I come from an educated politically correct atheist postmodern world. A world consisting of internet superhighways, Sand Hill roads, and multimedia gulches.
THE ART OF DEALING
WHAT WORD CAN I USE TO DESCRIBE MY INCARCERATION TO THE WORLD?
It’s always interesting getting a new ‘fish’ as a cellie because you can sort of see yourself in them and vicariously experience when you first got sent in here, without actually needing to experience it for yourself again. You wouldn’t think you would want to even vicariously do that, considering how surface-level horrible the experience is, but there’s always something appealing about it.
It’s sort of a reminder of how far you’ve come, I suppose.
I come from an educated politically correct atheist postmodern world. A world consisting of internet superhighways, Sand Hill roads, and multimedia gulches. In this App-driven world, the use of perseverance would be greeted with a bemused gaze, like someone confusing a router with a modem or proprietary with open source. This former power word now resides with AOL, COMPAQ, and WordPerfect in some distance inaccessible past.
When he first came in, you could see it on his face. The same look every guy has when they enter into this new world for the first time. It’s an awareness of uncertainty paired with a refusal to accept it.
HOW DO I DESCRIBE PRISON?
I need a new word to fit my existence as a ward of the State of California, serving 7 years 8 months for manslaughter (reduced by more than 500 days of ‘Good Time’ and ‘Milestone’ credits). My new world is the MAIN LINE at San Quentin State Prison. I live among those specters relegated to TV criminal dramas in my prior life — from 1960s Black Power revolutionaries to Hell’s Angles “club members” not to mention the garden variety murders, rapists, and addicts.
The first day is the worst. And then the next several dozens of days after aren’t really that much better. You sort of exist in a weird state of limbo for a while, while you go through the process of denial. Not even just conscious denial, but a natural resistance to your new circumstances.
If you are curious about prison life and the real work that goes on there, read The San Quentin News or listen to Ear Hustle.
WHAT WORD CAN I USE TO DESCRIBE MY INCARCERATION TO THE WORLD?
As my friend Tommy VoMit says about living on the MAIN LINE, “You wake up every morning to a room with over a hundred bitchy sleepy smelly yawning sneezing farting burping talking yelling men.” While this may sound disconcerting on its own, we have twenty-four hours of “safety light” a day filled with flushing, shitting, smoking, peeing, shaving, and OCD hand washing. Why do men have to flush a turbocharger institutional toilet twenty times during a morning dump or prohibited smoke? For that matter, why take five showers a day or feel the need to do laundry at 5:30 am, including “snap-drying” it at sinks and showers?
Look, I understand prison is filled with the most obnoxious self-centered egotistical burnt-out and chronically depressed men you’ll find anywhere outside of a Survivor or Big Brother show. Still, I must endure casual violence, men screaming across the entire cellblock, as well as fifteen future rap stars who should all be locked in the hole with Simon Cowell before they open their out-of-tune mouths again. I seek a way to concisely express my existence here to my former world.
While definitions of words rarely evolve, their popularity can rise or fall with the times. Just as men no longer carry a pocket watch or women a pair of gloves to evidence sophistication, the word “perseverance” has lost its evocative status as a word of power.
“Perseverance” would be perfect if this were a bygone era. The religious once used it to describe the fortitude of the Hebrews as they wandered in the wilderness for forty years until God allowed them to descend on the Canaanites and possess the Promised Land. The industrious used it to describe Thomas Edison’s efforts in searching for a filament that would burn bright and long in the incandescent light bulb and bring the world control over the night. The patriotic used it to describe courageous acts, like George Washington leading his rebel army to survive winter at Valley Forge and ultimately defeat the greatest military of the time, the British Empire. To persevere was an action word and of sufficient concreteness that you could birth a whole new world order upon it.
The world I come from has replaced many power words with phrases intended to confirm membership among the new ruling class. The closest example to perseverance accepted in that world would be the phrase “start-up work ethic.” Its use intended to evoke the image of a recent Harvard dropout starting a tech company in a garage and taking the company public before turning 30, or even turning a profit. What once was the foundation of faith, determination or patriotism is now found in a can of Red Bull and a prescription of Adderall. The modern world is one where words of substance have been replaced by cobbled-together phrases created in some mythic garage.
By both direct observation and participation, I have gained an understanding of the actions which serve as the foundation of the power once called perseverance. That power which allows me to maintain my identity here has a foundation build upon the actions of others. These are some examples:
- A recently single mother of two pre-teens bringing these children to visit their father in prison every month — a place she would never visit on her own, even for him.
- The friend that has served our nation from Kuwait to Kabul and Bosnia to Baghdad — continues to serve her friend with calendars and cards from far off battlefields and barracks always with heart and humor.
- A faithful Irish-Catholic mother of four who writes at least once a week and delivers secret gifts from an incarcerated father to his children hoping against hope he can maintain a connection across the years of separation.
- The man of means who sends stamps and subscribes to a $55 New York Review of Books periodical (absolute best periodical for an educated person)even though the recipient is “only a $29.95 friend.” And offers a spare bedroom in his Nashville home to a convicted felon upon his release, after all, friendship is a rare thing to be protected.
- The God Mother now serving a protective and caregiving role, not for the children entrusted to her but the incarcerated father who selected her.
- A quorum of Presbyterian Deacons still answering the call service with visits, packages, and treasured correspondence.
These acts, however, are exceeded by my observations made over the thousand days I have walked the Main Line where the struggle for survival is not a concept but daily reality. I have seen a mother, approaching eighty, which drives ninety minutes every weekend to seen her incarcerated son — over 600 visits spanning more than a decade. Never faltering, never missing her opportunity to remind her son that he is loved.
Volunteers by the hundreds who freely offer time, attention and resources to the abandoned within these walls; thereby reminding these men that have committed heinous crimes that they still belong to the community and will be welcomed to return to it as reformed citizens. Those incarcerated men that work with volunteers to support, organize and hold tens of AA and NA meetings a week for those seeking to escape the destructive cycle of addiction. In my prior existence, such examples have become so rare, they no longer serve as a foundation for a word of power. I am at a loss to find a word main-stream society would apply to describe the powerful force supported by selfless acts such as these. *If you want to know more, read the San Quentin News or listen to Earhustle.
To be honest, most prisoners pride themselves on being able to endure the preaching, nightmare screams, burnt oysters on toast smells and conversation starters like “I ain’t go’nna use no Obama Care ‘cus ‘da Man ‘ll put a chip in ma’ head.” This is a normal MORNING on the Main Line.
But what word can I use to describe my survival here to the outside world if “perseverance” has lost its power?
Free of the twin distractions of mobility and community, I spent my time pondering deep concepts — one was survival on the Main Line in an infamously famous and brutal prison, San Quentin.
I was able to develop my writing and learned to express myself in the narrative form under the tutelage of Zoe Mallory along with the creative writing students in Zoe Mullery’s class. This group has been meeting for three hours every Wednesday evening at San Quentin State Prison since 1999. If you want to know more, go to https://brothersinpen.wordpress.com/
A version of this story was presented to the class during my incarceration at San Quentin State Prison.
