What I Want the Book to Do

I want to establish that the men in the workshops are part of "us," not some separate "other" that is "distinct" from free society and therefore not worthy of concern and rights. I want to represent incarcerated men as complex characters that fall outside the stereotypes that haunt prisoners/inmates. I want to illustrate the role that creative, expressive discussion and writing can play in finding one's "story," as well as cultivate and imagine a new "future," by putting that into words. Reading, too, can broaden horizons of what is possible by rendering to the imagination different worlds. I want to demonstrate how a community that supports honest expression, and the courage it takes to do that, can transcend the racial boundaries of prison culture. I also want to show that literacy, by itself, is no panacea, and that political, social, and economic change has to be part of prison reform. All of this happens through story. When we hear stories from worlds different from our own, we can lower the walls of limitation and imagine a world that we have never really known. It is then that we can create possibilities of change. Narrative and creative possibility form the linguistic foundations that can then support doing things better than we currently do them. They must lead to critical thinking and action. We have to act, even if that action is symbolic.

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If I Could Only See

The steering wheel shimmies under my hands as I join the pre-dawn stream of traffic heading down the Swan Road toward the city. I have to pull off as a luxury SUV nearly rams me from behind. I get a flying bird for being a responsible driver who realizes he has a tire rapidly going flat. I get out to examine the situation on the traffic side of the vehicle. Cars whiz by, fifteen, twenty miles over the speed limit. I see a bolt jammed into the tire and hear the hiss of air escaping. I am not going to be able to drive anywhere on this and will have to change my plans for the morning. Email students, call for a tire appointment, re-schedule conferences. Check. Check. The day is painfully lovely, cool, and young. Anything is possible, I believe. But what I see is postponement, extra work, cramped make-up and hair-pulling, hurried catch-up. Breathe. Breathe. It's OK, I say. Even this moment, the one that falls far short of what I had hoped for, is a chance, an opportunity to delight in early morning, a morning that hangs there waiting, un-made, ready for what it is I will imagine of it. It sits there like a present wrapped in sunlight. I touch it and look for a way to open it, open to it. I have the tools I need and spin the crank that lowers the spare, the one that has been there for years, waiting.

Render Unto Caesar

The meetings sprout like mushrooms after a heavy rain. The lecturer promotion committee, the alternative textbook committee, the teaching awards committee and others all take up the limited space in your planner, little malignant blots. You know you have to fulfill your responsibilities. You have a contract to do so. That contract doesn't care that your brain is mush and your energy a flickering flame about to go out. You drag yourself to the table to grade your papers, plan the lessons, but there is more. The house has to be rented, cleaned, and loose ends need to be tied up so that the next chapter can begin. Suck it up, brother. You're about the be launched into the big blue right after you drop your last dime into the pot that Caesar has passed into your hands for you to render unto him what feels like your last breath.

Reprieve

She held the results of the tests in front of her and summarized the findings. "There is something going on, but it's not what we thought," she said. "There is some hope," she said. "You can get better," she said. All of this came as something of a shock. I had been living in the shadow of a steep decline leading to a dark, and close, end. The weight of that had been crushing the light out of me and would not leave me alone. "You've got some work to do," she said. "You have to address the impairments, the decline in function. All of that is real." As she spoke, I did not know how to feel. Elation? Guilt that I was going to carry on? Responsibility? Whatever it was, she was delivering the news that I would have to serve a sentence and that sentence was life. I was sentenced to live again. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. 

Real Life

It is those who are dying who have the most to teach about living. They know that days are numbered, that "here and now" is all we really have and that this life is about to end, leading to.... what? That proximity to mystery forces questions of priority, of what really matters. They are the ones I listen to now. All that ephemeral blather about climbing and fighting and winning I see now for what it is: shrill and frenetic distraction. The utter absence of heart and forgiveness leaves me hungry for something substantial. What is substantial is paying attention, which is a form of love, to everything that I get to enjoy -- a frosty beer, a sunset, wind in my face on a bike ride, writing this blog post. When I see something as possibly the last thing, the curtain pulls back and the real world of it's-all-a-one-off  comes into view. It is a feast my friends, a banquet that I didn't see before. And there is a song carried by wind and light, running through everything that is, a song that permeates even the thickest of skulls. But I have to listen, get quiet enough to discern the melody, the one that teaches the truth of how things are, which is, by the way, an ongoing gift, a wave, an infusion of welcome home to the me that is also you.

To the Trolls, Haters, Creeps, and Angry White Men

Your unhappiness is not the fault of others who have much less than you and now want to taste a larger life. Your error is directing your pent up rage at the ones who remind you of your shame. The real enemy is the one inside of you. It is the shadows of you exiled deep within that push you to build walls, take up arms. It has made you grotesque, ugly, mean; it has mired you in the land of "us and them," of separation. That is not who you really are. Those others are fathers, mothers, children -- born with the same inalienable right to live and find peace that you were given. Your fear has made you obese, tight, proud, armored and angry. That is the enemy you will have to confront if you will ever know fulfillment or happiness. There is room for all if you carve from your wound a piece of generosity of spirit, make peace with what will never be, forgive yourself. You can learn, if you listen, to see in the other the same desires that make you bow in humility, light a candle for what was good in the loves you lost.

The Day I Knew My Days Left Teaching Were Fewer Than the Fingers On My Hands

It's inside me, growing. A parasite, a black hole, it sucks light from my cells, hope from my heart. It is heavy. Heavier than lead, than iron, and it pins me to the bed or chair or wherever my body has settled to rest for a minute. Today, it told me that the door I thought would not yet close, was closing, and I knew. I knew I could not go to the meetings that make my head spin. I would teach. For that I am strong enough to fight still. The students are so beautiful and they look to me, sometimes bored and irritated, but other times for what it is an older person who loves language might offer them. I want to tell them about the closing in, the weight pressing down, but I never will. The mass of it is too much for their young shoulders. Another day, I say to it. Another day. It has not yet grown so big that it can take that away. I will never again meet students on the second day of spring, the day it grew warm while the sun made lovers think of blue water.