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The Diaries

One year, 2 months & 15 days in -- And if you should wonder ...

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Good evening, everyone. The end of another long week is upon me – Friday night at the house. Usually I would be cycling on the stationery bike right about now, another fifteen miles and another sweaty hour, riding in place. But tonight, writing all of you takes precedence. Earlier today, I had written an update for you, but the computer at Kinko’s corrupted my disk and ate my words. So I get to start over. I’m taking it as a sign that the first draft of this diary entry needed some serious editing.

As I sit here, I can hear a female inmate talking sorrowfully to her young daughter on the phone. She has been here only a short time (maybe a week) and she’s trying to make her daughter feel better about not being able to see her Mom quite yet. “Just hang in there, baby, I’m almost home. You do know I love you, right? I love you very much. I’m working real hard at this, I hope you know that. Don’t be spending your grandparents’ money. Grandpaw isn’t working right now. I’ve gotten a new job so I should be able to slip you and your sister some money real soon. Just hang in there, baby – I’ll be home soon.” It hurts to listen to her – how I wish this Mom was home with her “babies” right now.

Friday nights are like that here at the “house”. Those of us who are stuck here are generally new residents who haven’t been able to earn passes yet, probation and parole violators who can’t earn passes and the few of us sentenced directly here who also cannot leave except for work or church. The house is about two-
thirds empty, guys in the men’s dayroom are watching the first of three Friday night movies (mostly bootleg copies of films still in the theaters), and I’m sitting here at this computer saying “hi” to all of you.

I had planned to make this diary entry about my Days 2 through 5 here in the “house”. I have read my hand-written journal and remembered the fear, the uncertainty, the hyper-vigilance that came with just arriving here, with not knowing this place, with not knowing my place in this place. I will send those days’ remembrance to you soon. But for now, I would rather think about positive things. Like the end of another week, like a nice day in the warm January sun, like another good 12-STEP meeting today with my home group (the Franklin noon group, in the basement of the Methodist church behind the Franklin post office), like
the other pleasant and surprising things that just keep happening. Time to stay positive, to put one foot in front of the other for a few more minutes.

People just keep leaving all around me here. In the “grown men’s dorm”, two have left in the last day. One a very loud-mouthed and self-important repeat resident (who has been here for two separate stints since I’ve been here), who spent the last week reminding all of us that Wednesday night was his last night here. I finally went up to him and suggested that he make this Wednesday night his last “last night” here. That deflated him a bit, but didn’t make him much quieter. (The young Black men here call this older Black man “the Governor”, but they don’t do it out of respect.)

The other resident who left (this morning early) was an older White man from upper west Tennessee, coming out of his sixth trip to prison – this one for 33 months – walking on a cane for having his neck broken while there. Having to deal with the fact that his “baby girl” back home is now a mother, pregnant at 13, raped by a 22 year old neighbor. He told me last night that when the sheriff wondered aloud why his daughter kept saying “I’m glad daddy is in prison”, she said to him “ ’cause Daddy would have killed (the rapist) and his whole damn family and then Daddy would be gone from us for good.” I could tell that even thinking about not being home for his “baby girl” during her pregnancy and young motherhood is still tearing him apart. But he said to me (quietly) that killing the rapist would be too good for him – mutilating him
would be more what his crime called for. (I will spare you the details.) I just hope the rapist has moved out of the state, because this man is too old and infirm to keep dispensing his own crude justice, no matter how warranted.

So now the “grown men’s dorm” is quieter, the overhead lights already turned off (at 7:00 pm), allowing those of us left here to get to sleep early. That is a very good thing, and I look forward to it. But I also look forward to sharing with you some good news, some quite specific and some just a vague foreshadowing (I hope) of a swinging of the cultural pendulum. I need to remind all of you just how much you mean to me and how you have helped me float through this time and place with your good thoughts and prayers as well as your more tangible signs of support. The messages I receive back from many of you when you get these sporadic diary entries is most heartening -- your questions, comments and reflections are almost like conversations in face-to-face real time. And the photographs and miniature paintings, the cards and books you have sent me that fill my locker also fill my life. I often look at and hold a small ceramic owl left for me early on at the Turnip Truck by a special one among you, wrapped in a soft embroidered cloth in a gold-threaded bag. And the pictures of young people you have sent – kinfolk and others – who are growing
up fast while I tread water here are also close, as near as the inside of my locker door.

