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- 03-10-2005
- 03-12-2005
- 09-18-2005
- 09-19-2005

03-10-2005

The morning after…

Today is a lot quieter than yesterday when there was a major shake-down of the whole prison, I believe – for G House it started around 8.40 a .m. and didn’t end until after 1 in the afternoon. There were staff from all over and for each cell searched there was two doing the searching while two others had each of us facing away from our respective cells – handcuffed with only a pair of boxers on and shower shoes on our feet. As it was Wednesday the store for us was cancelled, as was all call-outs to see anyone and medications was stopped as well. Our 11.30 or so lunch was eaten at about 2.30 p.m. or so, a lot of hungry guys for sure. Since they were not regular people from here a lot of items were taken and trashed without our knowledge until we were placed back in our cells. By then it was too late to retrieve them.

Today, we’ve already gotten our store for the week and the normal activities are going on.

So much has come about since I last wrote about my days. A few executions, some vacated death sentences and recently two overturned as a result of the Supreme Court’s vote to give in to executing those under 18 when their crimes were committed. One of those guys is here in this block and he has definitely wasted no time being ready to go. I was the (appreciative) recipient of a couple of puzzle books and one one Black History, which I’ve started and find very good/interesting. Since it has been announced I haven’t seen the other guy but hopefully I will get the chance to congratulate him before he leaves. The guy in here is always picking up negative vibes from some of the officers, at least he says that’s what it is. He gets teased a lot that for a while he won’t be able to watch his daytime soaps which he loves – he will refuse to go outside to play ball or for the fresh air if it’s in the afternoon when soaps are on.

I’ve known him now for about 12 years or so and he’s definitely a guy who has practically grown up in prison. Sometimes you have to stop and think that being practical often isn’t what’s in their minds as they dream and fantasise. The struggle will be for the same young guys to be able to assimilate into opened prison, as death row is segregated and very secure from a lot of the violence they can expect to see and (if not careful) be a part of it. I just finished a (hollered) conversation with the guy getting of the row and none of us could identify one of the guys doing a voice on an old rap song – most of us thought it was an actor called Zeus but was corrected by a non-participant of the multi-conversation.

We were just served lunch which consisted of a bologna sandwich, an egg salad sandwich, two oatmeal/raisin cookies and two orange slices. The cookies I ate and gave the sandwiches away as they are just not close to being desirable after getting one’s store on the same day.

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03-12-2005

It’s just after noon Saturday and the movie Dennis the Menace just went off. I watched it for the first time and it was funny watching how much mayhem a five-year-old little boy can get into without even trying to. I understand I was like that and I certainly saw it in one of my nephews and my youngest son. As a comic strip Dennis the Menace ran years and years ago – it placed right in our face what they call A.D.D. / A.D.D.H..

In an hour or so the College basketball tournament continues from yesterday – they’re on all day.

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09-18-2005

It has been little over six months since I’ve written anything down. I just finished reading James Alexander Thom’s “Pather in the Sky.” A very interesting, educational and sobering book on the shawnees. Although I grew up seeing populair renditions of Indians, there was always the belief that much was left out. There had to be more that “little Big Horn”, ‘Wounded Knee’ or ‘trail of tears’. With such legends the Indians were savages needing to be put in their plaes by white Heroes of Savours.

Ironically, I had been saving the last few chapters for later reading while I watched a football game. Unfortunately, the game was turned off before its ending to watch a movie that’s been seen several times. I lay here writing and can hear the guy down a few cells bragging to an audience about some exploit or another and NOT even watching his movie. Of course this kind of thing happens in another of the cell blocks – guys having trouble being happy themselves so wanting to spread gloom around.

As I finished the book I first thought to myself that I was spending too much time being conscious of others and shoul be basically writing down more of my thoughts on issues that will likely be more instrumental in my kids’ lives than thinking of guys in here.

Earlier this month one of the guys who had been on death row for decades died of hepatitis and shortly after he scorned for cheating the executioner. No matter how conscious we are here of the feelings and thoughts most America have about and of us, it sometimes sadden one to hear the pure hatred in their hearts even AFTER DEATH.

A few weeks back this country suffered one of its most devastating natural disasters ever. Hundreds died from the hurricane Katrina and some from each other after being stranded for days in very stressful and degrading conditions. I stopped watching the coverage when POLITICS came into place – just as I did after 9/11 in New York.

I am listening to the radio as I write and it’s playing old R&B music, which is the only music I really listen to. I use Hip Hop music to block out all the cell house noises when reading or writing letters.

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09-19-2005

Although scheduled for inspection this morning, no one came and the ‘all clear’ was given about 10.30 or so. I read the newspaperand saw that the games we missed were close fought; nevertheless the team I wanted to win didn’t, so the cell house pool wasn’t to be mine this week. I won it last week, so I am still a little ahead, at least for the moment because I will chance the rest in the coming one.

I was thinking last night of something that I would like to discuss with my son, Antoine. Since we think of impermanence as a truth and death as a fact , why isn’t that knowledge enough to have him participate in my lifeas it is? Being a mysterious and complex as we humans are, such conceps gets watered down via assumption – yet there’s equally a lessening when it’s avoided. It’s no wonder that we give so much to immortality and struggle to live now without so many restraints. Much is gleaned from one’ tenacious hold on life and not so much on the release of it. Like the eternal restless soul of one who wish is to have that part of another improve on.  

I believe that the tremendous amount of guilt we carry makes our desperate need for sincerity so powerful that it seems to confuse what we think in our depression. Suicide/indifference are the seemingly immediate outs, at least in respect to one’s self. Unfortunately it does nothing to dispel the initial abondonment – at least in the eyes of my son.

Being such an impatient person, I have used the sledgehammer approach when the feather touch would have generated a great deal more. I sometimes fear pulling my sons into this kind of initmacy as, being young men, they just may internalise the residual poisons from it and unleash it onto one of the historically easy targets for us black men: black women. Since the chances are that most of his interactions with the opposite sex will be black women, thus my reference. They guy have already had mostley an adversial relationship with his mother and, due to her associating him with being another me opposed to an individual, my recruitment of him wouldn’t exactly be a better case scenario type deal.

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