Overcoming a Service Outage

Ripples from my friend Luke's disappearance, in October of 2023, spread far and wide. Gains and losses were to be had in equal number (even though I'd much prefer if he'd stuck around). Most notable among the changes: I inherited his position at the head of operations at XSTREAM but lost the weekly religious service that I had benefitted so greatly from.

The Department of Corrections requires all accommodated religious groups to maintain a certain attendance level. The minimum is five attendees per week. If the number of people drops below that for more than a month, the service will be suspended for ninety days and undergo a review. After we lost several guys to transfer, losing Luke brought our Buddhist service down to four. I tracked down everyone whose DOC file might list Buddhism as their religious preference. (This was somewhat easier than it sounds.) To those I could find, I extended an invitation to join our service—to no avail. We were suspended and ultimately put on inactive status.

After expending no insignificant effort over the past year, I'm delighted to say that Buddhist services are scheduled to pick back up this week. All it took was a seven-month search for Buddhists, a questioning about their level of commitment to the practice, a plea for them to sign a form claiming interest in attending services, then a long wait for the paperwork to grind its way through the gears of bureaucracy.

It was touch-and-go for a while. "No commitment necessary," I stressed to the guys whose signatures I sought. "Just give me a signature and I'll work out the rest." But the fact is, even if I collected enough signatures, I wasn't sure we'd actually meet the attendance criteria. Anyone can sign their name to a sheet of paper. That doesn't mean they'll show up to sit on a cushion every seven days with a group of strangers. I was nervous. Might my efforts be in vain?

What amazes me is how circumstances (or, if you prefer, karma) conspired to make my aspirations a reality. The Buddhists had previously met on Thursday mornings. When the chapel switched our scheduled time with that of another group, we started meeting in the afternoons, a time that two attendees couldn't make jibe with their schedules. We lost them, as a result. I only got them to sign back up as a favor; I needed signatures, dammit! Then the chaplain announced that our previous meeting space was already booked throughout the week. He'd have to talk with the Institutional Activities Coordinator and get back to me.

"How would you feel about Thursday mornings, through the midday count?" the chaplain asked. My wheels immediately started spinning. Thursday mornings were still prohibitive for those two guys on my list—but if the chaplain could offer us Thursdays through count time, couldn't he just as easily offer us the same time on Fridays? "Let me confer with the IAC," he said, "and maybe we can make that happen."

And just like that, I've stepped into Luke's shoes in another area, becoming the designated service representative for ERDCC's newly revived Buddhist community. The chaplain appointed me to the role last week when he cleared our group for Friday morning services, during count, a time that should work for more than the minimum number of us to attend. That feels like a big win.

As for becoming the Designated Service Representative, I have mixed feelings about taking on yet another responsibility. Nevertheless, I've accepted it with what I believe is an appropriate degree of solemnity. Being a DSR means placing orders for books and supplies every three months, and sacrificing time for quarterly hours-long meetings with the Missouri DOC's Religious Programming Coordinator. It's not exactly an unmanageable burden. If anything, I hope to be able to bring something good to the population, one breath at a time.

Two Books I Spent My Summer Reading

The Violent Bear It Away was one of only two novels published by Flannery O'Connor in her lifetime. The other, Wiseblood, is perhaps more widely read, but I came to The Violent by way of her short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," which we read in the book club I attend. When our conversation turned to unlikeable characters, I mused about whether an effective book-length narrative could be sustained using such odious personalities. The club facilitator responded, "That's so interesting, Byron, because O'Connor actually wrote a short story that became a sort of early version of a novel she published many years later."

We soon read both that story (entitled "The Lame Shall Enter First") and the novel that grew out of it. Three O'Connor works in three months—this was how I had my first experience with her, an author I avoided for such a long time, assuming that her being a Southern woman writing before the Civil Rights Era had to mean she was a prim, mannerly beldam who wrote about sippin' mint juleps on the veranda while Aunt Tillie shelled peas. Boring, in other words. But boring she was not.

"Is that the one about the woman with the prosthetic leg?" one friend asked. "That was brutal." Anyone who's ever read O'Connor's fiction seems to have the same opinion, that she wrote incendiary prose about people whose very souls flamed, often violently. "Brutal" is certainly not the worst word you could use.

