Four Books I Spent My Spring Reading

When the time came to choose what to read next, our book club facilitator suggested we pick up Alice McDermott's novel After This. He was teaching a course on Catholic literature at Saint Louis University and, with characteristic forthrightness, begged our mercy in selecting a book he was already teaching, rather than adding another book to his literary load. After This is a book he loves, he said, which sounded promising enough. Then he went on to say that it was the one book from the course that his students suggested he remove from next semester's syllabus. "They think it's boring," he said. Being the type of readers for whom such warnings arouse curiosity, we assented almost immediately.

This was my first encounter with McDermott. She writes beautifully at the level of the sentence, with prose rich in meaning without ever being ponderous. Plotwise, I can see why contemporary college students struggled with this book: they probably couldn't relate to the world it depicted. Spanning a period between the end of two wars, World War Two and Vietnam, After This has at its center an Irish-American family in search not of happiness—because wanting happiness, in these characters' deeply Catholic mindset, would constitute a kind of unseemly greed—but of simple contentedness. Just to be okay with how their lives are going seems to be their aim. Their saga unfolds episodically, in a series of vignettes, with years disappearing easily between sections. Its 277 pages flip past with almost a breeze.

Freed in May from an onerous work schedule, I did my best to make up for lost reading time, leaping straight into several books at once. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a collection of Zen and pre-Zen writings compiled by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki in 1957. It includes texts previously published as 101 Zen Stories, The Gateless Gate (called Mumonkon in the original Japanese), 10 Bulls (maybe better known as the ox-herding pictures), and an ancient Sanskrit text entitled Centering that emerged in India 4,000 years ago, more than two millennia before Bodhidharma famously brought Zen teachings to China. Unlike McDermott's novel, I took extra time with this book, ingesting it in small, meditative bites that never overwhelmed my ability to sit awhile with a given story, koan, or passage.

When Freedom Reads visited ERDCC a couple of years ago, I had to know its representatives' answers to two questions. First: what one book each of them read during their imprisonment most resonated with them. Then: what book they recommend for others in these circumstances. One response to the second question was The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writers Life in Prison, edited by Caits Meissner. This essay collection was put out by PEN America a few years ago, forwarding the organization's mission to celebrate and elevate the literature of writers "whose voices have too often gone unheard or been ignored." The Sentences That Create Us collects inspiring pieces by justice-impacted writers—novelists, poets, essayists, journalists, screenwriters, playwrights, memoirists, and everything in between—to reveal how prisoners whose minds remain free can create a different kind of life through their writing.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about Zen the way he taught it: simply and with a directness that matched his subject. His book The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation was probably intended to be an introduction to the practice, for readers who were not yet intimate with the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Five Aggregates, the Paramitas, and other essential Buddhist teachings. Even though I've been practicing this stuff for a while, its good to go back to basics every so often and get a refresher. With straightforward pronouncements like "The person who has no compassion in him cannot be happy," and "Twenty-four hours are a treasure chest of jewels," Thich Nhat Hanh once again proves himself a teacher worthy of his beautiful reputation.

I'm not really sure where my reading will take me next. It's been so long since I had enough downtime from work to read much of anything. A visit to the prison's library is in order—my first in almost three years. Who knows what I might pick up.

Modern-Day Cave People

The Flintstones notwithstanding, I don't know where the term "caveman" came from. Although some might've taken shelter in occasional caves while hunting and gathering, our ancestors and the other early hominids—from Australopithecus to Neanderthal—tended to inhabit valleys, plains, and trees. So why do my neighbors, in this modern age, choose to live as troglodytes?

It's against prison policy to cover any window or overhead light. Still, the people next door to me do both. Lining the window with rolled-up towels, they keep their cell blacker than a starless night. Using contraband tape to hang manila folders over the fluorescent light fixture, they ensure that any light emitted will amount to no more than a dull glow. I doubt either of them have thought about the reasons behind these choices. If you asked, they'd simply say, "I like it dark."

And dark it is. I once had occasion to knock on their door. Let me tell you, that void was deep. Even light from the open door barely pierced the gloom. I'm baffled as to how they achieved such an effect. It's not like the canteen sells light-absorbing paint.

What I could see was a small clip-on lamp fitted with a cardboard sleeve, which functioned as a spotlight. Outside of its beam, my neighbor's face was nearly invisible. All you could see in the cell was the small circle of light on the desk where he pieced together a cardboard tractor—precision work that'd be so much easier if someone turned the damn light on.

They're hardly alone in practicing what I call the dark arts. Across the small stretch of grass visible from my cell window sits 2-House, ERDCC's administrative segregation unit. People confined there get "recreation" in wire cages like dog kennels three times a week. Otherwise, they're out of their cells virtually not at all. You'd think they'd want a little sunshine in their lives, but no.

