Breakfast Line

Queued up for breakfast in the dining hall, it seems to be a mostly ordinary morning. Shouting is at a minimum, since much of the population's still waking up. The smell of this afternoon's lunch—fish patties—has yet to permeate the place. The only real negative is that, directly behind me in line, a frustrated soul won't stop ranting about how his elderly cellmate pissed all over his freshly cleaned floor.

"It wouldn't even bother me so much, but when I mentioned it he just waved me off and said, 'Eh, it'll be okay.' No, it won't! It won't be okay! I have to clean it up!"

This is what I get for asking about his morning. Ahead of me, our mutual acquaintance half turns and rolls his eyes. The line hasn't moved in several minutes, which isn't unusual, really. Anyone who transfers here from another prison will tell you that the chow hall at ERDCC serves more slowly than any other institution in the state. The joke is that the servers are too "deuced out" on K2 to do anything. It's not a joke at all, actually.

"Just sit down! For Christ's sake, if you know you have prostate issues, don't stand to piss!"

Up ahead of us, another person takes a tray from the window, and the line immediately stalls again. Have the prison's biscuits and gravy ever been good enough to warrant this level of discomfort? I venture to think not, then check my privilege. At least you're getting fed, Byron.

"So I ask him, right? I ask him why he didn't just sit down, instead of just spraying and dribbling over half the cell, and you know what he says to me? You know what he says?"

I shake my head, my face expressing what I hope is a kind of nonchalant half-interest. I don't want to encourage this, but I don't want to abruptly shut him down, either. The line continues not to move.

"He says, 'I didn't want to pull down my pants in front of everybody.' I was like, 'The cell door was closed! There was nobody around!"

People behind him quietly snicker at his tirade, and while I've not quite reached a point of being ready to bail on this breakfast venture, I'm definitely wishing the servers would get their shit together and resume pushing trays.

And just as this uncharitable thought about the kitchen workers develops—wonder of wonders!—the line's moving again.

"He just expected me to wipe it up like a water spill. I'm like, 'And let it start stinking? No way! I'm gonna get down there and bleach the whole area all over again!' The dude's gotta be senile, or else he was born before germ theory existed."

Baby steps nudge us closer to the window. At least we're around the corner now—the home stretch, with fewer than ten people in front of us.

The guard posted a few feet ahead commits to his vacuous stare as not just one but three line jumpers retard everyone's progress. It's like landing on one of those disappointing spaces in an even more disappointing board game: "INCUR DISRESPECT! Go back three spaces." I let loose a sigh.

"I should tell the case manager he's incontinent and get him moved to the ECU. I don't know how many more pools of piss I can stand to clean up."

Here comes my food, at last. I take the lip of the brown plastic tray and see that something's missing. A quick inventory tells me there's no gravy, jelly, nor butter. All I have is corn flakes, a box of raisins, two dry biscuits, and a half pint of milk. If breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day, this bodes ill for my afternoon.

At least I can get away from the barrage of bitching. Holding my tray in one hand, I pivot and assume escape velocity, course set toward an outlying table. Behind me, still at the window, I hear the complaints change tack.

"Hey, what's up with my gravy?" he yells into the window. "Are you guys too high to work the ladle anymore?"

The New Guy (It's Me)

Just as I open the book to resume my reading on the history of Zen, the housing unit's intercom squelches. Sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, guards' announcements on the wing's loudspeaker are often an object of interpretation, but this time I understand perfectly: "Case, bravo one-thirteen, come to the sally port." I set down the book and walk to the housing unit's control module. "Stay right here," says the guard. "Your boss is coming to pick you up."

He means my new boss, over in the Reentry Center. Today is my first day at the job. The Zen book can wait.

I interviewed for a position at the new facility a couple of weeks ago. The pair in charge—Department of Rehabilitative Services employees—wanted a technologically-adept all-rounder, someone who could help prisoners log in and navigate the computerized career resource system, assist with people's résumé preparation, offer tech support for visiting corporate partners who bring video or PowerPoint presentations, do interview coaching, track client attendance, and maybe even facilitate a class or two. "Sounds great," I told them. I didn't even care that it meant giving up nearly $100 a month for a position that won't pay a dime. That same afternoon, I gave my coworkers and boss two weeks' notice. My last day was Monday.

Had the Reentry Center not opened last month, I doubt I would've so easily abandoned my position as XSTREAM's team lead. Instead, I'd probably have continued gritting my teeth through stressful projects, losing sleep over toxic coworker conflicts, and wringing my hands over how to fit personal responsibilities into a day crowded by business tasks—all of the stuff I wrote about in my previous pariahblog.com entry. Options are nice, even when those options are theoretical.

