Get Up and Do It Again

It is still dark on a Saturday morning, and Simone, the cat, snores contentedly at the foot of the bed. I want the darkness never to end, to let me remain here in half sleep. But that is not what's happening today.

Demons have pinned me to the sheets. My gut is grinding in fear. My arms and legs feel like lead, but I have to lift them, to move, to get ready to go out to the prison.

These mornings are tense at home. I am angry, irritated, in a hurry. I need to be alone with the prison that hangs over me, but Megan wants to talk, wants help with house tasks, wants, deservedly so, to have some Saturday time together.

I can't blame her, but neither can I tell her about the snakes in my head, the twisting pressure on my heart, the pending doom.

My mind speaks only curses. Something here is dangerous, better left alone. It coils, hisses, threatens.

But I turn away from the demons and give her some of the morning.

We take a bike ride to a cafe so we can make plans, have the conversations married couples have.

I try to forget.

As soon as I can, I enter the transition of going to the prison. I put on my worn-in-the-seat prison pants, shoes, conservative button-down shirt, nerdy reading glasses, and get the plastic tub that will contain the supplies that I have to pick up on the way: books, magazines, pens, dictionaries, thesauri, folders. An inmate wants a copy of Dante's Inferno.  Another wants A Course in Miracles. Another wants a book about writing poetry. Many want erotic novels like Fifty Shades of Gray or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

I stop at an office supply store and a couple of used book stores. I also get something to eat. It's going to be a while before I am back out.

A waitress at the taco joint knows my routine, knows where I am going, has a relative who is incarcerated, and treats me to a drink. It's part of the Saturday ritual.

Then I head to my office at the university. There I will print out the turnout sheets, call the prison to make sure it is not locked down, and take some time to gird my loins, comfort my fears, settle in to the next four hours.

When it is time, I load the tubs, stack the inmate drafts, pin on my ID badge, and start the car. I do not listen to radio or give in to any distractions like engaging the shithead driver that just cut me off. I head south, to the industrial part of town: the belching power plant, the contaminated wells near the sprawling complexes of the defense contractors, the truck stops, trailer courts, the underbelly of Tucson.

Traffic is usually heavy when I merge onto Interstate 10. Big semis don't want to slow or move over to let me on, but I wedge my way into the stream and fly along with the river of commerce and the road.

At my exit, I feel the prisons, both federal and state. It's an energy field that extends a few miles out from the actual places. Maybe this is psychological, but it feels physical, and I am confident that someday, when we have instruments capable of measuring such things, that it will become a measurable entity.

I want to turn around, to recoil, to run, but I press ahead. Don't ask me why.

Then I am in it, and I gradually get used to it, like anyone gets used to cold water after swimming a few minutes. I shut off my personal sensibilities and simply act. I override my entitlement to a Saturday, a day off, and shut down the images things I might do: watch a game, go for a hike, ride a bike, luxuriate with a book, grade papers.

I grab the tub and rest it on my hip, like I would carrying a toddler, and head for the Main Gate.

Strangely, I am attuned to the place, notice the stunted, twisted barrel cacti, the harshly pruned, grotesque ocotillos, the flapping flag of the state of Arizona, the scraped earth. Inmates walk with a submissive deference, are polite. Guards look at me suspiciously -- "Creative Writing??" -- but do their jobs of opening the electric doors of the sally port.

I board the bus and head to Rincon, the medium high security unit. The driver watches me in the mirror; I don't know what he is looking for, and his eyes betray nothing. He opens the door, and I descend the stairs to the walkway that leads to no man's land.

I take a moment to look. I look hard, straight at my path, and meet the reality. Here is the place where men are confined, detained, broken.

But, in spite of the ubiquitous and constant theft of humanity, something endures. There glows an ember, a hunger to say what needs saying, to record, to witness, to escape, to capture a thought, turn it over in one's hand.

Then I recognize that hunger in myself, and I remember. I remember being beneath the wheel, of losing  a sense of awe, wonder, hope, trust. I remember wanting to undertake the hard work or wooing those parts back home, out of hiding.

Was it so long ago?

And I enter no man's land and realize that, yes, I have to pass through in order to reach the other side.

It seems so far to travel here in no man's land, but I pass through the razor wire not to save someone else, but to recover the lost and exiled pieces of myself. 

Ducey Delivers Disparity (Political Rant)

Well, they are at it again.

The Arizona Republican legislature and new governor, Doug Ducey, want to cut funding to Arizona universities. This time Ducey proposed cuts to state funding for Arizona universities of ten percent (community colleges could be cut even more -- up to 50 percent) because Arizona is facing a billion dollar deficit.

