Feeling better

Had the strangest dream last night... perhaps even a nightmare. Dead zombies walking, like those in that (horrible I-don't-recommend-you-watch) movie Night of the Living Dead I watched with my mum-friend last week. These disgusting zombies would prowl the streets and bite people, and those people would in turn turn into zombies too. I was somehow immune, or at least had 'superpowers' like Neo in The Matrix... which meant I could fly and travel back and forth in time to save the world. And save the world I did.

It was pretty intense, and when I woke up I felt exhausted and still very tired, all curled up in bed. At noon.

Though, just as I thought it was going to be a(nother) lousy start to the day in the new year, things didn't turn out to be so bad. Had lunch and worked more on my paper, and made a lot of progress, which made me feel happy (and smart). I guess it may be true what they say about dreams/nightmares, and how they're supposed to be a way to 'exorcise' bad feelings and spirits from your real life.

Been working and reading a lot on war crimes, and some cases from the Yugoslav Tribunal, and others pending at the International Criminal Court. Rape, murder, mutilation, genocide, child soldiers, slavery, sexual abuse, pillage, torture... horrible, horrible accounts of what (wo)man can and do do to (wo)man.

It makes you wonder why, why in this world and in this life anyone would and could hate and hate another human being so much so as to make him/her suffer pain and trauma and death. Where do those feelings of compassion, morality, humanity, and innocence go (or hide?) when these monstrous thoughts and acts take over that compell people do commit such hideous crimes?

And as a lawyer when you read these accounts, the trials and the setences it's just something to be analysed, to be deciphered and decoded in order to get the legal principles and arguments. At times it seems as if it doesn't matter what acts were committed or what the consequences are. What matters is whether the law can punish the perpetrator, and how. It's called doing justice, where justice was infringed on, even though justice cannot undo the scars and deaths. It's called detaching yourself from the case. It's called being professional.

It's the reason why I can never be a lawyer.