New Digs

For weeks we'd been hearing scuttlebutt about the prison's plan for a massive set of house-to-house cell swaps. All of the good-conduct wings will supposedly be moved from their current unit and scattered across ERDCC, one wing per house. Although the entire population stands united in the opinion that this is a terrible idea, institutional amnesia is real. (I need to say here that administrative hubris is real too.) In any event, the plan completely ignores history.

When it was enacted five years ago, the houses had nothing but problems. When a different warden tried it a couple of years after that, it met with failure yet again. The current powers that be think things will somehow be different under their watch.

I happen to agree, just not for the reason they'd like to hear. I think this go-round could turn out worse.

ERDCC's general-population units have descended into anarchy. A person only has to overhear the radio traffic to know how many medical emergencies are called for "unresponsive" residents ("unresponsive" being the most neutral euphemism for a drug overdose) and how many physical assaults take place here on a daily basis. Putting wings of calm, well-behaved people into housing units where chaos and violence are the norm won't make the guards' jobs easier, nor will it create in-house role models for the hooligans to emulate. This plan merely puts at risk those who follow the rules.

The one bright spot is that people who have a job and live in an honor dorm will soon be moved to the same housing unit. Once all of the workers are in the same house, the Recreation Director, will push to give that house outside rec seven days a week, for as long as there's daylight. Being on the opposite side of the facility, with a yard accessible exclusively to our housing unit, would keep us relatively clear of prison's least agreeable elements.

My cellmate, Bob, works in the canteen. I work in the recreation building. We know we'll have to move to 3-House if the warden's idea becomes reality; the concern is whether or not we'll move there together. After two years, Bob's shown himself to be one of the better cellmates I've had, and neither of us want to go live with some rando. "Better the devil you know...," as they say.

Relief washes over me when the call comes over the intercom for Bob and me to pack our stuff. Having kept ears on the ground amid the past few days of swirling rumors, we're halfway prepared. Little-used things have been boxed up, pictures and other unnecessary whatnots have been taken down and stowed. All that remains is to strip our bunks and pack the few things we use every day.

Someone's wheeled a couple of canvas-sided laundry carts into the wing for us to use as transport. Bob loads twelve years worth of carelessly accumulated property—"the hoard," I call it—jammed into totes and boxes and bags. After nearly a quarter century of minimalist living, my own cart's just half full, but Bob's won't accommodate all of his crap. I let his excess hitch a ride with me and don't complain that it hinders my view as I push. 

We wheel past a couple of 3-House residents on the walk, and I hear the guy mutter to his buddy, "Damn, dude's got a lot of shit!" It's tempting to tell them that a third of what I'm pushing is also Bob's.

The new cell, when we get indoors and enter our new abode, is exactly what we hoped it wouldn't be. The prior occupants apparently had the most popular spot in the wing to smoke up. Grimy, yellowed walls tell that story well enough. A search gets underway. We turn the desk upside-down a find more abandoned paraphernalia than I've ever encountered in an empty cell: a lighter kit, stripped electrical wires for sparking flames, bags of tobacco, and strips of "deuce." This is why you check everything when you first move in: possession is nine tenths of the law.

Drugs discretely disposed of, we get to work, scraping countless strata of soap of the walls with a plastic dustpan. Soap is how people without glue or tape hang shit on their walls. It's ingenious; unfortunately, no one ever cleans it up before they move out. Bob gets a piece in his eye. At some point this cell was apparently sprayed with mace that soaked into the soap. Our scrapings have pulverized and made the aggravating substance airborne. Within minutes, Bob's eye turns bruise purple. I start coughing. We keep scraping. Within an hour we're sweating. Bob offers me a can of 7-Up that I immediately drink halfway down.

Hour two is no less intense.

Once the scraping's over, it's time for wipedowns. After years of experience with moving into nasty cells, I know that three rounds of wiping usually do the trick. Fortunately, we brought a bunch of throwaway cloth rags. We start from the concrete ceiling and work our way down and around. Only after every surface has been scoured, scrubbed, and sanitized, four and a half hours after we set out from 6-House, do we start hauling our stuff inside to set it in order. 

Moving is always stressful. In prison, it's no different. At least this move is over now. Bob and I have toiled and sweated to bring the room back to habitability, and now it almost feels like ours. But of course it's not. The administration could hit us at any time with another relocation order and we'd have no choice but to obey. All we can do is make the space tidy and conducive to sober living, and make the best of the time we spend here—a decent metaphor for life in general, now that I think about it.

