The author

Read the following excerpt lifted from a letter I received not long ago. 

After you've read it, I'll reveal who wrote it.

The day is all about reading and writing for me here.  That's the things that change in my day:  what I'm doing with my time. Otherwise, the system offers nothing but a routine subsistence of nothingness that grinds one's soul down also to nothingness.  It is beneficial thus to find some reliance also to nothingness.  It is beneficial thus to find some reliance on your mind, your spirit--the Lord--and discover some meaning and purpose for your life.  And there invest your energies, and in so doing you don't spend energy--you cultivate it and it will sustain you when even all that is left is death.  I don't fear death (so much!) but the "death" I do GREATLY fear is a life devoid of purpose, meaning and intention:  I fear waking up and having nowhere to go, to strive toward--no dreams.  I think this is something I have discovered here to generate on my own:  my meaning, my dreams. . .because here these things aren't given.  Peace. . . .

This thoughtful letter came from the hand of a 33-year-old young man who makes his home on death row in a Texas prison.  He has done so for the last 14 years. 

He has become my friend.