“I would like to introduce myself to you, but first I wish to greet you by saying: I hope that you’re having a most wonderful day and that you are enjoying all of the many splendid things that maybe found in your daily life.”
I read those words by the most odd circumstances. Those are the words of an incarcerated man who posted his experiences on the internet. Putting them in his context does make one think. As I sit here content to surround myself with myself in my apartment and not go out in the sunshine, that does give me pause.
I hadn’t heard of him or the website he posted it on before a different convict mailed someone (I wasn’t the intended recipient) a letter pleading his case to anyone who would listen and I read it. Certain that I can do next to nothing about their plight, but curious as to what makes a man end up in jail exactly, I peeked in and read through a number of personals ads of convicts, all of them hoping someone will read their few paragraphs and send them mail. So many of them were categorical, so many in the same predicament, for the same reasons. There almost seemed to me a type of mind that is destined to fall into prison, after reading them all.
HUH?: There were the large plain witted ones, most with simple, simple needs, and simpler desires. Early-age misdirection and lack of guidance seemed to fit the picture on many of those. What nice next door neighbors might they have turned out to be had they had what they needed way back when?
I AM IT: Some were proud, into themselves, ubermaterialist, so macho, showing even in their ads they still wanted the fast and reckless and highroller lifestyle. They seemed so obviously a catch of their own webs. They were often young.
NOT ME: Some lay blame, over and over and over at every point, claiming victim forever. They tell story upon story, but the more you listen, the most bizarre sounding fabrications appear. They may never have been truthful. I feel most sorry for them, because they are wasting time not taking responsibility for their own, often warranted and serious, inner fears that make them dishonest. Their own lies have locked them in, and they will not look at them.
KINGPIN: Some considered themselves business men: they were interesting. Smart men, but with a lack of ethics that led them wherever the money smelled greenest. Some of them will never be given the chance to get out again. In light of the white collar crooks who walk free, file bankruptcy and start over, where millions were stolen, their situations still seem oddly inappropriate. But they are by their wits, most dangerous, so we say, as a society.
AMEN!: Many were repentant ex-sinners on the Jesus wagon. I do wonder how long they would feel so strong with that, once out of captivity. How will they deal with temptation after it’s been removed from their life for so long?
AGGRESSOR: Then there were the ones who either planned it, or just lost it — but they went AFTER someone. Aggravated assault — I can’t tell you how many many were in for that. Who gave them the idea that when you get to a certain point, you can just attack with a weapon? TV? Football? Video games? Their brothers? Their gangs might well be much of it. If you grow up in a place where you’ve nothing to lose, how much closer are you to thinking this is a logical step? If you grow up in dog-eat-dog land with no man who shows you what manhood and restraint have to do with each other, how do you just referee yourself?
LOST: The saddest are those who were too young and too weak and succumbed to pressure or drugs and have the most to lose. They sound in print like a stray dog looks as it skitters sideways across a street, looking anxiously unclear about where home is, or whether they will ever find it again. If they are let out, they are the ones that are in the highest wind, and are the driest leaves.
HOPEFULS: Some had everything, full lives, with wife and children and homes, or even next to nothing, but now they know it; they know what they lost. They have a grounded intention that makes you sure they’ll be leaving their cell and never returning. I truly hope that the one who wrote the words up top is one of them.
THOREAU WAS RIGHT:
I sometimes think there is no me that relates to this social world more than the one that writes, which I do at home, sequestered, alone, and feeling supremely alone inside, and very much unable to do more to get myself out. Even as a kid I had to push myself to even put money in the hand of a cashier. It was …. uncomfortable. It has always been.
When I haul myself out, it’s work, it’s ACT-ing, it’s difficult, it’s stress and anxiety and being ready for god knows what because the world feels like it’s falling in on me, and getting out of bed is an effort, every damn day. I am not me there. I am in someone else’s idea of clothes, I am in someone else’s idea of appropriate thoughts, I am in someone else’s opinion of myself as a lesser person than them, I am someone just as entrapped, warped, and molded. It’s not a physical game, but it’s there. It’s really there.
Why not change it if I view it this way? I am a criminal of greed and need perhaps, because it is, it really IS only the money. How close I am to those guys. It’s just a different berth.
When I was singing I went to perform at a lock-up facility for juveniles, a long time ago. At that time, I thanked my lucky stars that I was not in that place ( I was not far from their age then), because it would be BEING WITH THEM that would be my punishment. They were not bad people, but they were very emotionally out of control. I could not have withstood out of control people, because for me, the in-control people were hard enough to endure. And I knew that even then.
After I read these prison ads, and felt so fully their testosterone view of life, I was feeling half-guilty — my own freedom so unvalued at times. But to them I could say: you have your minds. You have no one in your head now but you. You do have what I don’t: eight more hours a day where you can think clearly for yourself, rather than at someone’s constant beck and call. So I feel like we’re even in a sense. In that one sense.
But I am thankful for these words up there, and I will take his advice. I plan to change this day a bit. And perhaps, more later.
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I tend to think of the staving Koreans.
I kid of course. This blog came at the perfect time. I was feeling… lonely
Better now!