Imposter Syndrome

We never truly know what other people think of us. When we find out, it's sometimes surprising. But they can be right, even if we don't necessarily agree.

I was talking yesterday with a person in the mentorship program for new prison arrivals—a program for which I, a mentor with a lot of other stuff on my plate besides, do the bare minimum. He was speaking critically about the mentors who do nothing for the program. I raised my hand, and said, "Guilty as charged."

"You do a lot for the community, though!" he said, sounding almost offended. "You're a positive influence and a role model for what we can be, even though we're in prison."

Me, a pillar of the community? That's a lot of weight to carry. Nevertheless, I accepted his acknowledgment of my service with grace. This went some way to explaining the gifts I received from neighbors and acquaintances for more than a week after my birthday had passed—pencil drawings and handmade fudge and from-scratch cake, all speaking to the kindness of my fellow prisoners as much as to the reputation I've somehow established here.

Part of my uneasiness at being well regarded stems from not yet fully thinking of myself as a decent person. Memories can take a lifetime to fade, and my residual self image remains the egocentric asshole I was before coming to prison. It surprises me when people see me as anything else, even though I know it shouldn't. I haven't been that little jerk for a lot of years.

Metta practice, in Buddhism, is the cultivation of a loving heart. Metta, sometimes called "lovingkindness," is a feeling a person may develop, but it can also be experienced and expressed though acts of service, or by doing things for the sake of community betterment. Developing metta partly involves meditating with these four sentences while thinking of other people: "May you be happy. May you be at ease. May you be free from harm. May you be free." There's more involved, but that's the basis of it.

I often sit in metta practice. I don't remember how or when I started doing it, but I know the why. Something in me needed it. Submerging myself in resentment and bitterness about my circumstances would've been easy. I was circling that dark place before I began exploring Buddhism. Continuing further down that road surely would've ruined me. Today, more than a decade later, I can attribute to metta practice at least some of my decency as a human being.

A lot of the Buddha's teachings urge practitioners not to get caught up on things. Therefore, as a general rule, I don't think about my "progress" along the path. Sometimes, though, people say things that prompt exactly those thoughts. Then I wonder what they're seeing that I didn't notice, or they're making a big deal out of something I consider effortless or unworthy of mention.

Why is it still so hard to think of myself as a good person? I don't get down on myself or think of myself as less-than; I just don't seek out recognition nor altogether understand when it's given. The very first part of metta practice typically involves expressing those four sentences to oneself: "May I be happy. May I be at ease. May I be free from harm. May I be free."

I could add a sentence to my next metta meditation. "May I accept that others' opinion of me as a good person is probably more valid than my own."

Happy Birthday to Me

Thinking that a person only turns forty-six once, I resolved to make my birthday a good one.

I made arrangements with my coworker in advance. It didn't take much convincing to swap production days with him. He almost immediately agreed that I could edit and composite video for XSTREAM News on Wednesday—his normal day—if he took Saturday for me. Thus I sidestepped doing any work.

Why even go in, you ask, if I had no plans to be productive on the job? Put simply, I felt like watching a movie. This is one of the perks of working for a media outfit. XSTREAM has more than 14,000 movies and series in our system, and many of them I can't make time enough to watch. Consider also that my work desk has three curved twenty-four-inch monitors on it, while the screen of my TV in the cell spans a meager fifteen inches. Sure, there's a greater risk of interruption in the office, but things at XSTREAM are usually pretty laid-back on weekends.

The morning passed pleasantly. I chilled out by making an insane little animation of a talking egg that has my eyes and mouth, then watched a movie. I left at 1 o'clock for a visit from my mother and a good friend I hadn't seen in many months. The three of us shared some delectable brunchy food—quiche, croissants, and berry tarts—and delightful conversation for hours.

After I left the visiting room, satisfied and stuffed, I met up with a group of tabletop gamers in my housing unit. Secret Hitler is easy to learn and strategy-based, and it turns quite boisterous when you've got seven or eight players all trying to suss out who's a fascist and who's a liberal before Hitler is elected chancellor. Four games in, I drew the Hitler card and promptly outed myself on accident, earning me the title "Worst Hitler Ever"—kind of a compliment, if you think about it.

Before I called it a night, my gaming host for the evening gifted me a bowl of handmade no-bake cookies and a version of the game Catan that he painstakingly crafted. I had only showed up to play a game, not to accept a gift, so I consider the surprise an amazing and thoughtful addition to a wonderful day.

Some days, I almost forget that I'm in prison. The people who help me do that are the best gift-givers of them all. To them, my deepest, most humble thanks.