We at the University of Arizona been under this gun for a long time now, but the cuts on top of cuts are getting harder to take. Those who can least afford it are being asked to pay far more than those who can.

Ducey wants to balance the budget, and keep the universities running, by again forcing regents and university administrations to raise tuition and fees. He wants students and families to pay more.

Cutting spending has been the default response to budget shortfalls for the last several decades, and the poor and young are the ones paying most to fill the holes. Not only are they being asked to fill the holes, but they have been paying higher tax rates. Yes, that's right, the poorest pay more of their incomes to states -- states that then cut funding for education, forcing families to pay more for higher tuition. Ducey, true to state tax rates in general, likes to double dip the poor, get it coming and going -- fat city for the fat and double zingers for the working classes. 

According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the bottom 20 percent on the US income pyramid pay, on average, about 11 percent of their incomes in state taxes. The top one percent pay about 5 percent. Washington state taxes the bottom twenty percent at a rate of 16.8 percent, while the top tier of tax payers kick in only 2.4 percent.

State tax rates have been notoriously regressive for a long time, but Ducey has no plan to address that. 

It goes without saying that the bottom twenty need that money more than those who have two or three or more of everything they want with money to spare, to invest, to play with.

As a Republican, Ducey will not consider increasing revenue in a fair way, especially by raising taxes on those who can most afford it.

He buys into "supply side" views of economics that see giving money to rich people creates jobs.

Never mind that that view has been debunked by generations of economists and historians. 

Yes,  a billion dollars is a big number. And Ducey could look at many ways to fill the hole, but asking the wealthiest Arizonans to kick in is not on his radar

He knows that students are not all that politically organized or active and that university faculty, staff, and administrators will gripe but will eventually roll over in resignation because they are no match for a conservative Arizona electorate that votes primarily out of self-interest.

That will have to change if  Arizona wants a better future.

The reasons to fund education are many. Education boosts the economy, raises quality of life, encourages innovation, creates opportunity, keeps democracies healthy.

Ducey thinks short term, bottom line, and his policies add to the already widening gap between rich and poor in Arizona.

But he does want to increase funding for prisons. At least the young can look there when higher education is out of reach. 

Compromise

She is sick. The weight of her body is more than she can lift when the waves of nausea force her up and out of bed. The sickness comes on hard, like a freight train, and runs through her. But she has to get up, go to work, get the baby fed, off to daycare. She needs help. There are men, but they want more than she cares to offer. She considers her situation. Another wave breaks over her and she has to hold her hair off to the side as the sickness leaves her. She is kneeling in the bathroom. The baby begins to cry. She needs to do what a mother has to do. The kitchen needs attention. The dog is hungry. Work has piled up on her desk. Necessities have gathered and allied against her. Although she would rather not, she picks up her phone and locates his number in the directory. I need you to come over she says.

The Joy and Danger of Persistent, Exhuberant, Extravagant Fantasy

Yes, a wise person lives and loves the life that is. Acceptance, embrace, gratitude, and thriving -- blooming where planted are all the right responses to one's life, the keys to being happy.

But mental wiring runs deep, and imagination boundless. Every once in a while I get slapped upside the head with a desire that just won't quit. What is it that those unfulfilled fantasies desire? Well, here are a few possibilities that unmet desires have to offer my rather mundane, routine, modest life:

I am supposed to live next to a snow covered peak in Switzerland or Colorado with a perky blonde woman whose sole purpose in life is to make me happy. We have no money worries and drive either an Audi or a brand new blue Toyota Tacoma four wheel drive pickup, depending on the conditions and the mood. We spend our days gazing out over blue lakes -- sometimes while sitting in claw-foot bathtubs on a pier -- or skiing or smiling toothy smiles as we ride our carbon bikes around a neighborhood full of like-minded, slim, perky, fun, liberal, intelligent and highly successful friends.

In this other life I have succeeded as a writer, painter, musician, athlete, father, son, partner. Sex is always good, off the charts in fact. I am a great cook, good story-teller, great and trustworthy confidant. I am a handy man capable of fixing toilets and building suspension bridges. I say exactly the right thing at the right time, especially to students and friends in crisis. Animals befriend me in the wild.

My socks don't have holes and my briefs' elastic waist band has not gone limp. Nor has anything else.

Everything is in order, like a Zen monastery. My pantry is always stocked, the larder a gourmand's dream. My knives are sharp and no one has used them as a screwdriver.

The floor is somehow magically swept, mopped, and free of smudges. I never have to wash dishes.

I wake up excited and have important work to do, but none if it is tedious, or other people take care of that.

My taxes are a breeze and the CPA compliments me on the order. He is impressed and threatened by my financial prowess.

My electronic files exist on the cloud. Not a sheet of paper is out of place anywhere in my sight.

