Unreasonable Ideas

Where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? Do you want to travel or grow roots? Do you live in the city or on some land? Describe your house. How many rooms? Do you have a garden? Do you have a shop? Is there a hoop above the garage? [...] Activate your imagination by adding unreasonable accomplishments. You'd be amazed at what is possible.

—from The Re-entry Guide: A Returning Citizen's Guide to Successfully Navigating through Re-entry, by Frank Patka and Ryan McCrone

I want to go to Berlin. At dawn, I want to buy freshly baked Semmeln at the neighborhood bakery, walking home amid the diaspora of ten or fifteen different countries. I want to enjoy my breakfast with coffee made from beans I just ground, while sitting at a high window to watch the city bloom into springtime wakefulness.

The apartment where I live is cool and aglow in pale orange from the rising sun. The cat purrs loudly, affectionately circling my ankle. Below this floor or perhaps next door, someone is singing, a tenor voice, tuneful and even. I can't make out the language of its lyrics, but its sound is lovely.

After eating, I sit in meditation. Then, with a fresh, clear mind, I begin the morning's writing. It's a novel I'm working on, my second. Writing fiction remains a challenging diversion from the essays, memoir pieces, and poetry that held my focus during the decades I spent in prison. My literary agent in America isn't confident in the book's marketability, which only makes me more thankful for her trust in my ability to create meaningful work.

After a few hours, I have an interview with an American podcaster, to talk snout overcoming bitterness and developing resilience. Even though it's the usual subject matter, interviews always make for interesting breaks from my routine, and I enjoy them even when they turn a little difficult.

Conversations like these always compel recollections of my early days in prison, the contrast between the scared, confused young man that I was and the self-assured person I became. For about the first half of my life, I didn't know what actually benefitted me. I wasted a lot of years, mindlessly chasing a good time. Because now they're more about contribution than about consumption, my pursuits today have meaning: video production for a nonprofit, teaching coping skills to people in need, speaking to educate and inspire, volunteering my time.

Later in the evening, I meet some friends for dinner. I wonder when, exactly, silverware stopped feeling strange in my hand. I eat deliberately, savoring each bite with care and close attention. Table talk consists of the heady and the ridiculous, from philosophical concepts to pop culture. We make tentative plans to take a trip to Poland in the summer. Then we go our separate ways and I head home on the train, watching the illuminated city pass my window. As the carriage gently rocks down the tracks, I think back to all those nights when I searched—usually fruitlessly—for a glimpse of the moon from my prison cell. I peer up at the sky over Berlin and think, Yeah, it's a good life.

This is all speculative, of course. Ask me again tomorrow and I might just as well say Vancouver or Amsterdam instead of Berlin. The locations are mere details. But the substance, you might say the heart, of the life that I want won't change.

Vision Quest

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That's one of many things I remember learning in high school... which later came to be revealed as bullshit.

Okay, so it's true and accurate in the realm of Newtonian physics, the context in which it was taught. What I'm saying, though, is that the ratio of effort to outcome is almost never one-to-one.

We could strive for years and years, investing perhaps time, perhaps money, perhaps blood, sweat, and tears, and nevertheless meet meager rewards in the end. This is why I can't get behind the concept of "manifesting," which says a person must only visualize and focus sufficiently in order to realize their dreams. If you wind up with underwhelming results, the manifesting metaphysician will say that you just didn't want it enough.

But let's try something. Consider the failures, those who go to their deaths without realizing their lifelong dream: the father who works his ass off to leave a legacy for his kids, the restaurateur who labors night and day to keep her little bistro afloat, the writer who spends decades trying to get her novel published. Could you look any of these strivers in the eye, in their final moments, and tell them they just didn't want it enough? If so, you're not just naïve, you're also heartless. I suspect that the rest of us—even the manifesters—recognize a fundamental flaw in this logic of sufficient desire.

Venturing to achieve something, we ignore other necessary factors at our peril. Timing, some say, is everything. But obviously, you need more than just favorable moments. There's also means to consider. You've got to possess the mental, physical, economic, or spiritual capacity to achieve the goal. Motivation, ability, and circumstances have to coincide in that beautiful dance we call serendipity. Without all three elements, you're left flailing alone in a corner somewhere, likely the target of disapproving stares.

I've visualized my exoneration in dreams, in idle moments of mundane afternoons, in fraught periods of prison nonsense, and at a thousand other times, in almost as many different ways. I've envisioned innumerable variations of the moment when I exit the facility. I've pictured the countless potential lives into which I move afterward. I've thought about what I might wear. I've wondered whether I should abstain from drinking alcohol. I've imagined an altar in a home where a future me sits zazen every morning. I've ruminated over the feasibility of a modern life without a cellphone (or at least a smartphone). I have an active imagination. Still, I'm sure I haven't thought of everything.

Have I focused hard enough? Are my visualizations worthy of the dreams materializing? Is this what manifesting freedom looks like? Out of a purely contrarian spirit, I'm inclined to say I haven't, they aren't, and it isn't. I haven't even taken time to construct a vision board. Maybe the Missouri court system will overlook that and base its ruling on the facts of the case.

Resignation

Joining the Speak Easy Gavel Club (Toastmasters club number 622676) six years ago, I wasn't interested in public speaking or enhancing my leadership skills. I was just looking to get out of the house at a new prison and maybe meet some other people inclined to self-improvement.

What I got was a rich reward. I found a friend, I landed a great job, and yes, I developed the handy ability to engage an audience through speechcraft. As valuable as these benefits may be, though, the well of riches had to run dry eventually.

I served as the club's Vice President Education twice, its President once. After that term ended, I announced my disinterest in running for another office. I wanted to set aside the organizing and delegating awhile and just do some speechifying—something that had taken a backseat to "higher duty" in the last couple of years. Nevertheless, at the next election I was nominated for multiple offices. It seems they didn't want to let me go. The position of Vice President Public Relations didn't seem like it would put an inordinate amount of work on my already heaping plate, so I reluctantly accepted a VPPR nomination and won it. Overwhelm, in retrospect, seems like it was inevitable.

As work ramped up its demands on my time, I started missing as many meetings as I got to attend. (I am living proof that, even in prison, time can get away from you.) None of the other members complained; nevertheless, I felt the distinct guilt of letting people down. I was not upholding my duty as an officer of the club. It was time to face facts: I was standing in the way of someone else who actually wanted to hold the position.

The resignation speech I gave to the assembled members at their last meeting was declared "eloquently straightforward." Then I was thanked for what I've done for the club and continue to do for the prison community. The Vice President Membership floated a motion to make me an honorary member—only the second in the Speak Easy's twenty-one-year history. As I left the lectern, the veteran Gaveliers led the room in a standing ovation. It was nice.

More than anything, though, it felt like a relief. I hadn't had to write and deliver a speech in almost a year, but there were member evaluations, committee efforts, mentoring duties, contest organizations, special event coordinations, fundraiser efforts, board meetings, and other responsibilities to tend to. Taking that away felt good. I had to wonder why I waited so long.