Month: June 2005

If you read my last entry you will note that I had the misfortune to spend some time behind bars. I know that what I did was wrong. I was willing to fess up, say “guilty”, and let the hammer come down. On the day of my final trial I really had no idea where I would go or for how long. The most terrifying moment was the 5 seconds before I was sentenced. The DA was feeling generous, however, and he only sentenced me to 2 years, non-mandatory, to the local county hotel. I was able to earn “good time” and was finally released on September 3, 2004. I will never forget that date. There were tough times in jail. Some were truly terrifying. There were times of great inner peace. The food was horrible. Fried carbohydrates for almost every meal. I gained 40 pounds. I have since lost 30. I spent a lot of time reading and am lucky to say that I had the resources to have books sent to me from the outside. I also had 2 magazine subscriptions. I am probably the only inmate in the history of that particular jail to receive The New Yorker and The Atlantic Monthly. I also kept a journal, in which I kept a daily log of happenings, fears, and hopes. Of the 1800 pages I wrote, I think that most of it is pretty self-absorbed drivel. I did have a period of a few months where I wrote haiku as well as my regular journal entries. I tried to write 2 or 3 everyday. I ended up with about 250 total, not including a “long” haiku story about an apple blossom and her adventures on the river. I hope to use that as a text for a children’s book. So in the spirit of my own past adventure, I’ll publish 3 haiku every Tuesday, written while incarcerated, in no particular order.

#7
Concertina wire
secures the perimeter
from the basketball

#102
I’m never alone:
at my most solitary
God touches my soul

#6
A parole letter
written by a friend and read
by faceless strangers

I’ve been thinking recently, which is not always the best idea in my case. I can get extremely lost in those thoughts and start to envision a reality where I am actually speaking out on current issues in public and whatnot. Does this make sense? My friend Lisa refers to this as “talking to the voices in her head” and she’s right. It’s as if I’m having conversations with people that we all know and love (politicians, rockstars, all those folks) and telling them how it should be in my oh-so-perfect world. They are all humbly nodding their heads and saying things like, “Yes, you’re right” and “Wow, I never thought of it that way”. I know this all sounds sycophantic, grandiose, and somewhat delusional, but there it is. Obviously, I do not voice these “conversations” out loud, and actually this is the first time that I’ve ever told anyone about them…But that’s not what today’s blog was supposed to be about…
I woke up this morning to a common sound around these parts–a mowing machine making it’s rounds through a field. In this case the field just behind my house and outside my bedroom window. I had left my window open last night so along with the rural sound of machinery came the fresh smell of new mown hay and birdsong. All of this was too idyllic for me to take, so my mind began to think of way back, when this county was all farms. Farms full of cows, corn, and apples. A pleasant combination I think. Very wholesome. Some of these farms had been in their respective families for generations, going back to the tenant farmers that worked for the Livingstons, the wealthy landowners that owned much of eastern New York. I used to ride along with my folks along the smaller county roads and there would be nothing but the smell of manure, docile bovines, and apple orchards. Somewhere along the line this changed. You can chart the political changes, but that’s an obvious and boring tack. I’ d like to think that MTV has ruined the family farm and caused the farmers to sell the land. No one wants to get dirty anymore. They just want to get jiggy, have the bling-bling, ching-ching, and not pay. Meanwhile, the prime real estate is snapped up by wealthy horse breeders and that’s what you see these days along County Route 9. Even the locals can’t afford to live here anymore.
I have no idea what the above was about, but it felt good expressing my morning dialectic: MTV is evil, the love of money is the root of all evil, and I do not want bling-bling, ching-ching, or to get jiggy. Just give me a little peace!