The journal of T. Reed
8 April 2007
Another day, and just another day. One of the things about prison is the disconnect from the outside world. You try to maintain your ties, but its not easy, nor is it encouraged really. No, I don't think there's any motive in that. It's more just a matter that it's not a priority that gets any effort assigned to it.
It isn't, after all, the job of a prison to keep an inmate connected to the real world. For the most part, it's just the opposite.
We can debate the right or wrong forever. It doesn't even matter right here
The reason I've been thinking about this is because though its seemingly just another day it is in fact Easter. Although, unless you happened to go to Catholic or Protestant service this morning you would never know that on the other side of the stone wall that there is any holiday. No gardens are being planted in minds here. The home center has no sales on fushias and geraniums. There are no chocolate bunnies or easter egg hunts. No marshmallow peeps.
Ok, that parts ok by me. Always hated the marshmallow peeps..
There isn't even a holiday meal being served today. Not that easter without ham for dinner, says easter anyway. But that's just me.
No, pork products in this prison. Large Muslim population so no pork on the menu.
One of the things that just says spring is those same above mentioned plant sales, bunnies, egg hunts and yes even those nasty little yellow squishy wannabe bird things...
There is no spring here. Oh yes, the weather's a bit warmer. (Not very this year yet). But what there isn't is any green. We don't think about these things much, I think. But if you do, if you stop a moment and look at it, you out there, or we in here, you realize the backdrop of spring. For all of you out there all around you. For us, its marked absence.
Not all prisons are like this. Many, perhaps most have yards with grass, flower beds where appropriate, even tress and shrubs. Here in Trenton though, the only living green here are the woods that manage to find a foothold between the concrete slabs or the cracks in the blacktop. At least until they get sprayed with herbicide.
I grew up on the West Coast, the Pacific Northwest mostly. It's a green world. The dark emerald of the pines, fertile lush fields. And we bring so much of this right into the cities. We don't like gray concrete cities, I guess.
Perhaps, reading more than I should into this, I'm making a big deal about this, and its not. Have you ever felt disconnected, not just from your life, your family, or job, but the world itself? Like the very backdrop behind you is wrong?
Just another day here. If you added in some living green though; or perhaps the scent of new turned soil, then, oh then it just might be spring.
15 April 2007
It's been quiet here. Working puzzles and reading a lot. The usual
So who thinks the whole, Imus, thing was a complete waste of time? Ok, I might give you the need for a discussion about race, language and the whole stereotype double standardizing mess we call American culture. All I'm saying is don't pay a guy to be a shock jock ad then cry when he says something offensive. He's job is to get people riled up. People are not exactly lining up to listen to the Disney network. Sad perhaps, but true.
Nor do I believe for a moment that the women of that basketball team would have given his comments a second though if not for all the hype. You don't get to that level of play sporting a thin skin.
Frankly, I don't even like Imus. Never found him that funny. A lot of people do though. So who am I to say.
With all the real stories we should be paying attention to why make a national media circus out of a tasteless joke. And please, do not start in about how this is about so much more. Because if that's how people truly feel it wouldn't have taken this to start trying to do something constructive about the problem. Pointing fingers about a problem is a cowardly lazy out, for those in media and politics that "could" do something, but won't put out any of the work to accomplish it.
Quit fixing blame, start fixing the problem. If, that is, what you really want... enough
I guess my ranting really is little better than all the other talking heads. I just have hypocricy. Even my own.
There has been no word from Arizona since my letter that way. Granted, its only been a few weeks and the outside world moves at its own speed, with its more immediate concerns.
In some ways my four odd years of no contact with my family has been an easy out for me. Now my sons are 18 and 16, and I'm sure are beginning to fill their lives with all the distractions of these final steps into adulthood. At that age you are less concerned, I think, with where you came from and more with where you're going. 14 and 12 year olds have questions....
Which is worse? Silence or the lack of answers?
Oh, I know, the questions are all still there under the surface, and they will be asked eventually. Or, they will have found their own answers for good or ill. Not really my place to say at this point.
But contact, pictures , letters, perhaps even a voice, these small touches would feed a craving I've scarcely allowed myself to even acknowledge. And yet there it is.
Every day then when I return from work I'll be looking at my bed through the bars. Trying to see if there's an envelope from across the country laying on it. Whatever's in it. Wish me luck....
21 April 2007
I have often written in these pages about my memories and memory itself. It is a strange gift this power of our memories. There is nothing short of a loved one's embrace that can both comfort us and haunt us with such immediacy.
To be lost in memory. It evokes images of half slumbering old dotters sitting in a sunny spot on a lazy afternoon or perhaps a lone person brooding in those hours of the night that are always too long and too quiet. And these pictures are too much cliché not to be true. Which of these two facets that I represent, I'm not sure.
The guy who I share this cell with goes back to sleep, or attempts to, nearly every morning at about 9:30. Usually I go ahead and turn off the light unless there's something I'm trying to get done. There's a DJ I like to listen to, so it's not really a huge inconvenience. Often though, be it because the radio that day is boring, or if I just don't feel like listening that day, my mind wanders down the roads of memory. Some days even when I should be getting something done.
