Inmate 357
Day 3, Monday 4 January: The Exercise Yard and Our “Super Risk” Identity Labels
We exercise out at the front in the morning and again in the afternoon on the 5th floor “Roof Top Garden” which is not a garden at all but just a flat roof with a circuit marked out. Our room actually looks down on it and the backs of numerous other buildings.
It takes the athletes 1 minute to walk one lap. The nice nurse told us in the morning that the top 5 floors only (of 10 floors) are being used. Guards are everywhere. I try and talk to them. They do 12 hour shifts!
Tyler* and Mary* try and Zoom at 8.30 pm but I had to bail out as I was totally physically and mentally b—d. I crashed out not at all graciously at 9pm but had a bad night and kept waking so I read for a bit in the middle of the night and took a zopiclone. I felt so hot and bothered and exhausted and vowed never to come to this dreadful place ever again (hotel, city, country, the whole lot).
This is the necessary ‘low spot’ talked about by psychologists. It has to happen before any rebuilding or ‘Resurrection’ can occur. The Gospels are telling us about the realities of life – Richard Rohr said in his daily emails. The next day I realised that the hot and bothered bit was because the aircon had packed up!
During the day we were also told we could remove our purple wrist bands, but we had already taken them off and discarded them on Saturday as we thought they were just our ticket for the bus at the airport. They were in fact to identify us as ‘super risk’ having come from UK.
Day 4, Tuesday 5 January: A Change and a Strange Dream
I was awake all day and was still going at 8.45pm. We had Day 3 COVID tests, and we changed rooms. The wonderfully friendly and polite duty manager that we spoke to at the desk downstairs moved us. Inmate 356 had been angling for days to get a swop as really there was no view in the last room bar the ‘Roof Garden’. We moved over the corridor and what a view we have from the 10th floor! Sky Tower, Harbour Bridge, Waitemata Harbour (a bit anyway), all because our aircon mysteriously stopped working and we were baking like a couple of potatoes. How and why did this happen? The aircon was very cool when we arrived. Do I share the room with a saboteur?
We had 5 hours of FaceTiming in the morning and more walks down in the front and around the ‘5th floor garden’ aka the exercise yard.
It is so funny how moving into a room with a view, which is a mirror image of the last room, makes it all seem really grand! The Lord is so good to me. So good to all of us. I felt that I was like the room, now all sorted and turned around whereas the night before I was all back to front and all over the show.
I dream of a ‘real’ Christmas, it was rather strange but of one when all the dates and ancient lay lines coincide, and carved turkey is laid out at midnight on Christmas Eve. I think it was all pointing to the Sacrifice of the Lamb without spot or stain. Then in a very holy hour, I could see that every bit of me eventually wants to dissipate and be part of the Great Love that has created me and redeemed me. “Love is flowing like a river, flowing out from you and me”. (Sorry if this is a bit heavy but it was very real to me. Not an incipient psychosis!).
*Not their real names.
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