A BREAK IN THE FIRE

There is no softness behind these walls. Figuratively or literally. Even the word "soft" has come to be one of the worst insults that can be leveled at someone with a prison number.

Cold hard steel and unforgiving concrete walls surround our bodies as well as our hearts. Which came first? Which is the cause and which the affect? Does this environment create our hardened hearts, or did we manifest this place through our energy and intentions? Maybe it's just a mutually complimentary dance?

Fluorescent lights buzz over head and radiate into every corner and crevice of this place. The cameras need good lighting to record the predation and violence. A high-def directors cut of the stabbings and rape.

Metal bunks beds hold rock hard mats. Mats stuffed with some type of petrified and ancient cotton. Unaltered, unrefined, unprocessed, cotton directly from the field it was grown in. Twigs, seeds, and dirt lay cemented throughout the stuffing. A sanitarium green, rip-proof, vinyl case holds it all together.

The walls are cinder block. Every few years, re-painted with the newest soul crushing color available. Applied, layer upon depressing layer, until the paint itself becomes part of the structural integrity of the buildings that house us.

On one 8x16 inch block I'm able to count four different colors of misery; One is a seventies style mint green, like the metal military desks in Vietnam movies. Another two are slightly different shades of equally depressing institutional grays.The deepest and oldest layer is a faded gun metal blue, chosen before lobotomies were a frowned upon practice.

All this lifeless anti-expression can leave you overwhelmingly underwhelmed. Finding a place for your spirit to breathe anything other than the dull, odorless, and completely deadly fumes of carbon monoxide can be exhausting. But humans can get used to almost anything. 

Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps found reasons and time to share, to hug, to laugh, to love. Native Americans, the Anishnabe, would sneak off to the back rooms of the re-education schools they were forced to attend, so they could speak their native tongue and sing their songs to each other. In the midst of darkness life does its damnedest to continue burning, even in the places specifically designed to smother its flame.

Even in here this rule holds true.

I went to healthcare today. I sat in a nurses cubicle/office, answering mundane questions, as she readied my tetanus shot. The surroundings swept me away. I sat in the small office with my back to a single window that bathed everything in natural sunlight, which is completely rare in prison. Sweet harmless country music floated from a clock radio on one of the desks, It danced from surface to surface filling the small space. The needle wielding nurse's perfume, an intoxicating mix of some sort of candy and wildflowers, seemed to be carried by the melody coming from the radio, to every corner of the room. Not a single wall was barren. Posters of cats, nature scenery, and inspirational quotes decorated the office. Everything was anchored in the natural and subtle femininity that radiated from the nurse who was ready to gently stab me with a menacing needle. A femininity that I had always either took for granted or was unable to perceive when I was a free man.

Did Norman Rockwell ever paint a nurses office? 

I exchanged banter with Lauren. That was her name, Lauren. We behaved the way human beings behave and I even got to hear her laugh. It was invigorating and yet bitter sweet. 

I got my vaccination and was pleasantly dismissed with a pamphlet about the dangers of tetanus. My head swirled from the stimulus of a former life. As I floated out of the office I almost forgot where I was and for just an instant I felt the current, I saw the beauty, waiting to be found in even the most mundane moments in this Life.

And so, with just enough momentum to carry me into another day, I carry on.