Dear Larry,
It’s one of those sort of days here I experience from time
to time where I feel my soul being slammed repeatedly against the prison walls,
similar to the way a ship moored to a crag with too much slack would be in a
strong stormy gale, threatened to be smashed under.
Today, I discovered prison walls are not made of concrete
alone. Prison walls I found, in the intimate relationship between the pulsating
warmth of life and this cool lifelessness, are constructed of fear. Prison
walls: the physical manifestation of the fears of the prisoners and the prison
administrators.
I’ve always imagined fear as being a hot, trembling, and
excitable thing, so it’s curious that it would reveal itself in this cold,
calm, and indifferent state. But perhaps it’s just the way of the frenzy of
fears. In the prison setting, anxieties crystalize into compressed and fired
clay.
Interestingly, the Creator formed us –prisoner and prison
administration alike – out of clay, but with the creative spirit He breathed
into us, we’ve learned only to shape and bake bricks in the ovens of our minds.
Cooled and stacked high, they become a fortress – one in
which the prisoner views as impenetrable and the prison administrator as to be
defended. Each play their roles obsessively – despite the irrationality: the
prisoner resigns to a life limited by the walls, where even the considerations
of the tearing them down has been utterly banished by thoughts of what the
administration would do; the administration out of fear of breaking with custom and seen as soft on the prisoners
in the distorted and perverse light of the colleagues, also along with the
prisoner, maintains the walls. The result?
Nothing.
Except that a lot of dreams die in prison. I’ve met men here
who, when sent to death row, arrived with the aspiration for self-betterment
intact, and I have watched over the span of years as the prison, which appeared
only poised ready and all too willing, to take every opportunity to grind them
down –beyond the bones of their souls – along the grated edges of these walls,
leaving all prior aspirations, a pile of dust.
I’ve also witnessed prison administrators enthusiastically
enter the criminal justice field and witnessed the zeal for their professed
calling so overwhelmed by the prison culture of degradation and the devaluation
of prisoners’ lives that soon, their once robust sense of humanity is whittled
to an emaciated specter of spite aimed at any prisoner they encounter.
Unwittingly, they begin defending the walls, becoming just as much a prisoner
to the prison as any prisoner here.
These walls are false, I know. And being so, I strive daily
to not allow them to solidify, to become real, because prison can be more than
a place of punishment. These walls can be a haven for healing, reconciliation,
a place where prisoners and the administrators can work together to facilitate
the healing and personal reconstruction process necessary for a truly civil and
deeply humane society.
Some days, like today, it seems that despite all efforts on
my part to bridge the gap between prisoner and prison administrator with peace
and an open willingness to encourage positive change for everyone I encounter
here – the administrators can but muster no more than flinging me against these
walls – over and over… by ordering me, for instance, during lunch time today
while serving a meal to me here in the cell:
“Obie, do you want to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, well, I don’t want to do this, but it’s policy. If
you want to eat, you have to kneel with your back to us and cross your hands
behind your back.”
“Kneel?!”
“Yes, on your knees. It’s policy, and I’m just doing my
job.”
Well, I will go sit and meditate now: tomorrow can only be
better.
-Obie
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