Twenty-four windows of 2-House can be seen from my cell. More than half of them are completely covered with some kind of detritus. A couple have identifiable items hanging in them—shirts or sheets—to thwart the sun. Others are papered with what I assume are Health Service Request forms or pages torn from paperback novels that float around the Hole every so often. As questionable as those works of "literature" usually are, and as little love as I hold in my heart for direct sunlight, I just can't condone vandalizing a book.

The number of cells in ad-seg with covered windows far exceeds the number in general population. The number here in the honor dorm is even lower than that. Based on a quick, informal poll I took before starting this post, only about one in eight cells have some form of window covering. Most of those are temporary fixes—a shirt hung up in the afternoons, for example, when the sun casts a glare on someone's TV. The same held true at Crossroads, the prison where I spent the larger part of my sentence. There's no accounting for taste, but the consistency of these numbers between prisons doesn't seem like mere coincidence.

Are the prisoners who keep a dark cell trying to block out their surroundings? Is their pitch-black room an outward manifestation of depression? Is it merely a sleep aid? There are probably reasons I'm not even considering—some sort of superstition, maybe, about light.

Whatever reason these people have for living that way, I don't relate. Prison may be hard-edged, dirty, and visually unappealing, but I'd rather not have to fumble around blindly to find my coffee cup, my toothbrush, or my surface-dwelling humanity.

Breakfast Line

Queued up for breakfast in the dining hall, it seems to be a mostly ordinary morning. Shouting is at a minimum, since much of the population's still waking up. The smell of this afternoon's lunch—fish patties—has yet to permeate the place. The only real negative is that, directly behind me in line, a frustrated soul won't stop ranting about how his elderly cellmate pissed all over his freshly cleaned floor.

"It wouldn't even bother me so much, but when I mentioned it he just waved me off and said, 'Eh, it'll be okay.' No, it won't! It won't be okay! I have to clean it up!"

This is what I get for asking about his morning. Ahead of me, our mutual acquaintance half turns and rolls his eyes. The line hasn't moved in several minutes, which isn't unusual, really. Anyone who transfers here from another prison will tell you that the chow hall at ERDCC serves more slowly than any other institution in the state. The joke is that the servers are too "deuced out" on K2 to do anything. It's not a joke at all, actually.

"Just sit down! For Christ's sake, if you know you have prostate issues, don't stand to piss!"

Up ahead of us, another person takes a tray from the window, and the line immediately stalls again. Have the prison's biscuits and gravy ever been good enough to warrant this level of discomfort? I venture to think not, then check my privilege. At least you're getting fed, Byron.

"So I ask him, right? I ask him why he didn't just sit down, instead of just spraying and dribbling over half the cell, and you know what he says to me? You know what he says?"

I shake my head, my face expressing what I hope is a kind of nonchalant half-interest. I don't want to encourage this, but I don't want to abruptly shut him down, either. The line continues not to move.

"He says, 'I didn't want to pull down my pants in front of everybody.' I was like, 'The cell door was closed! There was nobody around!"

People behind him quietly snicker at his tirade, and while I've not quite reached a point of being ready to bail on this breakfast venture, I'm definitely wishing the servers would get their shit together and resume pushing trays.

And just as this uncharitable thought about the kitchen workers develops—wonder of wonders!—the line's moving again.

"He just expected me to wipe it up like a water spill. I'm like, 'And let it start stinking? No way! I'm gonna get down there and bleach the whole area all over again!' The dude's gotta be senile, or else he was born before germ theory existed."

Baby steps nudge us closer to the window. At least we're around the corner now—the home stretch, with fewer than ten people in front of us.

The guard posted a few feet ahead commits to his vacuous stare as not just one but three line jumpers retard everyone's progress. It's like landing on one of those disappointing spaces in an even more disappointing board game: "INCUR DISRESPECT! Go back three spaces." I let loose a sigh.

"I should tell the case manager he's incontinent and get him moved to the ECU. I don't know how many more pools of piss I can stand to clean up."

Here comes my food, at last. I take the lip of the brown plastic tray and see that something's missing. A quick inventory tells me there's no gravy, jelly, nor butter. All I have is corn flakes, a box of raisins, two dry biscuits, and a half pint of milk. If breakfast is truly the most important meal of the day, this bodes ill for my afternoon.

At least I can get away from the barrage of bitching. Holding my tray in one hand, I pivot and assume escape velocity, course set toward an outlying table. Behind me, still at the window, I hear the complaints change tack.

"Hey, what's up with my gravy?" he yells into the window. "Are you guys too high to work the ladle anymore?"

The New Guy (It's Me)

Just as I open the book to resume my reading on the history of Zen, the housing unit's intercom squelches. Sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher, guards' announcements on the wing's loudspeaker are often an object of interpretation, but this time I understand perfectly: "Case, bravo one-thirteen, come to the sally port." I set down the book and walk to the housing unit's control module. "Stay right here," says the guard. "Your boss is coming to pick you up."

