I go so many places. I can understand why you might be jealous.
Just last week I was in Berlin, this perfect little third-floor apartment off Alexanderplatz, writing late into the mornings, fueled by bottomless cups of fragrant black coffee. Sunrises spilling over rooftops and updrafts of diesel fumes from below were my cream and sugar. I go there often.
A while before that, I was in, of all places, the Australian desert, following the straight-as-a-plumb-line highway north from Sydney in a rental car. Road trains whipped past like giant mythological pachyderms, their two- and three-trailer tails roaring terribly. My father was there. He drove. We passed the time in silence, mostly, but there’d be occasional moments of mild excitement when one of us would spot a bend on the faraway horizon — a shift of a few meager degrees in the road’s direction — and say something with mock-delight about the sudden variety. The trip was an echo of the one we took when I was eleven and we came to Oz for Christmas: we drove to visit the Great Barrier Reef, just he and I, and besides the accident that burned my hand and took us to the emergency room, it was perfect.
I’ve trekked through the forests of Hokkaido, communing with the spirit of the Japanese wild. I’ve flown over the Mongolian steppes with my mother, thousands of feet above where hordes once led their hard, nomadic lives under the Golden King. I’ve stalked the midnight streets of London, ascended narrow footpaths to secluded Alpine retreats, and watched ghost crabs scuttle along moonlit beachfront while cool Caribbean breezes treated my skin.
I’ve done these things, and so much else, without leaving my prison cell. Although the scenery here sucks, my mind encompasses a number of universes, each more enticing than the last. It’d be wasteful to sit dwelling on reality.
Just last week I was in Berlin, this perfect little third-floor apartment off Alexanderplatz, writing late into the mornings, fueled by bottomless cups of fragrant black coffee. Sunrises spilling over rooftops and updrafts of diesel fumes from below were my cream and sugar. I go there often.
A while before that, I was in, of all places, the Australian desert, following the straight-as-a-plumb-line highway north from Sydney in a rental car. Road trains whipped past like giant mythological pachyderms, their two- and three-trailer tails roaring terribly. My father was there. He drove. We passed the time in silence, mostly, but there’d be occasional moments of mild excitement when one of us would spot a bend on the faraway horizon — a shift of a few meager degrees in the road’s direction — and say something with mock-delight about the sudden variety. The trip was an echo of the one we took when I was eleven and we came to Oz for Christmas: we drove to visit the Great Barrier Reef, just he and I, and besides the accident that burned my hand and took us to the emergency room, it was perfect.
I’ve trekked through the forests of Hokkaido, communing with the spirit of the Japanese wild. I’ve flown over the Mongolian steppes with my mother, thousands of feet above where hordes once led their hard, nomadic lives under the Golden King. I’ve stalked the midnight streets of London, ascended narrow footpaths to secluded Alpine retreats, and watched ghost crabs scuttle along moonlit beachfront while cool Caribbean breezes treated my skin.
I’ve done these things, and so much else, without leaving my prison cell. Although the scenery here sucks, my mind encompasses a number of universes, each more enticing than the last. It’d be wasteful to sit dwelling on reality.
Your travels reassure me freedom is a state of mind. I pray in this day of mass incarceration others enjoy this state of being. Take care.
ReplyDelete1) I've read your freebyroncase.com website. It's good quality and answered all my questions. The reader-discouraging problem is that it hasn't been updated in about two years, not even the copyright date. Your website maintainers could update it by year with, say, the number of posts written by you and others on Facebook, etc.
ReplyDelete2) I think you will be freed - eventually. Over decades, I've read several cases like yours. Professors and journalists keeping chipping away at wrongful convictions. Wrong witnesses recant. Persecutors get old and tired. Unfair judges and sloppy LEOs retire. Prosecutors always claim they were right, but their public careers end in private law practice. New prosecutors can then reopen old cases.
3) Yes, you have job offers for when you get out, but everyone's health declines after age 45, when even men get andropause. It's difficult to get or keep a job after age 45, because older employees raise business health insurance costs. Don't take it personally. It's not you.
4) You need to study a profession that you can profitably pursue in old age. Missouri might offer you some higher education. But which learning will last long enough to be useful in old age?
I once read that historians have careers that peak at the oldest age. Consider U-studies to write academically-researched, but popular, music history books. Ask any correspondence professors what is trending to sell well. Consider learning to write simultaneous outlines for both a book, and a script for TV documentaries. If a book sells, funding may be offered for a documentary, and then your pre-written TV script only needs revising.
Be serious about regular backing up of your work. Google concluded that data needs three copies.
5) Most people need reading/computer glasses around age 40. Daily pills for BPH prostate enlargement is typical around age 50. Be prepared to fight off the depression that may result from hormonal decline. Don't take bad feelings personally. It's not really 'you', it's hormone trouble. A well-timed daily coffee habit helps. Evidence is that coffee drinkers have better health in old age. But not after 4pm (British tea time), or your vital old-age sleep will be disturbed.
6) Federal commissary stores list multiple vitamins; age 45 is a good time to start taking one daily. But Missouri state commissaries may not sell them. If not, start when you get out, however long that may be, including the following other nutrients that the feds also sell (some sold as "drugs"):
Calcium: not enough in prison meals; 1200mg/day (3 or 4?) calcium antacid tablets also work.
Milk of Magnesia: tablets are 0.3g (1, 2, or 3 daily); calculate 0.3-1g liquid magnesium. Stay under bowel tolerance. (For nutrition, organic magnesium is better absorbed.)
Metamucil Powder: made with natural psylium husk, and provides the fiber missing from prison meals (not cheap).
Vitamin C: ignore the 60mg RDA that prevents classic scurvy; many humans need about 1g daily (2x500mg/day tablets) to reduce seasonal illnesses and maintain back disc fibrocartilage; by research, 750mg/day isn't enough.
Vitamin B-100 complex: high levels of B-complex antioxidants quench free-radical aging; 1 daily; don't believe the "expensive pee" dismissal, fed weight lifters probably buy these.
Vitamin E: Olive oil contains the 15mg RDA in 7.5 tablespoons, but not realistic unless mixed with other food. After you get out, take full-spectrum Gamma Vitamin E (a,b,g,d + tocopherols). (What the feds sell identified on the bottle as "dl", is not recommended; a cheap D-only product, with half-unatural E-receptor-blocking synthetic "L".)
No guarantees (YMMV), but with at least these, plus eventually other life extension nutrients (via lef.org protocols), you might get more productive years of 'what wasn't that': disorders that others get, that you get less of, or get at an older age.
I hope this helps.
Sean
I signed your Governor's petition today and I am making my husband read and sign it as well. Keep writing. <3
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