You Paid The Price But It Couldn’t Be Bought: Frog Gravy 58

“Freight trained!”

“Only with a bull it’s worse…”

Before you read this post, take a look at this letter from DOC and bear in mind that I have an eight-year sentence:

Roxi, my sister’s Cocker Spaniel, jail art by Crane-Station on flickr:

McCracken County Jail, after the hole, January 2008

“You have to understand that you’re in jail,” says Garrison, a high-ranking McCracken County Jail officer. Garrison is wearing a crisp, white shirt. His good looks have probably assured him status in all the right cliques, from high school (football I assume) days to the present. Garrison’s soft-spoken, understated manner makes him an effective officer, I think. His demeanor commands wide-spread respect from inmates.

I have requested placement into one of the smaller cells at the back of the jail rather than one of the large overpopulated ‘population’ cells, and cited several psychiatric diagnoses to support the request.

He says, “Now, if you didn’t want to be here you shouldn’t have done all those crimes, I read the charges. This ain’t the Marriott, this is jail, and we don’t make special exceptions for anyone. We provide a safe environment with three meals a day and TV and that’s a lot more than a lot of people have on the streets…”

He is going to place me in a large population cell, and my heart sinks because I am not sure I can handle dueling screaming asylums: one in my head and the other in the environment around my head. The synergistic pitch alone could lead to a violent hemorrhagic event that would leave me bleeding from my eyeballs.

There are many Garrisons out there, who wear white shirts, because they are in the business of pest control. Where to warehouse and entomb the vermin? Where to stash society’s lower companionship? Such decisions.

However, God smiles this day, and guard Sally leads me to Cell 107. What a blessing. My prayers are answered.

I begin writing down everything I see and hear. Most of what follows is verbatim, from my notes, pages 9 through 14.
(Private joke: God divided by zero and got my notes.)

The cell is the size of a tiny garage. The bolted steel door has a hinged metal flap that is opened from the outside. After the steel door closes, I notice that a previous occupant/artist has penned three verbs that make newcomers feel cozy and right at home: “Kill. Fuck. Die.” in no-shank pen block letters. Below that a verb, then an article, then a noun: “Fuck The World.” As I have explained, the artist then outlined the small window in the door with a border to make the window look like a TV, and even added a rabbit-ear antenna. The ‘volume’ knob is labeled “valium,” and the maximum setting is labeled “10 mg.”

Three bullet-proof glass windows face the hallway. The rest is standard fare for a kennel: six people in a four-person tomb sharing one steel toilet; a lingering smell that is typical of jam-packed humans; no view to the outside; so little room that you can only do a few standing-in-place exercises or push ups against the cement wall; fluorescent lighting 24/7; ice cold that re-triggers traumatic arthritis; maniacal laughing and shouting all hours of the day and night; a man screaming, “PLEASE!!! Help Me! Let Me out!! HELPmehelpmehelpmehelpme Help!” all hours of the day and night, with the whole Daliesque, grey cement landscape dotted with focused, albeit narrow, religious pamphlets, bibles and study guides.

photo by jef safi (writing) under creative commons on flickr with the explanation:

slεεp oƒ thε paranoıa-crıtıcıst rhızomε . .

Dream Caused by the Feverish Flight of a Concupiscent Pigeon Around a Daliesque Girona’s place One Second Before the Nightmare of Awakening.

I can hear in my mind, horsemen on the horizon, Ka-ka Kunk, Ka-Ka Kunk, Ka-ka kunk.

I spot an ice water thermos on a cement ledge at the entrance to the toilet. I get a drink of water. I see an M and M bag that seems to have been abandoned. I pick it up, empty out what is left of the M and Ms and eat them.

A while later, Leese is in the toilet and there is an ear-piercing shriek: “Who took my M an Ms!!! Oh my gawwwwwd, my M and Ms, they are gone, they were just here!” Leese is hysterical, on the verge of tears.

“Um,” I begin. “Man, I am so sorry, I ate them. I did not realize they were yours.”

“You fucking old-ass bitch!” she shouts. “They were my makeup! You ate my fucking makeup!”

A round of snickers in the cell.

Color me Scarlet Letter. I am now, officially, the lowest of the lowest of the low and much less. In a record-breaking ten minutes I am close to being voted off of Inmate Island. Another way of putting it, in urban slang: I am going down.

In time, we heal the relationship. I replace her Max Factor M and Ms. One day, Leese hands me a poem she has written. The poem is four pages long. She says, “Here. Put this in your book.”