Dust is distant memory. Criticism? Ha!

No one has Alzheimer's or anxiety or foot fungus.

My family visits and we share our deepest fears and challenges. No one is afraid to talk things through.

Death comes at a good time. Wakes remind us to live well and with clear intention to love each other.

Oblivion is just another cool place to visit sometime.

Yes, this life is not the only one possible.

At least that's what part of me keeps saying. The real life is just around the bend of some imaginary path I was supposed to take or that still waits just out of reach. These pictures of the other life keep bubbling up from deep in the psyche, often with the help of finely crafted and highly manipulative advertising. The fantasy both gets me up off my butt to do something and makes me vulnerable to persuasive suggestion. I have to be strong to see through the illusion. There is danger in "needing" desires to be real, in grasping, in mistaking longing for possession. But I just want to dwell there sometimes, especially as I age and ambitions in the the "real" life fade.

Yep, this is quite the place, one I can dream of, and realize in some small degree, soon, as soon as I round that imaginary bend while I live fully in a less than perfect here and now. 

A Little Out There

He is wiry. Compact, thickly muscled, and what in other days was called jaunty. His nappy hair he wears braided. He tends to carry an expression of amusement, of some joke he knows that no one else has gotten.

He also has a far-off look in his eyes.

I guess he is what many would call mentally unstable, part of why he is in prison, most likely.

Prison is, after all, where we put many of our mentally ill after the Reagan Era terminated funding for their care in hospitals.

I don't know what brought him to the writing workshops, but he has become one the regulars for the last several years. He sits across from me, and nods a lot. He writes odes to God and says he sees things most people don't.

He is also impulsive, and quick to take magazines or dictionaries that I offer. Sometimes the other inmates don't appreciate that, so I have to be careful about how those resources get distributed.

A week ago, he very ceremoniously presented me with a letter of sorts. He said, "Give this to your wife. I know she will like it." He was adamant about this.

What he did not know is that M. is struggling. She is going through a dark night and looks for comfort in soulful music, poetry, and close friends.

"You give this to her," he said again. "She'll know."

Now, you may be thinking something like "This guy is a wing-nut, half-a-bubble-off-plumb, bonkers, not-playing-with-a-full-deck," or other off-the-rails expression. And you would be correct. But consider some of the following.

Last spring, before I took a hiatus from the workshops to work on the house in New Mexico, Mr. L. took me aside as I walked to the guard house and sally port. He looked straight at me, hard. "Now, you listen... You have some kind of truck, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, you need to careful. I'm just telling you. You need to be careful driving that truck. Because there is a lot of trouble out there, and some gonna come to you. So you drive slow and careful."

As I turned to leave, he stood there and spoke to my back. "You be careful up there. You and that truck. You drive careful."

I didn't think much of it, but did remember that he seemed to know when I was coming to the workshop. He told me that he could "see" me coming down the road, from miles away. He knew, even when the guards told him otherwise, that I was coming to meet the writing workshops. "They said you weren't coming, but I knew you were. I told the guys so."

When I returned to the workshops at the end of summer, Mr. L. was first in line and made a bee line to me and asked "So, how's your truck? Is it bad? You look OK."

I had said nothing, but had been in an accident, been T-boned in Gallup in an intersection. The truck was nearly totaled.

"You gonna fix it? Can you fix it? Everything OK? You need to be careful about that front end."

Remember, I still had said nothing. The truck had been hit right at the front wheel. The impact knocked us into the oncoming lane. If I had been going any faster, the collision would been absorbed by the door, behind which Megan sat.

"It's going to cost a lot, but the truck will be fixed," was all I said.

"Is your wife OK?"

"She was a little shaken up, but she is good," I said, as other men filed in and Mr. L. took his place across from me at the table. He spent the day nodding in assent, smiling when he caught my eye, as the other men read their work.

That was six months ago. Since then, he keeps checking in, following me to the guard house after the workshops. He has not offered up any more warnings or advice beyond "I knew you were coming today. I saw you."

I kept all of this in mind when I presented Megan with the card. She opened it and found a hand-drawn heart surrounded by flowers, all if it intertwined, all of it on a manila file folder transformed into art. This came from a man who has no "official" access to paints, Exacto knives, brushes, or markers.In fact, those things are contraband.

M. found the card soothing, lovely, meticulously crafted.

I put the card on the mantel with the other Christmas cards.

I'll have to ask Mr. L. about it when I see him next.

His eyes will likely be looking through me to something distant, either here or out there over the horizons of his mind.