He means my new boss, over in the Reentry Center. Today is my first day at the job. The Zen book can wait.

I interviewed for a position at the new facility a couple of weeks ago. The pair in charge—Department of Rehabilitative Services employees—wanted a technologically-adept all-rounder, someone who could help prisoners log in and navigate the computerized career resource system, assist with people's résumé preparation, offer tech support for visiting corporate partners who bring video or PowerPoint presentations, do interview coaching, track client attendance, and maybe even facilitate a class or two. "Sounds great," I told them. I didn't even care that it meant giving up nearly $100 a month for a position that won't pay a dime. That same afternoon, I gave my coworkers and boss two weeks' notice. My last day was Monday.

Had the Reentry Center not opened last month, I doubt I would've so easily abandoned my position as XSTREAM's team lead. Instead, I'd probably have continued gritting my teeth through stressful projects, losing sleep over toxic coworker conflicts, and wringing my hands over how to fit personal responsibilities into a day crowded by business tasks—all of the stuff I wrote about in my previous pariahblog.com entry. Options are nice, even when those options are theoretical.

The Department of Corrections boasted that Missouri had opened a Reentry Center in each of its prisons last year; however, the truth of this announcement depends on how you define the word "open." The Reentry Center here at ERDCC didn't even have furniture when that publicity notice went out. (The DOC isn't often dissuaded by tetchy details.) Shortly after that, I heard whispers that a clerk position was available there. One of the inmate carpenters who'd worked on its construction discretely asked if I knew of anyone "reliable." (That's basically prison code for "not a druggie, a thief, or a piece of shit.") At the time, I said no and moved on. But his question planted a seed.

Now here I am, walking across the yard with my two new bosses, feeling my excitement grow as we approach the gate to the "reception and diagnostic" half of the prison. R&D is where new and returning prisoners are processed before it's determined where they belong. Some of the people who come through are on 120-day "shock" time and will be out in months; some are at the beginning of life sentences and will die in prison. Because of the possible disparity between our custody levels, I can't walk unescorted across this yard. Hence, this commute by necessity involves my bosses.

"We've got a plan for you," says one. Just a few years ago, he was a likeable captain working for the DOC. Now he's a likeable civilian. I appreciate the offhanded way he refers to a plan; it sounds like a deliberate downplaying of thrilling possibility.

"I want you to learn the Chromeboxes inside-out," he went on. "Then we'll run you through the VR simulations."

It all has the tinge of dialogue from an early William Gibson novel. Then his female counterpart, a former case manager, cuts in. She brings us back to the present, saying, "After that, I've got some spreadsheets I need made up. I found an extra keyboard, monitor, mouse, and standalone computer. We'll get you set up on that soon."

All this novelty! I always get a flush of uncertainty with the new: Is this really what I wanted? Of course, in this case it very much is.

We pull the first door and step onto gray vinyl extruded to look like artfully distressed floorboards. Foot-tall adhesive black vinyl letters that I cut and applied to this wall last month welcome us.

About $150,000 went into converting the former 11-House into the space that it is today. The open dorms are long gone, having been pulled out in favor of erecting light gray walls. The doors are white. Most of the trim is black. Colorful prints and framed Successories liven up the walls of the Reentry Center's six classrooms and two meeting areas. Wi-Fi antennas and rows of CAT-6 wall outlets demonstrate the building's potential. In one room—the room in which I'll be spending most of my work hours—a row of desktop workstations boasts career resources for anyone nearing release, who requests access to them.

"It smells like oranges in here," I say. The guard, whose post used to be the visiting room, smiles and says, "I just ate one."

"Byron is going to be working with us here, Monday through Friday," my boss explains across her elevated desk, where the former housing unit's control panel used to be. "He'll be staying through, most counts, but taking off for his religious service on Fridays, and for visits, whenever those come up."

"Well," she says, still smiling pleasantly, "welcome aboard, Byron."

It's all so convivial, so... normal. I experience a moment of uncertainty about what to do with my hands. That feeling vanishes once I'm set at a computer and instructed to learn the material backward and forward.

Five hours later, I'm halfway through module one of three—a point that users don't usually reach until their second month.

"I think you'll do pretty well up here," says the boss as he leads me back across the yard. "See you tomorrow."

I can hardly wait.

Resignation/Resuscitation

You wouldn't think that a prison job could keep a person busy enough to induce burnout, but that's exactly what happened in my leadership role at XSTREAM.

Exhaustion, anxiety, distracted thoughts, and occasional testiness over the past six or seven months tipped me off that I was feeling more stress than was healthy. The hours kept me away from my cell for a minimum of seven (as many as fourteen) hours a day, seven days a week, which you'd think would be nice, considering the environment. It wasn't. Stress gnawed at me, even on the good days, sometimes feeling as if I was being eaten from the inside.