The poem is titled, You Paid the Price, But it Couldn’t Be Bought.

It reads:

Sick of the darkness, sick of the light
Sick of the day, sick of the night.

Sick of the quiet, sick of the noise
Sick of the games, sick of the toys.

Sick of the shoes, sick of my feet,
Sick of the cold, sick of the heat.

Sick of being happy, sick of being sad,
Sick of doing good, sick of being bad.

As I read, I can feel tears form. The tears are warm. They drop onto the cement. And the poem continues…

Razor Side Of The Balloons: Frog Gravy 57

Rose and heart balloons by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail art: colored pencil, ink and magazine ink.

In the end of The Red Balloon, the balloons all come to the boy, and take him away.

note: Frog gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

KCIW PeWee Valley women’s prison, mid-Spring, 2009.

What beauty! The sky is filled with hot air balloons. A festival of piloted spinnakers with magnificent colors and patterns. A parade in the air!

We are locked down. Because we contaminate the air. Razor wire and balloons will never mix.

There, in the air, are colorful symbols of freedom, of innocence lost, of escape. From maddness and war and inhumanity and pain.

So close I can read the letters, of corporate-sponsored inflated symbols. Symbols of a life I once had but lost. Of failure I can almost retrieve and take back.

I step into the store of my mind and say, “Put this on my insanity tab.”

Comes the reply: “Your credit is good with us.”

I pay and enjoy the ride in the Red Balloon.

The Color Blue

A photograph by digitalART2:

This beautiful photograph is under Creative Commons on flickr: attribution, noncommercial, no derivative works.

The magnificent Hyacinth Macaw is the largest of all parrots. This bird is endangered. From wiki:

The Hyacinth Macaw (Anodorhynchus hyacinthinus), or Hyacinthine Macaw, is a parrot native to central and eastern South America. With a length (from the top of its head to the tip of its long pointed tail) of about 100 cm (3.3 ft) it is longer than any other species of parrot. It is the largest macaw and the largest flying parrot species, though the flightless Kakapo of New Zealand can outweigh it at up to 3.5 kg. While generally easily recognized, it can be confused with the far rarer and smaller Lear’s Macaw. Habitat loss and trapping wild birds for the pet trade has taken a heavy toll on their population in the wild, and as a result the species is classified as Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, and it is protected by its listing on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).

Dichrioc glass wall by cobalt123 on flickr:

Under Creative Commons on flickr.

cobalt123 says:

Century Glass Glow

A glowing corridor, with a dichroic glass wall casting blue light across the polished floor. Always inspiring to see this glow while the family goes to and from Drew’s hospital room when he is in the Neuroscience Tower of St. Joseph’s, in Phoenix, Arizona. If you look at a large view, you will see that the textured glass has the pattern of gigantic Century plants, common in Arizona.

Blue Man Group:
under two minutes.

Blue Poison Dart Frog by Rastoni under creative commons on flickr:

BBC Blue Planet, Blue Whale:

Blue, by Trois Tetes( TT) under creative commons on flickr, with a beautiful poem:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/trois-tetes/303754513/lightbox/

Blue

Blue is the color of night
When the red sun
Disappears from the sky
Raven feathers shiny and black
A touch of blue glistening down her back
We don’t talk about heaven and we don’t talk about hell
We come to depend on one another so damn well
So go to confession whatever gets you through
You can count your blessings I’ll just count on blue

Lucinda Williams

Thanks to Dobak for the raven

Blue Origami Spiral by Mammaoca2008 under creative commons on flickr:

With an explanation:

Blue origami spiral

Since plotters where invented, architects use tracing paper rarely. Tracing paper used to be very expensive and because we needed a lot, when you eventually found a stock at a good price you would buy a lot! That’s what my father did 15 years ago, 14 years ago he bought a plotter…. now we have stocked at the studio rolls and rolls and rolls of unused tracing paper so I’m experimenting how to do something with it. Here’s experiments for a lampshade. Origami spiral with inside IKEA baby night light in green and blue, and a head light bulb (experimenting lightning hats).
Enjoy and try!

Wonderful idea. And on that note, blue lighting, an Anti-Suicide lamp in a Tokyo subway by ykanazawa under creative commons on flickr:

Here is the explanation:

Anti-suicide Lamp in Tokyu Yoga Station

Trains in Tokyo are often delayed by a person jumping in front of a train. More than 30 thousand people commit suicide every year in Japan. The ratio of railroad suicide is not so high. It should be about 1%. But one suicide makes so many trains delay.

