Rodney's been down, as we say, for over forty years. He says that he doesn't dream anymore, but I'm not sure if I believe him. Years on death row, plus two more in solitary confinement seem to me as though they'd inspire the wildest flights of fancy. Then again, I know how creatively stultifying my own surroundings sometimes feel, day in, day out, and what a tonic pictures of elsewhere (whether physical or mentally conjured) can be.
A couple of days ago, my friend Paul said, "I think I've transitioned to
dreaming exclusively about prison." I doubt this, too. I don't think that
Paul, scarcely locked up for a year and a half, is in a position to know what
influence his fresh memories of freedom might yet exert on his dreams.
Even after twenty years, my dreams aren't usually restricted to this world of
walls and chain link and razor wire. The people in them are only sometimes
inmates. I once wrote a blog about my weird dreams that
still paints a pretty accurate picture of my nightly subconscious adventures.
Last night's dream was decidedly a prison dream.
The prison in it wasn't a real prison. It looked instead like an amalgam of the
three very different facilities where I've been confined. While I walked around
it, doing whatever daily tasks the dream-me did, a large group of angry
prisoners took up occupation in a particular zone and refused to move. They
shouted obscenities at passersby – myself included – and put on their most
menacing faces; however, their purpose wasn't clear.
What was clear was that they were doing a good job of intimidating
everyone. Members of the prison staff spoke about getting home to their
families before violence broke out, while they packed up office supplies like
Ukrainian refugees before a bombing attack. I just drifted from point to point,
watching wordlessly, a spectator, but with the sense that I wasn't quite there,
as though I occupied another plane of existence, which only intersected with
this one.
That was it – just a series of observations. No riot ever took place, nor did I
never get away from the fearful chaos. I simply stood by, watching and waiting
for the seemingly inevitable. Because of that, it felt a little bit like real
life.
Maybe it was the execution that the state carried out yesterday, here at ERDCC. Protesters massed in
front of the facility, behind sawhorses and faced with armed guards – an
unsettling scene from TV, remixed by my brain at some point in the night.
Or it could've been yesterday's breakfast-table topic about State Representative Kimberly Ann Collins, the legislator championing
Missouri House Bill 1922 to form an
independent committee overseeing the Department of Corrections. That conversation had me
thinking for much of the day about things I've seen since being transferred to
ERDCC, the ways that this facility operates, and the ways in which it's broken.
Sometimes I do wish that, like my coworker Rodney, I didn't dream. The lasting
effect of dreams often feels like a daytime haunting. Even the best of my days
are freighted enough.
♡
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