrasion of personalities threatened to derail the little adventure. However rather than throw a gloom over the experience, it served to accentuate all the more the colorful experiences of the last 5 days. Much like how grey brings out the richness of color. There was the food (personally I felt as if I had committed small scale genocide on the squid population), the restaurants and cafes that served them (some on the verge of collapse, but still held together with a heady cocktail of style, custom and bravado), the walks (of which the random trails seemed to bear as much sights a planned routes), and of course the experience of watching the sun set into a distant, cloud blanketed cluster of mountains, the cerulean sea an all present backdrop, foreground and frame. Then the slightly unnerving experience of having your skin burned to a golden brown without any sensation of pain thanks to the constant, cold wind (pain does come later, in force).

I list the things we did with the reservation, because all lists seem such too cold and formal a summary of events. Further, if you could break your holiday down into a comprehensive list, then I fear that the trip has failed rather miserably – you have instead had a series of events some good some bad, strung together for mere chronological convenience. Hokdate then is to be remembered for the experience, rather than the events. As an experience, it has been an almost unreal detachment away from the normal rat race, especially coming after the exam grind. So much so that now as I get ready to board the plane to Tokyo, it almost feels like I’m leaping into the gaping maw of modern life with all its faceless interactions and leaving behind the quaint simplicity of waking up to a lazy hour of telly which I don’t understand.

Regina v. Dudley and Stephenson

So if you’ve been reading up on your Criminal Law, you’d probably have come across this case. If you haven’t, and for the laymen (and i mean this term not with derision but with envy, because you guys are possibly pursuing interests you might actually believe in. Unless of course you study business. In which case I eagerly look forward to your future career as a door to door salesperson.) the case involved a ghastly turn of events. A boat was sunk and the survivors had to resort to drinking their own urine and cannibalism to survive. And as if the horror of that wasn’t enough, the killer still ended up being charged for murder, in the face of stiff public support for him.

Of course there was a lot more than just these facts. There was a series of machinations happening between judges and a possible enforcement of moral principals. This wiki article covers all the sordid details. Suffice to say though, the case once (the law has thankfully been reviewed) stood for the rule that murder cannot be excused by necessity.

So, in some inspired moments of boredom, I decided to rewrite the judgment in prose. (Yes call me crazy – normal bored people just turn on the telly)

R. v. Dudley and Stephens ([1884] 14 QBD 273 DC)

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Aloof on his mahogany tower,

The Judge spoke down to a rapt court

I have reviewed the facts of the case, he says

Which I shall now summarize briefly.

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Here are the dramatis personae,

A cabin boy barely bearded

A killer bent on the blackest of survival

Come what may the cost.

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And two witless accomplices, who

Like the crowds at Calvary did nothing;

Choosing docile participation

Over the moral fortitude to intervene.

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Our scene is the bosom of the high seas,

Where a foul wind cast our actors adrift.

Prisoner to their tiny life boat,

And tempted, as she was in the Garden.

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Allow the worms of hunger to over come them

And face most certain death.

Or feast on one of their own number,

And face less certain death.

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My learned country men, we cannot accept an excuse of necessity.

Indeed, such circumstance impose on men the moral necessity,

Not of the preservation, but of the sacrifice of their lives for others,

From which in no country, least of all, it is to be hoped, in England,

Will men ever shrink, as indeed, they have not shrunk.

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It is hence my opinion, that there will be no excuse.

No Speluncean Explorers or Carneadian Plank

Will come to the rescue of the accused, who was duty bound to die.

To not find guilty, would be a mockery of our Great Example.

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Guilty for murder, as charged.

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The Judge retires to a clamor in the court.

He walks briskly past the tea lady and court room cleaners.

All of whom, by necessity of economics,

Squeeze out a pittance of a daily wage.

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In his life of powdered wigs and silken robes,

How fortunate then for the Judge

That the Great Example never spoke of

The necessity to be poor.

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* note: Great Example, as lifted from the judgment itself, refers to Jesus Christ.

P.s. Cursed formatting forces me to use periods to separate stanzas