Some time in last year, it was reported that a blue lamp on the platform can reduce suicide. The desperate railroad companies were quick to adopt the idea. The picture shows blue lamps installed at the end of a platform in Tokyu Yoga station.

Perhaps we should remove the cause of the suicide. But what can a railroad company do other than installing blue lamps?

Why You Cannot Divide By Zero: Frog Gravy 56

Bone with a bow, hand-drawn copy of caricature by Crane-Station on flickr. Prison art, colored pencil and ink.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley, Winter, 2008-2009.

Wherever you go, there you are, and you just hope that God sets you down someplace and leaves you with a really good story. Kentucky courts bend over backward to help with this.

I love prison. It is helping me to discover who I am and who I am not. I never realized this before, but I really, really enjoy tutoring, particularly in the subject of basic math.

Growing up I had the best of all teaching worlds. My mother is an elderly retired high school Honors English teacher who taught me to write. If there is a better writer in the world than my mother, I would like to see it. Without her, I could not write my way out of a sack. To this day she helps me. My father is an elderly retired chemist and pathologist who ultimately founded a medical laboratory in the Pacific Northwest. He took his training at Emory, and I have yet to meet a more intelligent, methodical and ethical physician of his word. When I was young I often visited him in the basements of hospitals. Ironically, my mother went on later in life to found a center for addicted and incarcerated mothers to obtain treatment and skills needed for transition to a better life, on the outside. The center is in Portland and it is named after her: The Letty Owings Center. Both of my parents are gifted teachers.

I never thought of myself as gifted at anything. But in jail, and particularly in prison, I discover my penchant for teaching.

Tory is a mother of two who never completed the tenth grade. She loves school and wants to sit for her GED. She is enrolled in Algebra and has asked me to help her.

We sit at a table in the crowded, noisy day room of Ridgeview Dormitory, and begin our lessons.

In my mind, however, I am not in prison. I am in a town called Lake Oswego, Oregon, on the deck of my childhood home with my father. He is patiently teaching me math. I learn math in a place that God created called the Willamette Valley, in the shadow of pre-1980 Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams and Mount Hood, and with the Willamette River so close you can hear the water ski boats.

My father demonstrates, in a humorous way, that dividing by zero is not allowed. He starts with allowable math, and then slips in the zero, underneath the dividing line and I fall for it. My father is laughing and I laugh too, because I have been tricked. I will never forget that you cannot divide by zero. I will draw a pastel picture of Mount St. Helens, not knowing its fate.

In prison I try to be my father, but I cannot remember the sequence of equations and letters and lines that he set before me, all those years ago and so, I am a poor imposter.

I say to Tory, “Rest assured. This question will be on a test. Look at the answer choices. If there is ever, anywhere, a zero underneath a dividing line, eliminate the answer choice. Here. Try it on the calculator. Pick any number and divide it by zero.”

Tory punches in some numbers, and the word “error” appears.

“Why is this?” asks Tory.

“It’s just one of those things that is not allowed. You cannot divide something by nothing. You can come close. If you divide something by something small, very close to zero, the number will be very large. But divide by zero and there is no number. There’s not even nothing, because it is just not allowed.”

My explanation is insufficient on its face and I know it. I have insulted my father and I am ashamed.

The lesson continues and I say, “Here is another neat trick. Pick a number. Any number in the world. By the end of this lesson you will be able to multiply and divide any number in the world by ten. You will be able to eliminate some of the answer choices this way. And eliminating multiple choice answers is half the game on a test. The process of elimination will increase the chances that your guess will be right. Are you penalized for guessing on that test? Do you know?”

Tory tells me she will find out.

We continue. I explain how to call an unknown number by the letter ‘x.’ “The object of the game,” I say, “is to get the x onto one side of the equation and get everything else onto the other.”

Turns out Tory is a natural at Algebra. She quickly understands the beginning steps to every problem, no matter how convoluted it looks on paper.

At the end of the lesson, Tory says, “God divided by zero. And he got the universe.”

I begin to wonder if someday, when all of this is behind me, I can return to prison, to teach.

note: Tory was shipped to Otter Creek Prison, just one class shy of sitting for finals and completing her coursework. I received a thank you letter from her. Her spirit was not broken; Even though her schooling had been interrupted and she had to start all over, after she was shipped, she immediately looked for classes to enroll in, at the new location.

The Embarrassing Conversation: Frog Gravy 55

cartoon bird with flowers by Crane-Station (as masonbennu) on flickr.

