Summing Up, Part One 5-2010

 [The following is incomplete. I cannot find the opening. I do not know how I titled the piece back in 2010. There is an assumption this piece belongs to May - it may belong to April. There may be some edits due to my monitoring software. I almost skipped publishing this for all these reasons, and admittedly I am a little tired of myself from 2010. I know what happened - just about everything I thought would not: I kept writing in prison, I did not die there. In these pretrial notes is an underlying feeling: that I needed to spew forth everything that was in my head, as I had kept silent when I thought I should not have, and time was short to make up for my cowardice. For all these reasons, I will publish. Notes from the present day are, like this preface, in brackets. sch 10/30/21.]

 And I got a new secretary in November [2009]. Things looked like they were improving - that they got worse is what actually happened. [Duh.]

Business got bad to the point of wondering if there would be enough to eat. I worked harder and harder to get business in the door. Back of my mind roosted the idea I was getting older and doing no one any good.

Going from chasing wild women to meeting them was not such a short stretch, but it is an even shorter stretch to believing yourself a horror.

Might have been an even shorter stretch for me - feeling useless, feeling trapped in a world that did not care for me, feeling strangled by obligations to the living and to the dead.

Somewhere before the end of last year, I tried inducing a heart attack, or a stroke, by smoking crack. [I helped buy $500 worth to accomplish this goal; I recall it being November.] Fired another blank there.

I think it was just before or just after K- started working for me. I know that I expected money in later that week, and I got stiffed and now not only was I not dead, but I owed rent.

One thing I really like about incarceration - the time it gives me to think. No telephone calls, no demands by courts or clients or creditors, no deadlines, no voices in my head, no juggling everything needed to be done. Now I have silence in my head.

But my recollection still sucks. I know C- went to jail for a month, but I cannot recall the months. I know I destroyed the Taurus' brakes about a week before I got pinched, but thinking it could have been two weeks. [I was wrong about either choice. It was weeks between the brakes going out for the last time and my arrest. Which only further shows my memory issues.]

So my memory sucks. Once I could rattle off conversations, but that talent faded as I got older. I could remember what I read - now I cannot remember my estranged wife's cell number. In my family, the ability to remember, to recycle those memories as stories, is a natural thing. My mother's mother could recite The Village Blacksmith she had learned in school well into her seventies.

(Before you put the blame on illicit drugs, know I have sleep apnea. Do not underestimate the dangers of a sleeping disorder. Mine makes my heart stop.) 

I know I had my fill of chat. Too hard to follow. I have no idea when was the last time I was there. I think the government thinks I would pine for the day until I can return. [This I think remains true, as if there is no other reason to exist than what got me into prison. I may know people like this, but I do not think the majority do. Drug crimes are different - in this country money rules all, and they want to get the money.] Maybe the government employs people who like to constantly put themselves to doing things unpleasant and annoying. They can have it, been there, done the crazy stuff, I got over the crazy stuff. I have other things, pleasant things, to keep me busy. I will tell this to anyone who wants to emulate my crimes: do not, get away from the computer, and get yourself more sober-minded; if you cannot do so, go find a counselor.

sch 

[Continued in Summing Up, Part Two 5-2010.]