bars

it is interesting and inevitable how my little brother and i recall things differently sometimes. he remembers his burning curiosity about the life of a mother we spent precious little time with growing up.

i felt what he remembers, but different. i too have been obsessed with prison my entire life and have even thought my crimes of irresponsibility in my 20's were spurred primarily by a subconscious desire to know a little piece of my mother's life. three-and-a-half days later, getting out of la county in the middle of the night, i was finally clear that i could not go back. i felt the crazy creep eerily close to me in there. there were moments when i was screaming on the inside at the thought of being locked up, of having my freedom arrested, of my own gentle soul being treated as if i was a danger to society. it shaped me. that experience carved a deep groove in my psyche, colored over my values like whitewash, and formed, (in some part,) this person who needs to read and know and feel the alternative, the counter-culture, all things contrary.

i had been to jail a few times. i got a dui when i was 22-years-old and spent the night in san bernardino's county jail. that was an adventure but i was drunk and young and it was over in 8-10 hours. i was arrested a couple of other times for not paying tickets, typically car registration tickets, and failing to appear on the tickets. i was poor, trying to go to school to improve my situation and offended at all the money society demanded of me in taxes such as car registration. so i acted foolishly and rebelled in such a way i was essentially demanding more pain for myself.

that last time i got picked up by a cop who said he pulled me over because he saw a girl in my car who seemed to be climbing over a seat. from the substation i went to la county in the evening time and spent the next three days there. i had a couple of moments in there, low moments, when i was melting like anti-matter and raging like a warlord.

in one moment i sat in my bed alone in the middle of the day with the noise of warehoused prisoners wiling away their day all around me and i reflected. i felt sad at my plight, contemplated my guilt and considered if the punishment was reasonable . there i was incarcerated. riding to the jail on the bus i made conversation and gave opinions to people who were engaged in bartering shoes for marijuana. the guy who gave up his shoes for the ganja knew he would be staying a while and considered the ganj far more valuable than the shoes. the guy giving up the pot in favor of sneakers had been arrested without his shoes on, (strange he had pot on him though that got past the cops,) and wanted some footwear. the guy who obtained the pot then made a deal with someone else to share a smoke with him once inside if he could get it in. at that point several people in the vicinity feigned normal as this guy, handcuffed to his bench mate on the bus, worked a tiny baggie of herb into his rectum.

my thoughts? besides wanting to smoke a bowl of that poopy pot to take me away from this hellish place, i thought of how in a matter of moments i had taken one giant, de-evolutionary bound, backwards in time. living squarely in the age of the big-brained man, (i had often thought in those days that this was the world of the big-brained man, which is to say success was there for smart people to take,) i had transported backwards by at least a few centuries to a time when the big man ruled. success was there for the big, or brawny or burly or strong, man to take. there among prisoners, among many tough and hardened men, i was so profoundly saddened by this development. (i will avoid a lengthy divergence here but i watched the maysles brothers documentary, grey gardens, last night, about big and little edie bouvier beale, and it would be easy to contrast and compare my jail experience and feelings about the crude and base nature of man with the ease with which this refined and wealthy mother daughter combo digressed.)

anyways, i was saddened like no emotion i ever knew. this was not a particularly selfish sadness. it was much more than that. it was the sadness of understanding my species in a way i might have been better off not knowing. it was the sadness of having childish notions about my society drop away like cookie crumbs, like simple ideas and un-scrutinized beliefs, disappearing and leaving only the corrosive, exposed pain of knowledge behind. it was men going backwards, going base, forming hierarchies with meanness and ruthlessness and all things criminal as the valued personal traits which created and asserted power on the inside. on the inside... on the inside... fuck. that was a dark moment that day and i remember it to this day, which is so much brighter and colored by my children and my wife and some acquired wisdom. i was twirling a long thread of my won hair in my fingers that day, just sitting there, having the blackest thoughts and i remember those moments passing as i sat there in such a way i can feel that feeling, a little fraction of it anyway, on demand to this day.

in the other moment i called home and my buddy, his wife and my girlfriend were all gathered awaiting my call and i found myself on the phone unable to talk and darla recognized what was happening, the reason for my silence. she must have felt the stone in my throat that kept me silent l'est i burst out crying like a newborn baby so discomfited by this unfamiliar world i had arrived in. by the time my girlfriend at the time got on the phone i had turned toward a wall so no one could see my face and tears, silent tears, poured down my face. i made no noise. i could not speak. mireille spoke to me and assured me everything would be okay soon and she had spoken to my boss at work and all the rest. i was worried about that everyday stuff too, and i was worried about my own safety. no one gave me a hard time in jail or challenged me in any

physical way but i saw others challenged. i saw one fight that involved a guy laying on the ground getting kicked in the head and some amount of blood hitting the concrete. but i minded my business and made conversation in the tiny 'white' sections of the various rooms i was housed in. on that phone though, not talking, trying to remain unseen, i couldn't have felt worse and perhaps never have.

my brother, for his part, has experienced so much more than me, spending a large chunk of his life behind bars. the last time we visited my mother in prison i was 17 and he was 12. we flew to goodyear, arizona, and spent a couple of days in the visiting room of a women's federal prison. perhaps at that age he was more curious. perhaps. obviously we were both affected by all we saw and endured.

nowadays i am fond of telling friends i am attracted to justice. when i see justice, real justice, my heart leaps. so much about the criminal justice system is a joke, is so not about real justice, i can't help but be cynical about the establishment and our systems.

as for my brother, our paths are like rolling, curving lines, often parallel, sometimes criss-crossing. we are in ways products of the criminal justice system. we are both fiercely of the people.