Frog Gravy is a Kentucky nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley Women’s Penitentiary, my dad’s birthday, 1-7-09.

I finally got glasses. They are not the right strength but they will do for now. After nearly a year in the jails, in the constant fluorescent lighting, my vision, both near and far, is compromised, but with each passing day in the sunlight, my eyes are healing. I am not yet sure what my baseline vision will be.

Since I left the recycle job to attend school, I notice that the cardboard boxes that I used to break down have been piling up and piling up, into a huge mess. Another inmate that I used to work with tells me that the boxes area never looked such a mess when I worked there, and this is true. Not only do I enjoy work, particularly outdoor manual labor, I am also curious. When I worked with the boxes, I wanted to see where each box label came from, and so I always completed the pile of boxes set before me, no matter how large it was.

I mailed quite a few cardboard box labels directly to my family in Seattle for safekeeping, with notes that said things like, “You won’t believe this. This beef comes from Brazil,” and “The commissary handkerchiefs that inmates use in America are made by other inmates in other countries.”

I ask my former boss, Officer Osborne, what happened with the recycle area, and why it is such a mess, and he says, “A little of this. A little of that.” Which means that someone was fired, or sent to cell block (the hole) or both.

I miss seeing Bob, the fat friendly possum. But now I have my birds.

I spend most of my time in school now. Horticulture is a wonderful, diverse and fascinating field. My dream bird-sanctuary-of-all-time has now evolved into an aviary/ornamental horticulture dreamland. Maybe someday my dream life with birds will be fulfilled.

Since Kentucky is footing the bill, I decide to take full advantage of it. I am in school every day from 8 AM to 3:30 PM, and I am taking a wonderful night Biology class. I sign up for mammogram. I visit the eye doctor, the psychiatrist and the dentist. I draw and write. I visit the state-of-the-art gym and do aerobics. I speed-walk the ball field and talk to birds. I attend Sunday mass. I read Mother Goose and Space Books and everything else I get my hands on. I read The Adversary: A Story of Monstrous Deception by Emmanuel Carrere, which is the best true crime book I have ever read; I check out Naeem Murr’s The Boy(from inter-library loan) , which is the most hair-raising, poetic commentary on good and evil I have ever read, and read that twice. I make friends. I play cards.

I do not have to worry about the bills. Life is good. Writing about it is even better.

As I am leaving school one day, I encounter an inmate who is from McCracken County, where I am from. She says, “You’re from McCracken, right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Small world, you know. I took my case to trial and lost.”

“Never take anything to trial in McCracken County,” she says. I have now heard this from many inmates, in various unrelated settings.

“Oh, that,” I say. “Hey, no worries. I love to write, you know, and…”

“So I heard. You’re the inmate that writes.”

“Yeah, and I mean, McCracken is the gift that keeps on giving. Did you hear about the inmate who got pregnant in the shower stall of her own cell? I thought that was effing hilarious.”

“Oh I heard all about it.Uh Huh. That was my husband, that got her pregnant.”

What?!

“Yeah. The guy that was having sex with her in the shower is my husband.”

“Oh my God, I am so sorry, I had no…”

“It’s okay, it’s not you,” she says.

“Man. That’s tough,” I say.

“Yeah, and wanna know the kicker?”

“You mean there’s more?”

“Oh, yeah. I get here, to PeWee, and the bitch finds me. She comes up to me and points to her pregnant belly and says, Your husband fucked me in the shower and now I am carrying his baby.”

In my mind, aside from the image of two people having intercourse in a jail cell shower stall, I collect some sociological data: a husband and a wife and a husband’s girlfriend and an unborn baby, are all locked up. Wow.

“Man, I am so sorry. I did not mean to hurt you even more. What an awful story.”

I feel terrible for saying what I said to this woman. I want to take my words back. I want to disappear.

We speak for a few more minutes and then go our separate ways. I never see the woman again.

Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like without birds.

Bird Lady: Frog Gravy 54

Nikko, our Humane Society rescued African Grey Parrot, by Crane-Station (as masonbennu) on flickr.

Teddy Bear, Bee, Bluebird, Snowflakes. Prison art by Crane-Station on flickr.

note: Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

KCIW PeWee Valley women’s penitentiary, 1-20-09.

The birds know me. The inmates know that the birds know me, and everyone calls me Bird Lady.

