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Life Inside
Karl in Polunsky
August 2006
It’s a funny thing about Life, how everything depends on how you look at it.
A week or so ago the guards filled up all the inside-dayrooms, and were trying to get people to go ‘outside’ for rec. Usually it is the other way around, so when they came to ask me to go ‘outside’ I jumped at the opportunity for some sunshine and fresh air. It wasn’t until after I’d gone through the lil strip-search routine, bent over backwards to get handcuffed, and was walking out that I got a good look at the recreation yard. The concrete was covered in birdshit, and what’s more, the sun had already left the rec yard. Suddenly I realised exactly WHY everyone had eagerly volunteered to go to the dayrooms. I started to balk and demand to be taken back to my cell, but then I’d have to give up my chance at recreation for the day, and that’d be contributing to the delinquency of a guard – by further encouraging them to shirk their job or play these kinds of games – so I figured avian bird flu aside, a lil birdshit never hurt no-one, right?
As I said, it’s a funny thing about life, ‘cos often it all depends on how you look at it. I’ve heard lots of guys complain and moan about being put outside ‘all alone’. But when I got outside, after the guards took off the handcuffs and left, for a moment I just stood there and breathed in the silence.
Although I’m mostly a gregarious person, I’m an introvert with a strong extrovert façade. Yes, I like people, I love people … to me, Human beings are fascinating, wonderful and weird. But equally I really LOVE time alone. So perhaps you can understand the sweet wave of silence that washed over my echoing footsteps and the roar of waves of joy breaking along the beach of being, just walking and Being, alone and yet not, all in one.
That’s when I noticed that just above the chin up bar, on the side wall, was a climbing sheet of sunlight. I noticed that if I climbed up the bars, hung over and put my foot out to reach the nearby chin up bar, I could still stand in the sun! (Note: this is likely a highly dangerous, unauthorised manoeuvre which is not permitted by the prison administration and is not recommended to be tried by amateurs at home …) Well, but of COURSE I scrambled up the bars and, sure enough, when I stood with one foot on the chin up bar and faced the setting sun, the sunlight hit me like a wall of warmth. This was August, in Texas. In a couple minutes I was very nicely warm, then I was sweating and felt like I was being lightly broiled. I felt this joyous peace rise up inside, like I was melting into light. I stood there for 30 – 45 minutes with my eyes closed, just dissolving into quiet bliss. I stood there long enough that I had to shift my feet ‘cos my arches began aching. I stood there long enough for the second shift of guards to come in.
Once the light rose higher than my head I decided I felt nicely warm and satisfied, and I climbed back down…
For a while I just walked around, savouring the silence and avoiding clumps of birdshit, but then I noticed a bird of some sort, riding high in the sky, soaring along great warm drafts of air. The bird disappeared along the bars, and left me contemplating the sky. That’s when I remembered some words from a Quaker friend. She wrote about how the Live Oak Meeting (of Quakers) here in Houston, has a specially designed roof that would roll back and reveal a patch of sky, and how every Friday they would meet together, and watch the sky change. It was Friday. I thought of Friends near and far, and watched the sky slowly go from brilliant deep blue, for a moment it seemed to grow lighter, and then deeper, and darker blue, until it was nearly indigo and the guards came with the mail, and came to get me.
I was walking around quietly watching the sky when there was a sharp metallic click, then a thump as the guard threw wide the outside door – he said something like, “What were you doing up there earlier? I thought you were gonna jump!”
I smiles, a quiet sad smile, and said I was just trying to catch some sun. May as well try to hold up the sun as explain myself, I thought.
