The air in the court room is still, as are the people arranged theatrically around the room in a varied order of importance. This room is in direct contrast to the heavy bustle of the foyer where I have been sitting, behind the imposing security measures in place on the front door. Seated in the dock is a man with a jagged black hook beneath his eye, the red bloom around its edges enough to signal it as a fairly recent and very deep bruising. He slouches in his chair beside the guard, looking both confused and disinterested at opposing times. When he looks towards me I attempt a grim and appeasing smile, from one accused to another, but it doesn’t register or interest him, and as he angrily stares I look away.

The court itself is full of a duplicitous tension. The way in which couples of people turn to whisper to each other, conducting business beneath the veneer of the magistrate’s presence, echoes the obvious hierarchy of the courts rules of conduct.

My reflection upon this is broken as the court jerks itself back onto the focus of attention and leaps into business.

The man in the black suit in front of me and to the right of the desk (young, well cut suit, smart black haircut, probably plays football for his old boys association team), who is obviously the representative for the bruised man in the dock, shifts to his feet quickly as he introduces himself, then just as quickly returns to sitting. Almost immediately the police prosecutor does the same. The blonde woman in the middle rises. The magistrate stops her. Points back to the defendant. “Can you repeat that please?” He does so. The police woman does so.

This stattacato burst of action is like a finely timed opening to a well scripted play, establishing scenario and atmosphere. I look back to the bruised man and am reminded that this is no performance – he stares sullenly, with lips slightly parted at the proceedings. Apparently he has committed some offence while out on bail for another offence, and is now in remand. His case is adjourned. He is lead back out the security door of the dock. His life is adjourned until he is called back before the court, apparently.

I didn’t sleep at all well last night. I had some nightmare about not having shaved before going to court, or catching fire or something. A comrade arrives at my door early, carrying two motorcycle helmets and offering me a lift into the city. As we sit in the sunlit back yard having a cup of tea, me in only my underwear (having just arisen from bed), my housemate emerges with a SLR camera and takes a photo of us. We both ask at the same time whether he intends to use it as documentary evidence for something, and then laugh together. The same housemate was the person who answered the door at 6 am, two days ago, as 8 plain clothes police executed their search warrant on my house, overturning my small room and leaving it in disarray as they rabidly chased after whatever ‘evidence’ it was that they needed. Returning home after 6 hours in custody, two Styrofoam cups of water, about sixteen “no comment” answers, ten fingerprints and eight photos of my tattoos, I find almost all of my belongings heaped upon my bed, dribbling off onto the floor. There is no way to describe the way in which I feel that evening.

In custody I spend some parts of my six hours appreciating the visual arrangement created by the intersection between the large solid green tabletop, the blue chair cushioned chair opposite, and the Styrofoam cup of water, which has my last name neatly printed around the edge in carefully cursive letters. I take millions of mental photographs and compose a thousand burning paintings hallucinating off the scuff marks on the plain cream walls. My boots and both my necklaces (which I nearly never remove) have been seized rather politely by the two officers who I am dealing with – I am absolutely freezing in my black jeans and thin white cotton t-shirt. Thank fuck I wore socks without holes in them. All day I think of biting pieces of smart-arsitry which I could deliver upon the cops, and then realise that for once in my life I have a reason to keep my fucking mouth shut. Nonetheless I play out these comments against the cream walls, watching them bounce around between the fluoro lights and the solidly locked door.

In the foyer of the court rooms the same white cotton t-shirt is covered by a silver gray shirt, sensible enough to look reserved, alternative enough to make me feel comfortable. A heavy enamel badge of the red and black star is pinned over where my heart would be, if my heart had been displaced to the right hand side of my chest. Nonetheless it is there. My favourite boots have been seized by the po-lice, and having been horrified at the stupidity of sneakers, which after all, are merely cloth bound to your feet with string, I have replaced them with a fine pair of brown blundstones - the hillbilly slippers. Altogether I feel and appear heavy, like some form of solid combustible. Later in the day, after the brief hearing, my father tells me that I must reserve and control my emotional volatility, for matters where it is appropriate. He knows all too well that I get upset and angry very easily, and suggests instead that I transfer that intensity into rational and calm resistance. I feel completely unable to do so however, and have never been able to explain adequately to my parents the way in which my seething internal anger motivates and drives me, perhaps because it is indeed a purely juvenile force, unrefined by the years of a longer life.

At 19 I am facing the first criminal charges which have ever been levelled against me, for two counts of riot, two of affray, one of criminal damage to police property and one of reckless conduct endangering persons. When I tell my comrade this he laughs as I struggle to keep the broad smile from creeping across my face.  Although it is not a path of action which I would have chosen for myself and my family, I will endeavour to learn as much as I can from this experience as I work through whatever it is which I must now confront. I am determined not only to remain calm about it all, although at heart I feel a deep sadness which I cannot explain, but also to use my experience in a constructive and positive way.

I expect no mercy from the organised forces at play in the morning’s hearing, and I will make no concessions to their efforts to destabilise my polite and reserved manner when dealing with them.

I will gain from this experience, and I will remain determined that what transpires between the organised human forces of our society must be challenged, and that we have a responsibility to remain involved both as a point of resistance and as a point of creation for something better.

I thank everyone who has sent me messages of support, and wish everybody luck with their own personal struggles.

If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us.