As if by unwritten rule, many prison inmates are assigned nicknames; most often the names are apt. Pickles, Bam-Bam, One-Tit, Wheels. You can sort of get an idea where the name came from, if you know the inmate. I suppose fellow inmates changed the gender of the Bird Man of Alcatraz, dropped the Alcatraz part and left it at Bird Lady. At any rate, this is my name at PeWee. Many people will never know my real name. Since I am an ‘older lady’ by prison standards, some of the inmates combine a respectful Southern greeting with the name and call me “Miss Bird Lady.”

The incarceration experience is a bit like being a passenger on a train, in that people enter and exit my life like ghosts. I will learn the most tragic and intimate details of women’s lives, and they will learn mine, but then they are gone, and I will wonder if I imagined the whole thing. The woman whose nineteen-year-old son died in a boating accident and she attended his funeral in shackles. The woman who moved during count and was taken to the hole, where she labored alone and birthed a baby son. The passing parade of women in the overcrowded jail cells, who sometimes spent years warehoused in cement. Lasting impressions. Fleeting.

Over and over I am told to ‘do the time, don’t let the time do you.’ The prison birds, who do not have to be here, help me with this.

Starlings are very smart, and when I come up the path at 5 PM every day I whistle at them. They must know my walk or something, because they come when they see me, but not other inmates. Lately it has been bitter cold. When I come up the path the birds wait on the fence for me. They wait on a stretch of fence topped with coiled razor wire that serves no purpose.

The fence is a wall within the walls of the prison. You can walk around the end of it to get to the other side. The razor wire on top of this non-barrier barrier adds to dramatic effect and reminds me that I am in prison. If the fence could talk it would say, “You are a scumbag. Haha, of course no one would ever dream of climbing over an open-ended fence. I am here to snag the occasional bird, and remind you that you are a scumbag.”

The birds on top of the purposeless yet dramatic non-fence fence say different things to me. They say, “Bitch, look. We are here to show you that you are one of God’s children, but dangit, we’re hungry. Toss us some crumbs and we’ll show you a good time.”

A mockingbird who has graduated to the top of the utility pole gets my attention when he shouts, “Ebert!! EbertEbertEbertEbertEbert. Eeeee-bert!” He launches himself into the air like one of those cliff divers, does a perfect back flip, and returns to his perch. He acts as if this day in prison is the happiest day of his life.

Acting as if. As if life is good. As if all of the world is a perch, to dive from. I have heard that if you suit up and show up for long enough and act as if, that sooner or later your attitude will change, and you will be in the heaven of possibility and not in the hell of your own making. (I heard all of this on the outside, in twelve step meetings. In here, I am unable to attend meetings.) I begin, in earnest, to look for the good in people, and examine the irony that tragic events often bring out the good in people who would likely never mix in any other setting, or at least the sense that such events are an effective leveler.

My birds help me find my own humanity, but at the same time they must eat like everyone else, and so other inmates bring cornbread crumbs and other treats to the central distribution hub: the waistband of my khaki pants.

Starlings work together in a cunning glossy flock. Crows plot and plan and also work together, although they post up separately and communicate. Sparrows are my sweet scavenger; cardinals are the royalty; mockingbirds are the clowns; bluebirds are shy; woodpeckers act like they own the pole.

None of them have to be here, and all of them contradict the message of the fence.

Worth the watch. Nature By Numbers with hat tips to Kelly Canfield and Mary McCurnin:

Taking A Trip, Not Taking A Trip: Frog Gravy 53

Plants That Go bad hilarious video of nature:

Ahem. Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account that contains graphic plants.

I would like to give a shout-out to Miss Heavren, the amazing JCTC Horticulture instructor for her stellar teaching and saint-like patience, as well as her dry sense of humor. One of her sayings remains with me: “Well, in a perfect world…”

This post is for Stan.

Barn. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. colored pencil and magazine ink.

Daffy. Jail art by Crane-Station on flickr. My favorite cartoon character. Colored pencil, ink, magazine ink.

Pine Bluff Dormitory Study Room, KCIW PeWEE Valley Women’s Penitentiary, Summer 2009.

I am in the study room of Pine Bluff Dormitory trying to design a soccer field for one of my Horticulture classes, and my friend Lindsay is helping me.

Lindsay is serving out a sentence of fifteen years and will be released in 2016. She is a delightful woman, full of energy and really smart. Lindsay is an honor inmate who is now a literary braille translator working on maps (this may be called tactile translation) and, since she already completed the Horticulture program and remembers the content of the classes, she is invaluable to me.

I am trying to design a soccer field, which pales in comparison to one of Lindsay’s previous golf course projects, and I am jealous of her, floored really, in the same way that Patrick Bateman is floored when Paul Allen’s business card is shown in the American Psycho business card scene.