Then there are the flesh-and-blood encounters with some of you that recharge my batteries. The random encounters with you on Nashville streets, the pre-meeting smiles and the end-of-meeting hand-holding prayers at 12-STEP meetings, the phone messages on my farm’s answering machine that remind me of your voices – it is all so good (so very good) to have. And the certain something that is in the air these days – the more frequent kindnesses that I am witnessing between strangers, holding doors for each other, making space in traffic lines, random smiles – remind me that we are all in this together. I have started commenting
on these more abundant drive-by kindnesses whenever I see them, thanking people for what they do for me and for all the others around them. I hope that by paying homage to their selfless acts when I see them displayed, I will, in some way, help them multiply.

This air of thankfulness is such a safe and calming breath to take. And to give. Something good can come from almost everything, at least these days. For example, after my last diary entry, a number of you asked to read the remembrance of the sweet five day visit by my last ex-wife, Diana, a year before I entered the “house”. Several of you wrote back with your questions and reflections, and asked how Diana was doing today. Having not spoken with her since she left the last time (in November of 2004 – lord, has it been that
long?), I got online to try to track her down and check in with her. But (once again) she had disappeared from the face of the earth (and the folders of Google). So instead I found the phone number for her Dad and step-mother in northern California and called them.

I had not spoken with either of them for twenty years and I used the call mainly to thank them for introducing me to 12-STEP, even though it would take another seven years from that introduction for the program to stick to me and seep into me. But because of what they had started, I will get to pick up a 13 year chip at my home group next Friday (February 2). Not much else could make me happier these days, and that made them so proud.

The news about Diana was not encouraging. She had been in hiding with her current beau almost from the time she left my farm over two years ago because he had defrauded many people, some of whom had come looking for him. Her Dad was worried about her and thought that maybe my calling her would help in some
way. So I took her cell-phone number and placed three calls to her, leaving messages thanking her also for her role in my finally getting sober. After the third call, I got a message back from her, and it was good to hear her voice on my answering machine. Her life is still a whirlwind, but the conditions of my own serenity preclude my getting more involved. I can’t do much for her from inside this “house” and besides, I must accept the things I cannot change. She has my heartfelt thanks. Right now, some hard-earned wisdom says that that is enough.

Besides, the sharing of our caring and accommodation with those of you who were interested in reading the Diana remembrance brought other pleasant things into my life. One of you, a new and as-yet unseen friend, used the remembrance to stimulate a trip down the Natchez Trace with a friend of hers, to look at my land from that meandering highway (built on the Indian nations’ “path of peace”). She wrote me to say that she had seen the small log cabin I had built with friends through the fog on the ridge from the Trace, had imagined the land as I walked on it, looked forward someday soon to walking on it with me and with
many of you. That was such a nice gift.

Another of you, also a faithful (but as yet unmet) respondent who lives in Colorado, had sent back many questions about the Diana remembrance but had concluded with a beautiful picture of herself and her husband, smiling in front of this year’s Christmas tree, so that I could put faces with the words and the
warm feelings of concern and caring that she has been sending my way for some time now. And she sent a long passage from a book written by Paul Simon (Das Energi) when he was a young man of 27, talking about coming to that moment when we realize that we are exactly where we should be, and always have been. He was right then, and he still is. Here are those words, sent to me as a singular act of kindness by a caring Colorado woman and now sent to all of you, multiplying the ripples from her gift and magnifying its positive effect:

“Sooner or later a person begins to notice that everything that happens to him is perfect, relates directly to who he is, had to happen, was meant to happen, plays its little role in fulfilling his destiny.

“When he encounters difficulty, it no longer occurs to him to complain—he has learned to expect nothing, has learned that loss and frustration are a part of life, and come at their proper time—instead he asks himself, why is this happening? …by which he means, what can I learn from this, how will it strengthen me, make me more aware? He lets himself be strengthened, lets himself grow, just as he lets himself relax and enjoy (and grow) when life is gentle to him.