Is it unusual that it is not the stories that capture our attention, not the childhood trips or grand events that we retravel in our minds? Perhaps this is not a general thing but more a singular trait of my own. It is the moments that capture me. A particular view as you crest a hill years in the past. The first time you saw or felt the ocean. When you first galloped a horse flat out almost one with the animal. It is those things that pull me under.
And there are the smells...
Prison does not smell good. Too many people in too little space. A great deal of disinfectant and poorly cooked cheap food. Not necessarily a stink but we're not talking wildflowers here.
There are smells, even bounded only by memory, that can lead me down drowsy roads. The smell of the big bakery as I go to work in the middle of the night. The smell of the ocean both good and not so. Pine needles on the trees and deep and old carpeting on the ground. Or the smell of her pillow after she's risen and gone the scent of her hair still pulling and drowsily comforting.
I do not know whether or not it is a healthy thing, this retreat into scents and sights. One of the things about prison, perhaps overlooked, is the narrowing of the world. There isn't enough to keep yourself here. So many guys get in trouble in prison doing stupid crap with no long term benefit. Burning bridges that only leave them worse off over years. A lot of this I think is just to fill time. Boredom.
It's the way some deal with this smaller world we're in. They get in trouble attempting to get something over on someone. Maybe my way is better, at least memory can't get me in trouble?
29 April 2007
It's been a slowish week here in Trenton. One day blurring into the next like they tend to. Perhaps this isn't so unlike most people's lives, with few things happening to separate one day from the others. Another workday, another weekend spent cleaning or grocery shopping.
Been writing a lot of late. Letters mostly. A friend of mine got back from a South American cruise. A whole bunch of countries in a few weeks. A big package of postcards landed on my doorstep. It's getting so that my photo album is more full of postcards than photos. From Argentina to Alaska, it's all in there. Even have some from my home state in there.
Some of them I put on the wall. Periodically they get changed out for variety. Traveling vicariously is about the best I can do at this point. Better than nothing I guess.
Been working on my second letter to my brother in Arizona. Most of the time I have no idea what it is I'm writing about. The fact that I haven't heard back from them since my first letter their way. Not a lot of info either way. "Hey, is this getting to you??" And "Yeah, I got it, how are things?" That about covers the whole conversation so far.
Prison isn't a really interesting subject. Once you cover the basics there really isn't that much to separate one from another as prisons go. Granted these small differences make a huge difference to the guys who live in here, but you sitting there on the outside, what difference would you really see in something like only paperback books or hardbounds allowed?
It's these small differences that dictate our lives in here. Recreation every 3 days or 5, small yards or big ones. I don't think that people for the most part could really appreciate the difference these small things can make when your world is reduced so. Your world out there pretty much puts blinders on your after the whole in prison vs. freedom thing. The small things get lost.
I wonder if it's like that for most people everyday life! The little important details lost to the "big" stuff. But it's those little details that seem to make our lives what they are. Those small details that make our lives ours's. Prisons worst punishment may not be the lack of freedom, but the exclusion of all those personal little events and habits that we've created our lives out of. The exclusions then of ourselves.
So what do I write my brother and my sister in law? What do I write my sons? Perhaps there will be a letter soon with queries to answer. Perhaps until then I simply write them about details small and boring. In the end perhaps that's all most of us have.
6 May 2007
Been reading a lot this last week. Finishing one book, starting and finishing another directly afterwards. And I'm fortunate enough to have a handful more ready to go.
Good times!
Had a conversation this last week that got me thinking. It was all about having a sense of humor and easy going nature, as opposed to those of us who magine everything as so very serious and important. The uptight people of the world, not just inmates, but especially inmates. And from that beginning it somehow translated into the long term living inside: aging, getting along, finding any happiness. But moistly it was about humor and aging.
Things to laugh about are everywhere, even in here. Some of it is ugly and sad, but that's not the kind I was thinking about. It's the gentle humor, the black humor, wry and stupid humor, these are what will keep you afloat in a place like this. And if not necessarily sane, at least less uptight about being half crazy. Well, it works for me anyways.
You could divide prison inmates in any number of categories. Race, age, religion, gang, not in gang, we're used to being categorized, divided, sectioned, assigned, pigeonholed, and once this is done, forgotten. But if you deal with inmates for a while, you will notice a divide that crosses all others and that is this divide of humor. The guys who can easily joke and at least find some small fun and joy, and the o so serious, tough or skitzy nervous ones.
How did aging come in?
Well, for one, maybe the most important people who can laugh seem too age better in here. We're not in medical every other month. There's no obsession over every perceived slight by other inmates or the parties in charge of the prison itself. I think it's probably all the obsessing that's so destructive. Being uptight all the time about things you can't possibly do anything about. Don't know if it's because they're more comfortable as victims or are simply dodgers of those things that they could actually do something about. Take your pick, either way, unhealthy living.
Looking in prison is a lot like a dish under a microscope. You can learn a lot from such small dishes. Heaven knows, scientists have been doing it for years.
Look around you, the people you know, work with, can't you tell who's likely to be happy and around decades from now? Will you? If you were in here, which side of the divide would you be on? Maybe you should gout and get a prescription for humor. Couldn't hurt. Might help. Who knows?
For myself, I'm going to go read some human.
Till next.