Everything continues to go according to plan. Dad and sis coming to finish moving the rest of the big stuff today, and Drew coming over after to paint the apartment. Get rid of these old, stained walls. Or cover them up, at least. Boxes everywhere, a state of disarray, but it is oddly comforting to me. I am restless by nature, and a feeling of transition calms me. It is when I completely settle that I start having problems. But that is another idea, for another time.
Today I will continue going through the journals. Forget Oz. Forget Orange is the new Black. Forget Escape from Alcatraz. Prison is mostly boring. Excitement happens, but it comes in spurts, followed by days and days of monotony.
Wednesday. 7/10/2013. 4:30 am. After breakfast. It is finally hot. Sweaty and sticky. Coffee is almost unbearable, but necessary. Left my radio on all night and killed the battery. I don't know what I will do when I get out of here. I don't want to go back to Bloomington. I don't know if I will be ale to get a job. It is scary. It gets worse every time I get out.
I will try to have a story done and ready to send to PEN contest by Monday. I will probably not be satisfied, but I need to just send one of them and stop screwing around.
Monday. 7/15/2013. He had a wild, gray/black/white thunder cloud of hair. It wasn't long, but he could never keep it together. I don't think he cared. He would wear his boots or his shower shoes to the bathroom, and then come back to his bunk and lay on top of his blanket with them still on. His footwear would have collected dirt, cock hairs, boogers, blood, semen, etc. He would rub his feet together and you could imagine everything from the bathroom floor being deposited onto his blanket. After a while, he would reverse his position and lay his head where his feet just were. He talked to himself, and drew pictures of people being killed. He had one where there was a line of people waiting to get into this huge dryer. The dryer had flames coming out of it. The caption read, "Dryer Rides!". I woke up this morning and his bunk was stripped clean. There were five pairs of indigent shower shoes, the cheap flip flops they give you when you get here, under his bunk.
Tuesday. 7/16/2013. Stressful dreams. Searching for dope. I woke up stressed out and didn't want to get up or go to breakfast. Crazy how that shit still affects me, even when I am not using it. Crazy that I go back to it. What the hell is wrong with me? Going to brush my teeth and go back to work.
Wednesday. 7/17/2013. Afternoon, in class. Hot and sticky in my brown, one piece jumpsuit. In the day room, sweating. Can't hear the video for the Spiritual Literacy class, because the fans are too loud. About twenty-five of us in a semicircle. A hemisphere. Coffee stains, food crumbs, and cock hairs litter the blue-green linoleum floor. Anthony Bourdain on the television behind the television I am supposed to be watching. Meth-heads and crackheads. Heroin junkies like me. Black boys with braids and cornrows. White boys with rubber bands in their beards. Bad tattoos. Everyone trying to get what the video is telling us to get.
Wednesday. 7/24/2013. The fan doesn't hit me and it is hot. People can't hear the video, and they sit around and complain. They installed some new machines in the day room.The machine were actually installed a few months ago,but now they are turned on. Sort of. All you can do is register your name. Supposedly you will be able to send and receive emails (45 cents a pop), and there will even be picture sharing and video conferencing. I wonder how much the half hour video visits will be? Another way to get money out of inmates and their families. Restitution comes in many forms, with many hands held out. I wonder who will be the first to get escorted out in handcuffs for waving their wiener at the screen?
Wednesday. 7/31/2013. There wasn't any soap in the bathroom. Four or five shiny, porcelain sinks. It was clean, someone had just done their civic duty and cleaned. But there was no soap. The blue and white tiles of the floor were beat up, chipped, but clean. There were names and profanities scratched into the paint, but the walls were clean. It smelt clean. Antiseptic. But there was no soap to wash your hands with. The light from the fluorescent lights bounced off the sleek, shiny, mostly white surfaces.The bulbs were bare, exposed, no covers. The light was harsh. I squinted. I wanted to wash my hands with soap, but there was no soap. I had just taken a shit. I felt like I should have soap available to wash my hands in situations like this. I rinsed my hands, and stepped out of the bathroom into the hallway. The hallway was brighter than the bathroom. One of the counselors was in the hallway. Black lady, light skinned. Beautiful. I yelled to her that there was no soap. I yelled that there were people in here with diseases and they couldn't even wash their hands. She held her hand up. "Okay," she said. "Calm down." She turned and walked down the shiny hallway and into her office.
Monday. 8/12/2013. The van stunk. It smelt of body odor, old food, and cigarette smoke. The carpet was gray, matted down from years of abuse. Crumpled McDonald's french fry wrappers and a few fries crispy with age. Two bench seats and eight passengers. Four more passengers on another bench seat behind the front seats. Everything separated by cages. The smell of rotting people and rusting metal and desperate smells made by desperate people. Uncertainty. A nineteen year old Mexican picked up in Charlotte, NC, heading back to Texas to face a double murder charge for a drive-by shooting in Houston. They have the death penalty in Texas, and they aren't afraid to use it. It was super hot in the van and super stinky. Two uniformed drivers and twelve passengers. Chains and handcuffs. Leg shackles. We ate McDonald's three times a day, seven days a week. The good drivers would pass out cigarettes after meals. Park at the back of the parking lot and pass cigarettes through the cage. One cigarette for every two smokers. Share and be nice or no more. What do the families going to their meals think? Towns in the middle of nowhere, but they have a McDonald's off the highway exit. I hope I never smell that shitty van again.
Monday. 8/19/2013. I stop to think about all the wrongs I have done, but I usually don't dwell too long. Sometimes, and it kills me. I know they are serious misdoings, but I feel that if I were to dwell on them would go insane. There is n way to repay all I have done, so the only thing I can do is try to live right from now on.
Tuesday. 8/27/2013. They are poisoning people in Syria. There are babies on the news, naked and crying. They want to kill each other, and now the US will send warships. We will get involved and kill people so we can teach them that killing is wrong. We will force our civilized ways on them using uncivilized brute force.
Tuesday. 9/3/2013. Sometimes I go pee for no reason other than boredom. I tell myself that I really don't have to go, and then I get up and walk to the bathroom, stand in front of the urinal, and dribble a little out.I end up dripping more down my leg, because I strain so hard that when I walk away it will keep coming. Slowly. I piss at least once an hour, maybe more. I should find something else to do with my time, but a routine is a routine, and it is easy to fall into a pattern here, which makes me ask myself this- If it is so easy to fall into a routine doing the things I do to avoid the things I should be doing, how come it isn't as easy to all into a routine of doing the things I should be doing? I devote as much energy, or more, avoiding things than I would expend doing them.
Monday. 9/23/2013. "She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you when young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life." Junot Diaz. From the book, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
7/3/2012. "A man is a reasonable being and is continually in pursuit of happiness, which he hopes to find in the gratification of some passion or affection, he seldom acts or speaks or thinks without a purpose or intention. He still has some object in view; and however improper the means may sometimes be which he chooses for attainment of hie end, he never loses view of an end, nor will he so much as throw away his thoughts or reflections where he hopes not to reap any satisfaction from them." David Hume
The trick I guess, is to focus thoughts, actions, and speech in the right directions. For the right satisfactions.
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