“Strengthened by this simple notion, simple awareness, that life is perfect, that all things come at the proper moment and that he is always the perfect person for the situation he finds himself in, a person begins to feel more and more in tune with his inner nature, begins to find it easier and easier to do what he knows is right. All chance events appear to him to be intended; all intentional actions he clearly perceives as part of the workings of Chance. Anxiety seldom troubles him; he knows his death will come at its proper moment; he knows his actions are right and therefore whatever comes to pass as a result of them will be what is meant to happen. When he does feel anxiety, he realizes it is because of that thing he’s been meaning to do but hasn’t done, some unfulfilled relationship he’s been aware of, but… He perceives the anxiety as a message that he’ll have to stop hesitating if he wants to stay high… He knows that he is out of tune because he’s let himself get out of tune; and because he knows he can, he begins to take action. He enjoys his high life; does not enjoy anxiety; so he stops hesitating and does what he has to do.

“He does not live in a state of bliss, though perhaps he feels himself moving toward one—or toward something, he doesn’t know what it is but it is the way he has to go, the journey towards it is the only life he enjoys. It is hard; it is exciting; it is satisfying, lonely, joyous, frustrating, puzzling, enlightening, real; it is his life, that’s all. He accepts it.

“Sooner or later a person begins to notice….”

Being fully aware of where we are, and accepting that it is where we should be (where we can do the most good) is such a comfort. And I keep seeing examples of it in my life. For the past two days, the “house” has been in the middle of a site visit by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials for the Southeastern region. As part of their visit, they set aside most of day two to hear from inmates here. One after another, my dormies went before them with their own concerns and unmet needs. Several people asked me if I was going to ask for my time also, but I said that I didn’t think I had anything to say that would change much, here or for me. But then, at the last minute, I realized that I was wrong. And so I became the last person on their list.

When I went before them, they started with a list of things that they thought I was there to speak with them about. But I interrupted and said that I wasn’t there to speak about me, but about how the BOP in general, and this “house” in particular, could be more supportive and encouraging of recovery from substance abuse by the people who cycle through here. It was a good discussion – they listened to my suggestions, I listened to their concerns. In the end, they agreed that there were some specific changes that could be made to make 12-STEP more accessible to the people who come here. And they said that they would
act to see that those changes take place.

As I got up to leave, feeling good for having gotten (and used) this rare opportunity to be heard by this federal system, to help people who are here with me who want to change (who want never to come back to this place or the places that precede this place), the BOP officials asked me to sit back down. They said that several of the other inmates who had spoken to them that day had mentioned my situation (not being able to earn and receive passes to go home) and had mentioned me by name. They said that this was another policy that needed to be changed and that they would work to set up a way that folks like me could go home before our release time comes. I am still smiling about that possibility, though I am also still breathing slowly, in and out. Who knows what might come of that brief glimpse of the possible, but the knowledge that something might be possible that previously was not means so much to me tonight, here in this “house” that is not my home. Should those passes come about, I will let you folks know and I will once again build three fires, but the next time for all of us to share. I am thankful, and all of you are a big part of the world that keeps my fires burning at this moment.

Maybe that is the best way to end this message, by giving thanks to all of you once again. I had the pleasure of writing a birthday poem for one of you recently, a poem that speaks to the special place that this one holds in her world and in the lives of all who love her. After giving her the poem, I realized that the last two stanzas reflect not only on my feelings for her, but how I feel about the goodness in all of you that has expressed itself in my life and in all the lives that each of you touch each day. Keep on doing that, and we can ride out whatever is next -- whatever is meant to be – together, with smiles on our faces and in our hearts.

“… And if you should wonder
What awaits you from here,
Take my word for it, darlin’,
At this moment, it’s clear

Our lives can be borne
By kind people who care
Who are deep as the ocean
And softer than air.”

Until next time, take care, of yourself, of each other and of everyone you come in contact with. And don’t worry about leaving the light on for me – I can find you in the quiet darkness by the soft, warm glow reflected from your heart.

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