The Department of Corrections boasted that Missouri had opened a Reentry Center in each of its prisons last year; however, the truth of this announcement depends on how you define the word "open." The Reentry Center here at ERDCC didn't even have furniture when that publicity notice went out. (The DOC isn't often dissuaded by tetchy details.) Shortly after that, I heard whispers that a clerk position was available there. One of the inmate carpenters who'd worked on its construction discretely asked if I knew of anyone "reliable." (That's basically prison code for "not a druggie, a thief, or a piece of shit.") At the time, I said no and moved on. But his question planted a seed.

Now here I am, walking across the yard with my two new bosses, feeling my excitement grow as we approach the gate to the "reception and diagnostic" half of the prison. R&D is where new and returning prisoners are processed before it's determined where they belong. Some of the people who come through are on 120-day "shock" time and will be out in months; some are at the beginning of life sentences and will die in prison. Because of the possible disparity between our custody levels, I can't walk unescorted across this yard. Hence, this commute by necessity involves my bosses.

"We've got a plan for you," says one. Just a few years ago, he was a likeable captain working for the DOC. Now he's a likeable civilian. I appreciate the offhanded way he refers to a plan; it sounds like a deliberate downplaying of thrilling possibility.

"I want you to learn the Chromeboxes inside-out," he went on. "Then we'll run you through the VR simulations."

It all has the tinge of dialogue from an early William Gibson novel. Then his female counterpart, a former case manager, cuts in. She brings us back to the present, saying, "After that, I've got some spreadsheets I need made up. I found an extra keyboard, monitor, mouse, and standalone computer. We'll get you set up on that soon."

All this novelty! I always get a flush of uncertainty with the new: Is this really what I wanted? Of course, in this case it very much is.

We pull the first door and step onto gray vinyl extruded to look like artfully distressed floorboards. Foot-tall adhesive black vinyl letters that I cut and applied to this wall last month welcome us.

About $150,000 went into converting the former 11-House into the space that it is today. The open dorms are long gone, having been pulled out in favor of erecting light gray walls. The doors are white. Most of the trim is black. Colorful prints and framed Successories liven up the walls of the Reentry Center's six classrooms and two meeting areas. Wi-Fi antennas and rows of CAT-6 wall outlets demonstrate the building's potential. In one room—the room in which I'll be spending most of my work hours—a row of desktop workstations boasts career resources for anyone nearing release, who requests access to them.

"It smells like oranges in here," I say. The guard, whose post used to be the visiting room, smiles and says, "I just ate one."

"Byron is going to be working with us here, Monday through Friday," my boss explains across her elevated desk, where the former housing unit's control panel used to be. "He'll be staying through, most counts, but taking off for his religious service on Fridays, and for visits, whenever those come up."

"Well," she says, still smiling pleasantly, "welcome aboard, Byron."

It's all so convivial, so... normal. I experience a moment of uncertainty about what to do with my hands. That feeling vanishes once I'm set at a computer and instructed to learn the material backward and forward.

Five hours later, I'm halfway through module one of three—a point that users don't usually reach until their second month.

"I think you'll do pretty well up here," says the boss as he leads me back across the yard. "See you tomorrow."

I can hardly wait.

Resignation/Resuscitation

You wouldn't think that a prison job could keep a person busy enough to induce burnout, but that's exactly what happened in my leadership role at XSTREAM.

Exhaustion, anxiety, distracted thoughts, and occasional testiness over the past six or seven months tipped me off that I was feeling more stress than was healthy. The hours kept me away from my cell for a minimum of seven (as many as fourteen) hours a day, seven days a week, which you'd think would be nice, considering the environment. It wasn't. Stress gnawed at me, even on the good days, sometimes feeling as if I was being eaten from the inside.

The other members of my team relished those long days at their desks. They'd rather stay at work, typing actor names into the database, than be around their cellmates. I never shared the aversion. Either I value my free time too much or my cellmate of the past two years, Bob, is just more tolerable than most people here. Many were the nights that I left work "early" (i.e., before the building closed at 8:30 PM) because I was just plain beat. My colleagues usually stuck around—I guess because the poor bastards don't have lives of their own.

I gathered Team XSTREAM together last Friday to lay it all out. Not wanting to mince words, I concluded my little monologue: "I don't want to work here anymore." Everyone suggested that I simply take a month or two off, clear my head. That wouldn't work, though. The on-the-job issues I'd been struggling with would still be there, whether I left for one month or for six. There was no fixing this. Still, I thanked them for their kind support.

What made me nervous was approaching our boss, the Recreation Director, about my intention to quit. I didn't want to have to justify my decision and decline a bunch of offers to make changes to the workplace, my schedule, or the workload. I'd reviewed possibilities in my head all weekend, and none of them were quite good enough to compel me to stay. I was resolute.

When the boss came in on Monday morning, I asked when might be a good time for us to have a serious conversation. We sat down in his office a bit later and I explained how I'd been feeling, the conversation my coworkers and I had, their idea for a remedy, and all the reasons that I doubted it could work. To my utter amazement, he shook his head and said, "You're preaching to the choir. I wish I had the option you've got here. I've still got two years before I can retire. I'm burning the candle at both ends." He gave me his blessing to do whatever was best for me.