In The Violent Bear It Away, two men vie over the soul of their teenage relative who wants no truck with either of them but finds his future inextricably bound up with that of his mentally disabled cousin, a boy whose soul he feels compelled to save by bringing him to God. Things, it's safe to say, do not go according to plan for anyone involved. The most interesting thing here is that everything that happens here happens behind, between, and beneath what happens here.

Lacking in anything resembling plot or characterization is David Markson's The Last Novel, the other book I read, which felt like a major change of pace after all that Southern Gothic psychodrama. Regular readers of this blog might remember, a few months ago, when I mentioned another couple of Markson books, This Is Not a Novel and Vanishing Point. The Last Novel is a third title cast in the same mold—his final literary breath before dying, back in 2003.

The Last Novel has the same textual qualities as its predecessors. It's a work of literary collage, pieced together from the author's note cards. As such, it offers scads of fascinating tidbits.

Chekhov died in Germany, and when his casket arrived in Moscow, by freight car, the crate containing it was labeled, "Oysters."

Voltaire wrote that the first priest was the first rogue to cross paths with the first fool.

William Carlos Williams called Emily Dickinson "a real good guy."

And so on.

I don't know how much novel there was to be found here, or in either of the other Markson books I've read, but at least The Last Novel kept me engaged, compelling me along with its tireless references and unexpected humor.

Next season, I anticipate turning to Buddhist literature and rereading a specific Camus novel. Because intention guides me. Because I prize meaning. Because I'm a guy who knows how to have a good time.

"Do You" Was the Challenge Issued

We hold monthly peer-review meetings at my work—which may not be the kind of thing you expect from a prison job. Sweeping rat droppings out of kitchen kettles? Sure. Stuffing bagged undergarments into an industrial washing machine? Yeah, that too. But engaging in a closed-door, round-table critique of coworkers' on-the-job performance? Let's just say that my coworkers and I pride ourselves on not fitting the penitentiary mold.

Every third Wednesday, our eight-man team coordinates to buy ingredients for an agreed-on recipe, which one of us cooks. The meals have been good: angel hair pasta with Alfredo sauce, chicken bacon ranch burritos, pizza bagels.... Usually, someone also makes fudge. We set up a couple of folding tables in our studio, sit down to a shared meal, and get down to business.

The review consists of two elements, applause and a challenge. Each of us takes a turn, giving everyone else a compliment on some aspect of their job performance that month and providing a concrete and measurable way that each peer might try to grow or expand their skill set. The process is meant to foster camaraderie, accountability, and empathy. To some degree, it even works.

When a coworker at our August meeting challenged me to "do you," I didn't at first understand. His applause had been for my displays of authenticity, loyalty, and meaningful criticism. Then he added, "You're always doing so much for everybody else. Take some time and do something that's just for yourself. Take a couple days off, do some reading, watch you a series on TV.... Whatever it is, just make sure it's something only Byron benefits from."

An instruction to be selfish ignores the satisfaction I get by doing things that benefit others. At this point in my life, "doing me" means doing for the community, which I find far more enduring than anything done solely for ego fulfillment. And it's not as if I live like some saintly ascetic. I am far from selfless. Last weekend I binged the entire first season of the post-apocalyptic videogame adaptation "Fallout." Yesterday I finished a Flannery O'Connor novel. Between those two events, I single-handedly scarfed an eleven-serving bag of corn chips in one sitting. The number of things I do purely for myself feels sufficient. And isn't contentedness the yardstick by which "enough" should be measured?

I certainly wasn't going to argue with my well-intentioned coworker. He sees me holding doors for people, giving my time, and tolerating endless incivility and imbecility, so of course he assumes that people walk all over me. Not so! If anything, I feel widely respected and well liked. There are shitheads everywhere; prison's no exception. But overall, my daily interactions are decidedly more positive than negative.

They're not just more, either. They're also greater. I get smiles, waves, fist bumps, handshakes, back pats, and even the occasional hug from the other residents of this institution. That's worth so much to me—way more than a few hours of zany TV, time with a good book, or bites from a bag of salty snacks.

I'd say my challenge was complete before it was even given to me.