The other members of my team relished those long days at their desks. They'd rather stay at work, typing actor names into the database, than be around their cellmates. I never shared the aversion. Either I value my free time too much or my cellmate of the past two years, Bob, is just more tolerable than most people here. Many were the nights that I left work "early" (i.e., before the building closed at 8:30 PM) because I was just plain beat. My colleagues usually stuck around—I guess because the poor bastards don't have lives of their own.

I gathered Team XSTREAM together last Friday to lay it all out. Not wanting to mince words, I concluded my little monologue: "I don't want to work here anymore." Everyone suggested that I simply take a month or two off, clear my head. That wouldn't work, though. The on-the-job issues I'd been struggling with would still be there, whether I left for one month or for six. There was no fixing this. Still, I thanked them for their kind support.

What made me nervous was approaching our boss, the Recreation Director, about my intention to quit. I didn't want to have to justify my decision and decline a bunch of offers to make changes to the workplace, my schedule, or the workload. I'd reviewed possibilities in my head all weekend, and none of them were quite good enough to compel me to stay. I was resolute.

When the boss came in on Monday morning, I asked when might be a good time for us to have a serious conversation. We sat down in his office a bit later and I explained how I'd been feeling, the conversation my coworkers and I had, their idea for a remedy, and all the reasons that I doubted it could work. To my utter amazement, he shook his head and said, "You're preaching to the choir. I wish I had the option you've got here. I've still got two years before I can retire. I'm burning the candle at both ends." He gave me his blessing to do whatever was best for me.

I thanked him, then made my ask: "Can I count on you for a recommendation, whatever I move on to?" I had planned to put in for a clerk position rumored to be available at ERDCC's Reentry Center, a newly opened facility at the prison, where people within one year of release can request help with job-hunting skills, work on their résumés, and even get vocational training. XSTREAM made a lot of signs, labels, and decorations adding to the building's slick, professional appearance, not to mention video-recorded their big open house event a couple of weeks ago. I hoped that our work would afford me a leg up in the application process.

Within an hour of my request, my boss called the Reentry Center and put in a good word on my behalf. They offered me the job without hesitation, no questions asked. I didn't even have to formally apply. (Of course, even after changing employers, I'll still host TV shows for XSTREAM. The team wouldn't let me get away from them entirely.)

I'm supposed to report to the Reentry Center sometime at the end of this week, to talk about the job and my options there. It sounds a little like I'll get to create my own position, with the possibility of even facilitating classes or programs myself. I love the idea of working face-to-face with people who want to use this time to make more of their lives! This feels in some ways like a major shift; in others, it feels like the most natural transition ever.

My last day at XSTREAM is a week and a half away. This probably won't surprise you, but I'm already sleeping better.

Equanimity or Bust

There's no romance in equanimity. The quality of being at ease with whatever comes one's way seems to be in opposition to our desire for excitement and drama. We want passion, conflict, and speed, almost as much in our lives as we want them in movies and on TV.

A writer once mused that it was impossible to compose a story about a happy man, because plot can't co-exist with contentment. He contended that a satisfied protagonist doesn't yearn, fight, or strive; therefore, anything you write about him will be just a tedious anecdote. Story needs movement. Equanimity, on the other hand, is stillness.

Much of our lives consist of struggle. If you're reading this, you have Internet access and leisure time. You're also privileged to have (here I make assumptions) easy access to clean water, adequate food, and a place to call home. Unless you live in a war zone, you probably have no dire existential concerns. Your day-to-day might even afford time for music and art. If so, lucky you.

The wealthy have all of their basic needs met. They don't have to worry about where their next meal is coming from. They don't need to fear (depending on how they got their wealth) being murdered in their sleep. They can easily afford clothes appropriate to the season. They are also, according to studies, generally dissatisfied. Without existential struggles, significant friction, and narrative interest to contend with, they get bored. Money can't buy happiness, as someone once said, but it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.

It's arguably easier to be equanimous in the absence of excessive difficulty. Study after study shows us that a person regularly faced with moderately difficult challenges will report being happier than somebody living a life of ease. I would argue that this is exactly the thing that the pampered Prince Siddhartha Gautama felt, gazing beyond the walls of his family's palace, before he ventured out on the quest that led him to become the Buddha, an icon of equanimity.

I understand why it's said that following the Eightfold Noble Path—practicing Buddhism, that is—constitutes a different way of being in the world. It changes your life, reveals the impossibility of an independent self in a universe structured upon interconnectivity.

This concept, no-self, is tricky but perhaps best illustrated with the koan "What was your face before your parents were born?" Everything we think we are depends on the existence of everything else. In a world without our mother and father, where can we be said to exist? Our existence depends on them, and on so much else. How much can be taken away from who we believe we are before we aren't us anymore? Are we our designer wardrobe? Our love of 1950s sci-fi movies? Our award-winning hot sauce recipe? Our career as a hospice nurse?

