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.