Locked Down Saturday 3-28-2015

[ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 10/18/2025] 

Ah, yes, a fight somewhere last night (5702? 5703? What rumor flew last night during recall had the trouble at the opposite end of the East Compound from me in 5751), and so one-way moves from unit building to mess hall and back. No moves since we've been back in the unit building. Read a chapter or two of War and Peace. Loafed. Did our usual 10 AM stand up count. (The federal Bureau of Prisons does not do much with us, the prisoners, but it does worry that we might not be in our twelve-man rooms for our stand-up counts.) We have two more today - 4 PM and 10 PM, as done every weekday. Saturday and Sunday, the government takes an interest in our morning whereabouts. I figure no typing on, "The Old Days Are Not Forgotten". I do have more of War and Peace to read; 1,370 pages to be exact.

 I need to call Dad and Melissa. Dad to see if her got my last letter and if he read "Reunion". Melissa, to see if she's still alive.

Anxious over the stories. A friend from the writing group has "Basketball". Cathy P has "Mr. Morgan Has A Problem". KH has everything written, except "Theresa Pressley Attends Mike Devlin's Viewing". I find myself wanting validation - or, at least, feedback. Some reassurance I have talent and not what I always thought was just kind, patronizing words. Sweazy was wrong - criticism, justified and rational is a help, a need for me. I fear I've gotten too involved in my fiction, that I am talking to myself. Thanks, Mom, for leaving me hating what you called "me living in my own world". Yes, I know you meant to help prepare me for the ugliness of the real world. Instead, I've got this aslant perspective, a feeling of tiptoeing along the fault lines of insanity, of having a default mode of hedging my bets. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan still refuses to work on Maggie's farm. Would like to have heard Russell's final verdict on "Basketball" (for which I need two minor additions.)

And I wanted "The Old Days" in a form Joel could see before he departs this wondrous place. Latest scuttlebutt has a fight in 5702 and 5703 and the track. Considering how we got patted down and how containers carried by some got searched, I'm thinking the guards were looking for weapons. Yes, this is supposed to be a low security facility. But we get blacks and Hispanics (take your pick of place of origin: Puerto Rico, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and some other places) gangbangers, motivated by money owed for hooch, gambling debts, or mere boredom, combined with too much energy. Prison does not encourage irony - although it is a fertile source [for irony 10/18/2025]. Those in the fighting - maybe even those caught fighting - could wind up in a camp - an even lower security level prison - where I cannot go, being a SO. 

Maybe I will work on "An Equitable Division" and my letters this afternoon. Do all that longhand. Meanwhile, I need to get ready for lunch.

sch