Meditation is the study of the self. To study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to become one with the universe. I'm no Zen master, but I feel a teensy iota of this oneness when I sit in meditation. It's a little scary. How does one avoid the pitfall—which I can only imagine exists—of slipping not just into a state of nonidentification but of nonidentity? It's one thing to forget the self; it's another to be subsumed by a conception (however misguided) of selflessness. Maybe this is where a teacher comes in handy, but I don't have that luxury where I am.

Sometimes I see myself, in my meditation, seated at the precipice of a great void. Leaning forward, I'll tumble into nothingness, into an inconceivably vast absence of concepts or observable phenomena, wherein I'll know only stillness and imperturbability. Leaning backward, I'll tumble to meet the irrefutably solid ground of a phenomenological reality, a consciousness stuck in this gradually declining meat-machine that I call my body. Neither option feels comfortable, yet maintaining equipoise takes so much effort.

I don't want to become one of those frustratingly chill bodhisattva stereotypes, seemingly indifferent to everything going on around him and, in a word, boring as shit. Nor do I want to keep going through this life with the same hangups, limited perspectives, and stressors that have for so long defined who I am. Yet I wouldn't be practicing if I didn't welcome a change.

These are just the worries of someone who's unsure but trying, the expression of thoughts by someone walking a road he can't see. I guess that's everyone, though. I'm nothing special, just one projection of the steady breath and beating heart of the universe.

An Afternoon Furlough (Almost)

The Missouri Department of Rehabilitative Services probably doesn't get much press coverage. Such is its lack of notoriety that I can't even describe for you the relationship between DORS and the Department of Corrections—and I've been a prisoner in the DOC since 2002. They did hit a significant milestone here at ERDCC yesterday, though, with a ribbon cutting for the Missouri Reentry Center, the state's biggest and probably most modern facility of its type. I not only got to be there for the big event, I even got to hand out purple octopuses.

The display table offered to XSTREAM was in recognition of everything my coworkers and I do for the institution, and for all we did for the Reentry Center in the leadup to yesterday's event. We not only cut adhesive vinyl numbers to mark the building's doors, we also made big decorative wall stickers—inspirational slogans, logos, and a career-centric word cloud. We even made the 6-by-9-foot Reentry Center sign bolted beside the front entrance, which the administrative team posed beside with giant scissors before cutting the ribbon.

We put a 55-inch TV beside us, looping a brief promotional video I compiled for the occasion. A 32-inch model on the tabletop continuously displayed our octopus logo. After recording the ceremony, a coworker and I sat and fielded questions from educators, law enforcement officers, visiting staff from other prisons, members of the Bonne Terre Chamber of Commerce, and a newspaper reporter. One of my ambitions is to make XSTREAM a recognized production outfit outside of the prison, creating media content for entities outside these fences. Yesterday felt like an opportunity to move toward that.

While pitching our production work to the public, I handed out swag to everyone who came close enough to talk—because who doesn't love stickers? Our logo is iconic enough to be cool without context, but with any luck the little octopuses I cut in royal purple and baby blue will prompt the person who took one to remember our unique display whenever they glance at the laptop, clipboard, or binder they stuck it to. Who knows, somebody might even strike up a conversation with them about it.

By prison standards, the Reentry Center is really nice, and I'm happy to have played a small part in making it look that way. Being allowed to attend the open house event and talk with everyday people about the work I'm so proud of felt like an afternoon away from prison.

As "The Real Killer"'s Third Season Comes to an End, I Have Some Thoughts

Attention being drawn to my case by The Real Killer is, arguably, a good thing. Continued interest at least hints at a reason for hope. The way Leah Rothman's been setting out the facts seems a little scattershot, but the Jackson County Sheriff's Department investigation lasted almost four years, the facts do tend to sprawl.

I've always preferred putting everything on the table and letting people decide for themselves whether mine is a cause worth getting involved with. That is basically what The Real Killer has been doing over the past thirteen weeks. Messy? Sure, but at least it's honest.

Comparatively, people who believe (or desperately want to believe) that I'm guilty take the opposite tack when it comes to their argument strategy. The anti-Byrons call up the worst aspects of my polarizing teenage personality, cite out-of-context case document excerpts, invent unsubstantiated and often outlandish "facts," then wave it all around like a bloody handkerchief, shouting to all the world that their case against me is airtight.

I do wonder what conversation about the podcast has taken place in that camp. I hear occasional snippets of what passes for communication on The Real Killer's Instagram feed, and it seems like more of what it's always been: some people consider the facts and come away with the sense of my innocence; some watch video of my interviews and hiss, "He's got no soul!"