Turns out that golf courses involve complicated design and maintenance, particularly the green, but even the fairway, which is why golf course superintendents make a lot of money.

I have chosen a soccer field because I love soccer, and played on two indoor and three outdoor teams in Seattle at one time. Old People’s Soccer is a sport for heathens who dish out a stunning variety of bad behaviors on a nightly basis, and then, the next morning, show up for work and blend in with the passing public. I used to carry an extra ACL knee brace in the trunk of my car, to the brutal coed indoor games, so that someone else could borrow it.

As an aside, I think that Old People’s Softball may be even more brutal than Old People’s Soccer, if that is possible.

I want a grass field because turf makes the game so fast. Lindsay helps me with the drainage design.

After a long stay in Ridgeview Dormitory, I requested the transfer to Pine Bluff Dormitory because Pine Bluff, which houses honor inmates and others serving lengthy sentences, is quieter and softer on the psyche. I miss my roommate from Ridgeview, Miss Pat, and I did not really want to leave her, but I was beginning to slide into depression at Ridgeview just because of the constant chaos.

I do not qualify to apply for honor status because I go up for parole at the end of the summer, but still, being housed with inmates in the honor dorm is much better. The study room we are in, for example, is quiet, and I can concentrate. While I earned A’s in Horticulture ultimately, it is a wonder I did not flunk out of school while I was living in Ridgeview Dormitory.

After we study, Lindsay goes to a bookshelf and retrieves an encyclopedia and opens it to the topic of The Riviera.

She explains to me that she has a male pen pal who is also in prison, and they write each other about all of the wonderful imaginary trips that they take, all over the world, on a regular basis. To take a trip, Lindsay uses the encyclopedia, and writes to her pen pal, the details of the coastline they see, the food they eat, and the side trips they will take.

Lindsay’s imaginary trips make an impression on me because she is so happy when she describes them, as if she is actually in these various beautiful places.

A few days later, I check out from the prison library The Diving Bell And The Butterfly. It is, without a doubt, the most poignant and inspiring memoir I have ever read. Author Jean-Dominique Bauby was working as the editor of the french Elle style magazine, when he suffered a devastating stroke that left him with a rare condition called ‘locked in syndrome,’ where a patient is fully aware and awake but cannot move or talk.

If ever there was a prison, this author was in it. He could communicate only by blinking one eye. A speech pathologist constructed a chart of the French alphabet, in order of the most-used letters first. A communicator would point to the letters as they appeared and Bauby would blink at the letter that he wanted to use, and so, letter by letter he wrote his story.

In his story he takes trips to beautiful places where he tastes his favorite foods, all in his mind, and he is thus freed from his devastating physical incarceration.

After release I obtain my own copy. Lindsay’s imaginary trips and Jean-Domonique Bauby’s memoir will change my view of prison.

That is, there need not be walls to make a prison, and there are no walls in the mind.

The Dictionary, Trick Writing And The Bird: Frog Gravy 47

First, “The death penalty is hella fuckin’ balls-to-the-wall awesome…”:

The religious symbol Wine, Wheat, Sea, Grapes by Crane-Station on flickr. Jail Art: colored pencil, magazine ink and eye shadow. Drawn in Ricky’s World.

Frog Gravy is a nonfiction incarceration account in Kentucky in 2008 and 2009, in jails and in prison, and is reconstructed from my notes.

Inmate names are changed, except for nicknames that do not reveal identity.

Frog Gravy contains graphic language.

McCracken County Jail, Spring, 2008, Cell 107

After some frantic searching in the cell, Ruthie finds the photograph of her mother, who passed away. She finds it, finally, during a trip to the toilet; she had sat on it, and it was stuck to her ass.

Ruthie wants to know if her mother is in heaven, and if she is, will she be sending a signal to Ruthie, like when the lights in the cell flickered this morning. She asks me. I am not an expert in heaven (In fact these days I think I am more an expert in Hell), but I tell her that I believe in a spiritual realm, and I believe we will see our loved ones when we die.

Tina, who takes a literal view of scripture, says, “She’s just asleep, until He comes to judge. You know, like when you go to sleep and…and that’s where your mother is…And the devil will reign for seven years. And, if you don’t have that number, you won’t be able to buy things, or eat things…”

I hear this, and cannot get the words out of my head: And he shall reign forever and ever…For Ever and Ever, Hallelujah, Hallelujah… and I wonder if it is indeed true that Handel wrote the Messiah in, like forty-five minutes during a manic psychotic break. At any rate, the man is a genius, and even though he writes of God’s reign and not the Satan that will be scanning our computer chips for the mark of the beast to see whether or not we can shop at the WalMart In The Sky, the Messiah is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written.