I thanked him, then made my ask: "Can I count on you for a recommendation, whatever I move on to?" I had planned to put in for a clerk position rumored to be available at ERDCC's Reentry Center, a newly opened facility at the prison, where people within one year of release can request help with job-hunting skills, work on their résumés, and even get vocational training. XSTREAM made a lot of signs, labels, and decorations adding to the building's slick, professional appearance, not to mention video-recorded their big open house event a couple of weeks ago. I hoped that our work would afford me a leg up in the application process.

Within an hour of my request, my boss called the Reentry Center and put in a good word on my behalf. They offered me the job without hesitation, no questions asked. I didn't even have to formally apply. (Of course, even after changing employers, I'll still host TV shows for XSTREAM. The team wouldn't let me get away from them entirely.)

I'm supposed to report to the Reentry Center sometime at the end of this week, to talk about the job and my options there. It sounds a little like I'll get to create my own position, with the possibility of even facilitating classes or programs myself. I love the idea of working face-to-face with people who want to use this time to make more of their lives! This feels in some ways like a major shift; in others, it feels like the most natural transition ever.

My last day at XSTREAM is a week and a half away. This probably won't surprise you, but I'm already sleeping better.

Equanimity or Bust

There's no romance in equanimity. The quality of being at ease with whatever comes one's way seems to be in opposition to our desire for excitement and drama. We want passion, conflict, and speed, almost as much in our lives as we want them in movies and on TV.

A writer once mused that it was impossible to compose a story about a happy man, because plot can't co-exist with contentment. He contended that a satisfied protagonist doesn't yearn, fight, or strive; therefore, anything you write about him will be just a tedious anecdote. Story needs movement. Equanimity, on the other hand, is stillness.

Much of our lives consist of struggle. If you're reading this, you have Internet access and leisure time. You're also privileged to have (here I make assumptions) easy access to clean water, adequate food, and a place to call home. Unless you live in a war zone, you probably have no dire existential concerns. Your day-to-day might even afford time for music and art. If so, lucky you.

The wealthy have all of their basic needs met. They don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. They don't need to fear (depending on how they got their wealth) being murdered in their sleep. They can easily afford clothes appropriate to the season. They are also, according to studies, generally dissatisfied. Without existential struggles, significant friction, and narrative interest to contend with, they get bored. Money can't buy happiness, as someone once said, but it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.

It's arguably easier to be equanimous in the absence of excessive difficulty. Study after study shows us that a person regularly faced with moderately difficult challenges will report being happier than somebody living a life of ease. I would argue that this is exactly the thing that the pampered Prince Siddhartha Gautama felt, gazing beyond the walls of his family's palace, before he ventured out on the quest that led him to become the Buddha, an icon of equanimity.

I understand why it's said that following the Eightfold Noble Path—practicing Buddhism, that is—constitutes a different way of being in the world. It changes your life, reveals the impossibility of an independent self in a universe structured upon interconnectivity.

This concept, no-self, is tricky but perhaps best illustrated with the koan "What was your face before your parents were born?" Everything we think we are depends on the existence of everything else. In a world without our mother and father, where can we be said to exist? Our existence depends on them, and on so much else. How much can be taken away from who we believe we are before we aren't us anymore? Are we our designer wardrobe? Our love of 1950s sci-fi movies? Our award-winning hot sauce recipe? Our career as a hospice nurse?

Meditation is the study of the self. To study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to become one with the universe. I'm no Zen master, but I feel a teensy iota of this oneness when I sit in meditation. It's a little scary. How does one avoid the pitfall—which I can only imagine exists—of slipping not just into a state of nonidentification but of nonidentity? It's one thing to forget the self; it's another to be subsumed by a conception (however misguided) of selflessness. Maybe this is where a teacher comes in handy, but I don't have that luxury where I am.

Sometimes I see myself, in my meditation, seated at the precipice of a great void. Leaning forward, I'll tumble into nothingness, into an inconceivably vast absence of concepts or observable phenomena, wherein I'll know only stillness and imperturbability. Leaning backward, I'll tumble to meet the irrefutably solid ground of a phenomenological reality, a consciousness stuck in this gradually declining meat-machine that I call my body. Neither option feels comfortable, yet maintaining equipoise takes so much effort.

I don't want to become one of those frustratingly chill bodhisattva stereotypes, seemingly indifferent to everything going on around him and, in a word, boring as shit. Nor do I want to keep going through this life with the same hangups, limited perspectives, and stressors that have for so long defined who I am. Yet I wouldn't be practicing if I didn't welcome a change.

These are just the worries of someone who's unsure but trying, the expression of thoughts by someone walking a road he can't see. I guess that's everyone, though. I'm nothing special, just one projection of the steady breath and beating heart of the universe.