Everyone's got opinions, but the podcast itself keeps them to a merciful minimum. Anastasia's sisters said in a recent episode that they believe my accuser, in part, because she's stuck to the same story for twenty-four years. I have only this rebuttal: if time invested in maintaining a stance was the measure of its legitimacy, my innocence should be of no question. I've stuck with the truth since investigators first asked me if I was involved with Stasia's death. That was in October of 1997, three and a half years before Kelly Moffett made up her story. How could time convince you that Kelly's being truthful, but not that I am? This is the double standard I'm pitted against—another example of the injustice I've now fought more than half my life.

Listeners have been promised that the podcast's finale is coming soon, that The Real Killer is now taking a short break. What that last episode might be, I can only guess. I've been waiting for disappointment ever since I listened to the very first episode. Other shows' outcomes, even the half-hearted shrug that was MTV's Unlocking the Truth, have instilled in me a bit of pessimism. My approach with The Real Killer has been one of nonjudgment. Week after week, I refrained from guessing what direction the podcast was heading, the whole time half-expecting a hard left turn, as it veers away from Leah Rothman's relatively straightforward reportage.

At the moment I'm typing this, that turn has yet to come. While there are some small things about the podcast I take issue with, they're trifles, not important enough to speak out against or even mention here. Some of them are simply products of dramatic necessity. Leah's got to keep listener numbers up and her sponsors happy. The podcast is, after all, primarily a form of entertainment.

Like everyone who's faithfully listened every Thursday as new episodes drop, I'm waiting with anticipation to see how The Real Killer concludes. You could say I'm waiting for a miracle; I'm waiting for justice, after all.

Sleep, Interrupted

I wake in the small hours, unsure of why, until I strain my ears against the night and hear the faint jingle of keys. A guard's doing his routine wing walkthrough. I'm frequently woken up this way. The cause isn't always noise, though. Sometimes a steel door will slam after I wake up, and I'll realize belatedly that the person who closed it must've aimed a flashlight through the cell window and pierced the fragile membrane of my sleep. In either case, when the interrupter exits the wing, I'm often left to lie here, at the mercy of idle thoughts.

When am I going to be able do laundry tomorrow, considering my schedule? I need to ask how this weekend's Spotlight episode is coming. Shit, and there are still three guest spots to fill for this season of Real Talk. I've got to hurry up and record those episodes! And what are we going to do with the sports slot on Channel X after next week? Mental note: load Twon's notes for the next Playlist episode onto the tablet before our taping. That flyer still needs to be made for the housing units, too. And so on, leaping from thought to thought.

It only makes sense that anxieties about looming deadlines would lay siege to my nights. They certainly preoccupy my daylight hours. Considering that I practice regular meditation, I probably struggle too much with this.

Lying flat on this dense mattress, I turn my focus to the breath. The heaviness of my chest suggests that it's filled with lead. The tension in my neck battles this lumpy pillow. A massage would be nice, I think, then let go of the idea, recognizing its unhelpfulness. Be here, now, I remind myself, and come back to the breath.

It's been a long day. I'm so tired. Sleep should come quickly, but the mattress is hot and my mind is on the move—the perfect recipe for unrest.

I'm no stranger to this. Insomnia plagued me as a teenager. Tossing on my bed for hours on end, I'd be exhausted but kept awake by a mind racing to nowhere. Doctors prescribed medication for sleep, but not even 300 milligrams of trazodone did the trick. The drugs only succeeded in making me dizzy. I'd just lie there, my head swimming, desperate for rest that wouldn't come.

Only when I started taking more control of my life did that anxiousness go away. I started asserting myself, exercising more independence, and opening my mind to the possibility of a rosier future. From major depression, I emerged into something like contentment.

Now is different. I have tools that are tremendously effective under normal conditions. My confinement is entirely to blame for these 2 o'clock wakeups. There's no way for me to prevent from being stirred out of sleep. All I can do is work to get back to that state when it happens. No prevention, only repair.

This fact, too, becomes a conscious thought that harasses me, another ten or fifteen minutes lost to unproductive thought. The sun will be up in a few hours. There's no winning here; I can only practice being a gracious loser.

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.

"The Real Killer"

Season Three of iHeart Media's The Real Killer podcast began last month, and everyone I know seems to be listening. This season of the podcast focuses exclusively on my case, digging into the archives for never-before-released audio and playing new interviews with both outliers and those closely involved. Four episodes have dropped so far, with each one drawing listeners a few more steps into the gnarled travesty that the case quickly became.

Even though there's been other media coverage brought to bear, The Real Killer seems to offer the most in-depth examination of the circumstances leading to my arrest and conviction. Listening to reports and interviews from my case has been an object lesson in past life regression. My own young voice—lighter and with intonations I no longer recognize—speaks on tape about people I've known, places I've gone, and memory sweeps over me, cold and brackish as high tide.