The Good Stuff

It was not the best of moments. My stomach burned something fierce from the coffee I drank on the way to the prison. To distract myself from the gnawing acids, I looked up at the collapsing ceiling tiles and the big gaps that showed electrical wiring, galvanized pipes, and the guts of the Programs Building. I waited for Sargent T., the C.O. on duty, to unlock the classroom where we would meet the writing workshop.

The hallway narrowed to a vanishing point in both directions. I stood there in the middle, next to the drinking fountain, and decided I should use the time to write something. 

Just as I settled in, inmates began to show up, and we gathered there in from on the door, an informal, and likely unlawful, assembly.

Y.D., usually one of the first to arrive, noticed that I was writing, and wanted to share his week of work. He tended to minimize his efforts, repeatedly saying, "I'm no PhD." He told me that he had not done the assignment but rather was reading "Chozer," something the prison librarian had recommended. It took me a second to realize he meant Chaucer.

He said he had neglected the homework reading, a short story by T.C. Boyle, because he wanted to read some "serious stuff." He said it was tough going, but that he liked it, had heard that Chaucer had quite the bawdy sense of humor, and that he had published the first fart joke. He also said that the Boyle story was too "working class," too much about young guys making choices about violence and its place in growing into men.

I didn't know whether Chaucer published the first joke about flatulence, and agreed that Chaucer's Middle English could be tough going. But I wondered about the stigma, or bias, against writing that looked too much like life in the 21st century. I wanted to know more about what he meant by "serious stuff," so I asked him.

"You know, the stuff they read in college. Real literature. High brow reading, not the stuff that passes as 'good' these days."

I had to think about that. Here was a man who was a pretty good writer. He had published a few things in our inmate journal, Rain Shadow Review, and other magazines, like The Sun, but he felt that subjects that he knew, and that writing told in a contemporary voice, was somehow "less than."

To be sure, ,may popular, "genre," books do not past muster for "literary merit," but there was more going on here. Y.D. felt that his voice, his experience, his way of seeing things was not "correct" or "worthy" of literary attention. Y.D. was buying into the idea that "real writing" had to grow out of academic study, university training.

And yes, those are valuable endeavors. But writing from one's standpoint, one's place on the social hierarchy is also valuable and necessary. We readers need to hear more from the margins, from the underclasses, from the hard-knocks of having to scramble and fight for a living.

Too many men, I told him, live lives of noble struggle. They build our houses, roads, bridges. Pick up the trash. Raise families. Teach working sons and daughters how to navigate a society out to exploit them.

Movies don't get made about the dignity of work, the genius of stretching limited paychecks to provide rich, stimulating athletic, creative, or academic training for children.

Yes, craft in writing is important. Quality of ideas, language, and awareness of literary history all matter. And the voice of a writer who has lived the underside, who can speak truth to power, who finds a voice that inspires action -- all of these are what make writing good.

Before I could put these thoughts into words, Sargent T. showed up and unlocked the door. With a space to talk and write waiting, we entered.

Beating the Odds, Forgetting the Prize

Between the mad rushes to buy things, December can be a time to wax philosophical.

Here are two things to think about: stars and life.

Stars because it's dark, like it is for more of the day this time of year, we can see them better. Also because they are where we come from. I mean really and literally where we come from.

The stuff that we are made of (atoms) was forged in the furnace of stellar fusion. Nuclei of atoms fused to make the elements of the universe. The material that we are made of was once the light of fusion. Hold that thought.

Then consider the impossible. Atoms and life found each other in the immensity and hostile conditions of cold, heat, radiation, distance, and entropy.

Life then took those atoms and put them in motion, into a dynamic system, a system that defies the greatest of odds. The conditions necessary for life are more rare than gold, diamonds, winning the lottery, or finding Rosebud. But wait, there's more. Life can evolve, again, against great odds, to a form of consciousness. Nobody knows what consciousness is or where it resides, but we can agree that it exists.

We humans are lucky enough to be be able to see and appreciate the stars and world that brought us into being.

Given the enormity of space, the light years of absolute zero, the emptiness of it all, that's a big Wow!

Problem is, we forget.

Instead of wondering in awe at the gift of it all, we want more. In the process of getting more, our brothers, sisters, fellow animals, and planet take it in the shorts in the form of brutality, atrocity, violence, rip-off, exploitation, genocide.

Knowledge and image run riot but kindness and wisdom  go begging. 

Talk about dragging a rose in the dust....

In this, the dark and cold time of year for us in the northern hemisphere, anyway, the stars are particularly bright. And because it is cold outside, it is also quieter than summer.

How about taking a walk under to stars to marvel, wonder, and open to amazement?

How about remembering joy?

How about surprising someone with the gift of seeing in him or her the life we share? Seeing in its generosity and mystery the planet that sustains us? Waking to the moment that contains within it the secret of eternity?

Now that would be a winner.