In this cell, in this mixture of madness and sadness that is condensed as though cooked under reflux, I adjust the towel on my head, and continue working on the jailhouse dictionary we are composing. Down the hall, Harry shouts from his isolation cell, “PLEASE! Let me OUT!! Help me! HELPMEhelpmehelpmehelpmehelp.” I am reminded of the acronym GOMER, which means “Get Out Of My Emergency Room,” but if you read House Of God by Samuel Shem, you will know this, of course.

Spork: a jailhouse eating utensil that is a plastic hybrid of fork and spoon.

No-shank pen: a flimsy, short version of the ballpoint that has been rendered useless as a weapon.

Hot on the walk: A very good looking Class D nonviolent male working the hallway, such as the one who, from time to time graces us with a view of his erect penis from the broom closet down the hallway. You have to get on tiptoes and strain a bit to see this, but it’s worth it.

Kentucky taxpayers spend something in the neighborhood of $30,000 per year per non-violent war-on-drugs inmate for us to sit in a cold cell, composing a twisted urban dictionary and gazing at the occasional male specimen of perfection. Kentucky. Fuck yeah.

Christie explains trick writing to me in a bit more detail. Trick writing has afforded her the opportunity to pay restitution to her check-writing victims and obtain canteen supplies that she needs to live, such as shampoo and other hygiene products. I am fascinated, and although I have never trick written myself, I would venture to guess that trick writing alone is a multi-billion dollar industry in this country.

There are a good many men who are interested in contacting and developing correspondence relationships with locked up women. Contrary to popular belief, the men are not always interested in sex, or in sexual letters. They are more interested in having a pen pal. There are many sites on the internet that advertise for prison and jail pen pals. Many relationships are long-lasting, and often, particularly if the female inmate has no viable family ties any more, the pen pals are all she does have. Not infrequently, the pen-pal relationships evolve into long-term relationships and marriages.

Christie’s pen pals come from all over the country: Maine, Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico. A nudist in Indiana (who looks like he came straight out of the movie “Revenge Of The Nerds”, she points out). A marathon runner in Texas. A professor who speaks French and Italian.

We eat lunch: chicken breast, one slice of white bread, carrots, broccoli and vanilla wafers. After lunch I go into the toilet and climb onto the steel sink, and look through the tiny, scratched out slit in the ghosted-out, bullet proof window. There are the dumpsters.

And a bird! Oh my God a bird! What a blessing. I got to see, even if for a fleeting moment, a bird.

And this is the highlight of my day. If God could bring me just one bird to see each day, I will be happier than ever.

What It Is Like To Live In A Community: Frog Gravy 46

Behind the scenes, the Frog Gravy notes. When I say that Frog Gravy is reconstructed from my notes, you may wonder what the notes look like. Here are some of them.

And, in the Spirit of Halloween:

Ghost and bats. Felt tip pen. By Crane-Station on flickr. Prison art.

A while back, I blogged What It Is Like To Live In A Community on Firedoglake/MyFDL. I actually wrote it while I was in prison, but I had no idea where the essay was until today, when I came across it in my notes.

Being in prison is a lot like being a passenger on a train. The community members are transient and so, although you live in one location, you never feel quite grounded as though you are at home. Although I became very close with Christie (who I named after Christie Brinkley) and Tina (who I named after actor Tina Louise), other inmates passed through my strange prison life like ghosts. Just when I would get to know intimate details of someone’s life, she was gone.

I have always been fascinated with groups. Anything more than two people, I think, is enough to formulate a group. I find group dynamics most interesting. In women’s prison, the group is a group of people in nearly constant crisis. Inmates have been separated abruptly from everything that once defined them, and they become a faceless number. A criminal outcast, whose life is forever divided into two parts: the before and the after. This division is sometimes compounded when a family member, a child in particular, dies on the outside. I saw this happen, more than once.

Incarceration is akin to being psychologically raped. I have always been a loner for the most part, and being forced to live with women was like being forced to befriend a group of feral cats. Still, I had hope that the members of the group could recognize their commonality rather than their differences, and work together toward a common goal of redefining the second half of their lives to incorporate the prison experience in a positive, rather than a negative way.