I know this story, it occurs to me, but not this particular telling. The host, Leah Rothman, presents fact upon fact, and even though I know it all, I have to keep listening. (Is this how Cassandra felt, in the ancient myth?) Because Leah conducted her own independent interviews in preparation for the podcast, there are plenty of new tidbits that strike me. Because the prosecution was unforthcoming as I prepared for trial, there are also lots of crackly old recordings that I'm now hearing for the first time. I don't know which feels stranger.

I can say definitively that I dislike the voice of Young Byron. It's not his tone but his enunciation that's hard to get past. Now I understand why so many people found me insufferably pompous; in those early interviews, I somehow manage to mouth plummy vowels while simultaneously losing a battle with lockjaw. All that's missing is a moment when I propose the lead investigator meet me for tea and finger sandwiches.

I don't know what direction the podcast is going to go. We're already almost halfway through the season, and today's is the episode when Leah and I sit down for an interview. I think I know how that went, but as those recordings from half a lifetime ago show, I'm not an especially good judge of my performance during such things.

Rewatching Donnie Darko

I loved Donnie Darko from the first time I saw it. And that's no understatement: I loved this offbeat sci-fi story and all it has to offer. High school drama? Check. Temporal paradoxes? Check. Patrick Swayze as a child pornographer? Check. In the autumn of 2002, my cellmate and I watched the film twice in two days on VHS, hungry to unravel its Möbius strip of a plot.

The movie centers around Donnie (played by Jake Gyllenhaal). He's a brooding, troubled teenager living in swanky suburbs, circa 1988. He takes mental health meds, wanders the town at night, questions the notion of free will, and hangs out with a menacing six-foot-tall gray rabbit named Frank—truly, an all-American kid.

When we first meet Donnie, he wakes at dawn in the middle of a hillside road, a few feet away from his bicycle. What he's doing there, and why he stands up and smiles like someone who's just unexpectedly won a race, is only slowly—and partially—revealed. Along the way, we learn all sorts of things about time travel, the history of the Smurfs, and what's significant about the phrase "cellar door." It ends in a tragedy almost no one could see coming. Plenty of people have walked away from Donnie Darko scratching their heads or cursing the filmmaker, Richard Kelly, for making a movie that defies linear storytelling and forces them to go into analytical mode.

Echo & the Bunnymen, The Church, Joy Division, Tears for Fears, and that great Michael Andrews and Gary Jules cover of "Mad World" make the soundtrack really enjoyable, too.

I was twenty-three at the time. The prison where I'd recently been confined played seven videos per week. A staff member drove over to the local video store and rented two cassettes every couple of days. You never knew what you'd get. Each movie played for two days, alternating with another on the same channel. Donnie Darko played, and while it rewound, the other movie played, then it rewound and Donnie Darko played again. That other movie wasn't worth remembering.

The digital air channel Comet plays all kinds of science-fiction-y cult classics, so maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised when Donnie Darko popped up there. Other movies I've seen in Comet's recent listings include Space Truckers and Night of the Comet—hardly masterpieces of cinema, but entertaining nonetheless. (I admit, I may be too close to the issue to say whether Donnie Darko is objectively good or not. Critics liked it, but it bombed at the box office.) Last Saturday, the TV guide said that Donnie Darko would start at 4:30 PM, and I nearly squealed. What are the odds that one of my fifty favorite movies would play at a reasonable hour—even after you factor in the many commercial breaks for assistive devices and Medicare plans?

I made a cup of coffee. I settled in. I watched Donnie Darko for the first time in twenty-three years. What else was I going to do?

The film delighted me, but its true: you can't step into the same river twice. This viewing experience was radically different. I'm twice as old as I was when my cellmate and I sat in front of that tube TV in our cell, noshing on smoked oysters and smoking roll-your-owns. This time I didn't have a viewing companion to discuss the metaphysics of the movie's tangent universe, or to debate whether or not Donnie knew or merely hoped to know what Frank's prophecy foretold. More importantly, I no longer have the perspective of a kid drawn to the outré for its own sake.

Donnie's journey into a metaphysical realm of potential predetermination and madness seemed less urgent to me now. Put another way, the movie didn't hit me in the gut this go-round. Frank felt less threatening, while Donnie himself seemed more so. Details had been lost, but I knew where it was all headed, which, when I stopped to think about it, was quite fitting.

In a word, my love has changed. I suppose that's everything, always.

A Memory of Mail

Mail call used to be a big deal. As each day neared a certain hour, I would feel anticipation building—a physical sensation like an electrical charge in my abdomen and legs, which got stronger as the minutes ticked by. How much mail will I get today? If I heard the wing door open, I'd clamber down from my bunk and peer into the wing hoping dearly to see a guard with an load of papers, magazines, and envelopes in their arms.

This anticipation wasn't for mail, per se. Sentenced to life without parole at the age of twenty-two and never having felt so cut-off from everything I knew and loved, being forgotten terrified me. Mail, at least, was evidence of a lingering connection; people writing meant they remembered.

I used to get a lot of letters, sometimes seven or eight in a day. Cards came almost as often. There was no question: people cared. I subscribed to magazines, too, but didn't consider them "real" mail. If you paid for your mail, you were cheating. What mattered wasn't the stuff itself but the concepts and the sentiments behind the stuff.

One friend sent a letter from the road, written over a one-week period, on the backs of gas station receipts, concert flyers, and grocery store notices as she road-tripped through Canada. Someone else always made his own colorful stationery out of photocopied collages. Other friends created word art by writing their letters as spirals, mazes, word searches, and other ecstatic surges of mixed-media creativity.

As part of an anti-drug initiative, prisons around Missouri stopped allowing paper mail in 2022. I remember saying somewhere, years ago, that the Postal Service continues to exist solely thanks to Hallmark, distributors of coupon circulars, the elderly, and prisoners. Back then, I questioned the continued relevance of snail mail. Even though I adored the little works of art that used to reach me, I stand by that preference for efficiency. Not that it would matter if I didn't; the whole American penal system is becoming increasingly reliant on digital-age methods.

Today, I scarcely remember how it felt to wait on mail call. E-mail now reigns king in the dark realm of prison no less than it does in the wider world. I no longer need to wait for a guard to deliver letters to the wing. Mercifully, those hours of anticipation are a thing of the past. With just a couple of taps of my finger, at any time of day, I can check for new messages on my tablet. And just like anyone else, I get a little dopamine hit from seeing a friend's boldface name in my inbox, signifying a new message from them. It's cool, even if it's not the same. A high-res photo attachment is simply never going to have the same emotional resonance as a decent 5"×7" print in an envelope, and a friend's words onscreen won't weigh as much as they would on a piece of paper, even if they're typed there.

I'm not complaining or decrying the impersonality of digital communication. I love getting messages more quickly and more often than postal mail used to supply them. Sending out my writing in a conveniently editable format—just a copy-and-paste away from submission—is also a bonus. All I'm saying is that having to rely exclusively on e-mail for my nonverbal communication feels as fundamentally different as flying feels from sailing. Each has its own drawbacks and perks.

My correspondence has been airborne for a couple of years. It feels absolutely normal now. Weird how easily we habituate, how quickly the past, however emotionally resonant, can be set aside. And yes, this is the sort of thought that surprises my mind when I'm gathering myself together in the quiet, dark, early morning.

Two Books I Spent My Fall Reading

In the month of November, my book club chose to read The Plague, by Albert Camus, a book I last encountered seventeen or more years ago, in the 1948 translation. This new iteration, translated by Laura Marris in 2021, felt, for lack of a better word, punchier. Its language seems better suited to the philosophy that Camus espoused, downplaying some of the melodrama of that earlier version. The discussions we had in our meetings this season—about freedom, loneliness, religious belief, human nature, germ theory, bureaucratic inaction, the patron saint of wrongful convictions, Flannery O'Connor's opinion of Jesuits, and quite a few other scattershot topics—lent themselves to some very engaging Wednesday mornings.

Unstructured leisure time is at a premium in my life. The reading I get to do is split in several different ways. The New York Review of Books brings me joy, even though I take weeks to read a single issue and skip many of the political articles. The books waiting for my attention seem to increase in number weekly. (I've come to think of my to-read list as aspirational at best; I have e-book versions of several tempting texts and zero idea of when I might start any of them.) When I do get to pick out leisure reading, it's a special treat.

Recommended by a small host of writers whose opinions I trust, Anna Kavan's Ice proved to be an unsettling little novel. I bought Penguin's fiftieth anniversary edition, with a foreword by the writer Jonathan Lethem, and was floored. Kavan's hypnotic storytelling kept me rapt, chapter after chapter, as her horrific tale unfolded like a fever dream.

The book centers around one man's obsessive chase of a young woman—not motivated by love or even lust, but by an odious desire to possess. His quest leads him around a war-ravaged world on the brink of ecological disaster. Is it science fiction? Yes and no. The story takes place on earth, in a time very close to ours, but under the perpetual threat of "the ice," huge freezing shapes that will soon engulf and smother all life.

Despite the high concept at play, Ice is decidedly "soft" sci-fi, verging on Surrealism. Kavan gives us a phantasmal tale that doubles back on itself, revising as it goes, like a nightmare or a bad trip or a spell of amnesia. You think it's headed one way, until it picks up at another point, ignoring everything you just read. The girl dies, then she's alive again. Then something else is undone and done again, in a different way. Events aren't undone so much as un-done. Further confusing matters, the narrator's protean account continually shifts perspective. He describes impossible-to-know events and changes identities at the blink of an eye. The whole time, you hate him, but he gives you a window into this story that you can't help but stare through, mute and aghast. What a book!

In the months to come, I'll probably pick through a textbook, devour some Gothic horror, and ingest some philosophy—if I can make time amid my various commitments. Where there's a will, there's a way.