The key, I think, is in forgiveness, and in letting go of resentments. For me, this is a work in progress, or, as they say in the recovery program, “progress not perfection.”

What It Is Like To Live In A Community

A community is like a boat. Everyone must grab an oar and row. Otherwise, the boat just sits in the water.

Some people have oars, but their oars are not quite in the water, so it is really good to help them, to find their oar and get it into the water.

Sometimes half of the people are working really hard, and rowing forward, while the other half is working really hard to row backward, or sideways. In this case, the boat does not go anywhere; it just zigs and zags and circles and sits, attracting attention from other boats in the sea, who look and point and laugh and laugh. So it is really good to try and be sure that everyone rows in the same direction.

Sometimes people get tired and mad, and they throw their oars, so you have to be really careful and duck. Otherwise, an airborne oar could chop your head off, and your head would flop and splat across the deck, and slip and slide and splash into the water, where the hungry sharks are waiting, to tear your head to bits and eat it.

Other times, people may get to fighting over their oars, and they say things like: Your oar is ugly, or Yours has holes and so does your mama, or Well, your mama’s so fat she plays pool with the planets, or You don’t even have an oar, do you, or You do you and I’ll do me, or Who’s the bitch that stole my motherfuckin’ oar.

And then they all start fighting and beating the living crap out of each other with their oars, and throwing each other overboard, where the hungry sharks are waiting, to tear them to bits and eat them.

People might fall in love and forget to row altogether. So they sneak in and out of portholes, and up and down the ladders at the back of the boat all hours of the night, and write notes to each other, and set up meetings. Since no one is really rowing, to speak of, the boat goes nowhere. It just rocks and rocks and rocks, and the hungry sharks laugh and laugh because they know that sooner or later a couple of lovers will fight, as they always do, and someone will get tossed overboard, for the sharks to tear them to bits and eat them.

It is good to have a nautical chart. Otherwise, the boat will get lost, and people will try to jump off and swim, but they don’t stand a chance, because the sharks will tear them to bits and eat them, and stuff themselves, then sink to the bottom of the ocean and sleep.

One day, when everyone is rowing in the same direction and following the chart, the boat will be the envy of all the seas. Other boats will notice that everyone is tan and healthy, and they will never know that there was a time when its occupants were beating the living crap out of each other and turning each other into shark food.

People on the boat will notice a whole new world out there, and they will say, we don’t have to stop at that little piece of land after all, because we can row to the land of our dreams!

Dumpsters With A Message

Dumpsters are so ubiquitous that they are easy to miss. Hidden in plain view, if you will. Since they contain trash, we usually only notice them when they become an eyesore.

Some folks in Alaska, however, came up with the idea of using dumpsters to convey messages that promote health and peace. Here is what they did:

“We worked with the ReCycle Center that had leftover paint people had turned in. They had the paint, and we had the dumpsters. So we coordinated a system with Public Works to use the dumpsters. Anybody could adopt a dumpster. Public Works would go out and pressure-wash them. Folks got paint from the ReCycle Center and went out and painted those things. Then we got three of our biggest vendors in town, our local stores (Alaska Commercial Company, Swansons and ANICA) to donate prizes. The first year, prizes were $400 for first place, $300 for second and $200 for third. We got people who worked in some form of the art field to be our judges, and off it went.

“Public Health Nursing, school groups and even individual youth have won. Kids have adopted dumpsters in their neighborhoods. They’ve painted fireweed and little kids pouring water on the flowers, and a big happy face with teeth. Some of the college students’ work was remarkable. This idea also went to the Western Regional 4-H Leaders Forum in Washington some years ago.
“In rural Alaska, dumpsters serve a huge purpose. The Cooperative Extension Service Bethel District is 55,000 sq. miles. You think of it as pristine Alaska. There’s little worse than coming to a rural community for the first time and seeing garbage on the ground. The Cleanup/Greenup Project and the Adopt-A-Dumpster Contest have helped make a difference.
“You just don’t get it about living in ‘Bush Alaska’ until you come here!”

-Janet Athanas, Bethel Parks & Recreation Department

The creative folks of Alaska have it just about right: Involve everyone from Public Health Nursing to school kids, roll up your sleeves and generate some grant money, make it a contest, and produce something meaningful for the community at large. This must have been a really fun grant-writing experience as well.

I often fantasize about community activism. To me, this is a prime example.

The above video is from Seward, Alaska. If you do not like to look at dumpsters, just focus on the background because Alaska is art, all by itself.

The Healthy People 2010 Bethel Dumpster Art article, showing dumpsters with health messages: