Forgiveness: a concept in reality

From “There Are Things I Want You to Know” About Steig Larsson and Me by Eva Gabrielsson
Steig Larsson is the author of the Millennium Trilogy

“Stieg was a generous man, loyal, warmhearted, and fundamentally kind. But he could also be completely the opposite. Whenever someone treated him or anyone close to him badly, it was ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.’ He never forgave such an affront, and made no bones about it. ‘To exact revenge for yourself or your friends,’ he used to say, ‘is not only a right, it’s an absolute duty.’”

I’ve had reason as of late to consider the act of forgiveness. That is, I have been asked to forgive and have not yet been able to grant the request. Have had, in fact, to say out loud, I do not know if I will and if I can, I do not know when. This is uncomfortable territory for me. I believe in forgiveness as a basic value that defines who I am. I feel it is an ultimate gesture of not only peace, but also recognizing another’s frail humanity and in doing so, acknowledging my own. Forgiveness, to me, is tied up in humility, grace, compassion and an acceptance that try as we might, no one…no one…is perfect. Not granting forgiveness, I feel, stalls us in a place of anger, cynicism and feeds the fires of revenge while simultaneously snuffing out the embers of compassion.

And yet…I said no. Not yet. I hope, in the future, but not yet.

Part of the problem is I must first forgive myself before I can forgive anyone else, as I am also equally uncomfortable with the feeling of victimhood. That is I fight against seeing myself as a victim at all costs. Victims, to me, can lack control and autonomy and I refuse to acknowledge I have ever given either of those things away—or had them taken away—by another. Even when I clearly have. If I control whether or not I grant forgiveness at least I control something, right?

It is also hard, I’m finding, to forgive someone who must have, at least in some aspects, planned the betrayal against me. I feel as if I were marked, targeted and I do not know, let alone understand, the reason why. Only that I find myself here—unforgiving—and in the darker moments, even wishing I had the capacity for revenge.

This scares me.

I think then about the men at the prison, and remember the times I have lauded on to others who ask about my work there about my utopian dream that one day we will have a “justice” system in this country that is more focused on reconciliation and healing for both victims and perpetrators than it is on retribution and punishment. I consider my wish that the men in prison can not only find a way to forgive themselves, but their parents and others who should have known better who betrayed them in the worst ways, a system that fails them in their quest for rehabilitation at almost every turn and a society that ostracizes them for mistakes—egregious as they often were—made, in most cases, decades before. I think of the victims. Their suffering, loss and pain (in a myriad of unimaginable iterations) and my still strong belief that forgiveness is the ultimate act of claiming their lives back from tragic experiences that otherwise threatens to define them forever. I think about how annoying, dismissive and ridiculous my notions of forgiveness for men who have ruined lives must feel to those whose lives exist within and in spite of those ruins.

I am not trying to forgive someone for breaking into my home, killing someone I love or hurting my child. I have not had to attend a funeral, return to an empty or destroyed home or explain to a son or daughter the meaning of death, violence or random acts of rage. The “crime”, such as it is, that I cannot currently forgive, is one of the heart (yes, that old story)…of love gone awry…of trusting someone who turned out to be untrustworthy. Disorienting, yes. Emotionally painful, yes. But an experience which even in the darkest moments I know, KNOW, I will recover from. An experience I know I will, one day, forgive.

Yet, I have not forgiven, and now get to spend time examining the side of myself that has no interest in forgiveness whatsoever. Fuck ‘em, as some say–as some have offered as a sentiment of sympathy and proposed as a course forward. I’ve been getting to know the part of me that feels forgiveness benefits only the person who wronged me—lets him off the hook, minimizes his actions and leaves me still the perpetual doormat (to my dear friends reading this, especially my fellow feminists, you do not need to convince me of my errors in thinking here…I know). I do not believe, as Steig Larsson states in his quote above, in an eye for an eye. I think such notions are juvenile, perpetuate wrong-doing instead of healing it and speak to the least of who we can be as human beings, not the best. And yet, if I could, take an eye…let’s just say, I get why the statement is appealing.

Incarceration is society’s form of revenge (also systematic racism and a litany of other “isms”, but that is for another post—do read: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander if you have the chance). It is not our highest ideal. It should not be held up as a symbol of who we are as a people. We should be ashamed of the prison industrial complex in this country. We should be ashamed that we are not ashamed. But revenge satisfies something in us as a people. It satisfies something in me. I am not okay with this realization, and I will fight against it, but I am acknowledging it for perhaps the first time in my life.

I have a vision of perpetrators and victims being able to sit across from one another at a table and simply talk. Tell me your story, I’ll tell you mine, and by the end, despite the pain between us, we will heal because we will know each other as the flawed humans we are. Currently, I won’t even take a phone call from the person who has hurt me. If I sat across the table from him it would not be to tell stories—it would be to yell and admonish and belittle and rage. If I cannot imagine such a setting given my current circumstances, how does a mother sit across from her son’s murderer? How does a rape victim sit across from her rapist?

I don’t know.

So, today, on the subject of forgiveness, I say this: Forgiveness is not mandatory, only a goal we can aim to achieve. In some cases (not mine), forgiveness is not even warranted (and that is hard for me to write, but I think it might be true). However, in the cases where forgiveness might be possible, even if we’re not sure how to achieve it, we should cling to that possibility and work toward it the way we work hard toward any difficult goal. And on the days that we can’t spend our energy there, when we must forget forgiveness, put it on the back burner because it is too exhausting or doesn’t feel right or only invokes new anger, then my wish is we (I) might instead focus on living lives filled with grace, beauty and love in the hopes that we (I) keep the scales from tipping too far out of balance.

I ask forgiveness for the flaws this post reveals about me.

Remember to label your bras

Things change at the prison from week to week, day to day, and believe it or not, the prison rarely gives us notice (and if you were inclined to believe they might, well, spend more time on this blog getting to know the Department of Corrections). So, when we arrived last night to a new electronic keypad lock on the door we normally just waltz through into the lobby where we get our nametags, put away our carkeys and then follow a custody upstairs for screening, we were confused, but not suprised. We had been given no code for the door (wouldn’t that be cool–having a code for anything at the prison?), and there was no sign giving any sort of instructions. A simple: A custody officer will be with you shortly to allow you entrance, would have sufficed, but no. Just a shiny keypad lock, daring us to try a code–any code. We did not dare. So, we stood there at the door, looking in, watching for a guard, sort of like those women in old department store commercials–open, open, open (though we refrained from actually tapping on the glass of the door because, well, tapping might now be a punishable offense, you never know).

We ended up being let in by another volunteer. How she got in, I don’t know. But I saw her, dared to give a light knock on the glass and she opened right up. A custody officer showed up shortly thereafter to collect our ids and start issuing our nametags. Even he looked a little baffled as to how we’d all beat the new lock system and were standing in his lobby waiting on him instead of the other way around. Later, as we left for the night, my co-facilitator, asked why the new lock had been installed. The response? To keep folks from getting in and just waiting around without supervision. Yep, tax payer dollars well spent there, folks. I sort of felt for the officer, he seemed disappointed as well to realize it was still possible for us to figure out how to get in on our own accord. Like the long staff meeting he’d had to endure to figure out how to prevent such loitering in the lobby was now only 2 hours of his life he’d never get back.

Oh, and perhaps now is also the moment to note, not in a demeaning way, I’m sure it’s just a small oversight, but there are two entrances to the lobby. Only one has the new lock. The other…well, that might be how the other volunteer got in.

Once we had our nametags we marched upstairs as we always do to go through the screening process. I’m pretty conscientious about this process. I don’t wear jewelry, try to remember to leave my belt in the car and never have change or other various what-nots in my pockets. Not having all these extras speeds up the process, and also keeps me from setting off the metal detetector or otherwise drawing any unnecessary attention from the custody officer. The best policy as a prison volunteer in terms of not having your program hassled unnecessarily (and we were already “in trouble” for being behind with our volunteer evaluations) is to try to just stay off everyone’s radar. Don’t cause problems and you’ll have less problems.

I put my bag of class materials, shoes, jacket, nametag (because the clip on them is metal so you put it on downstairs then have to take it off upstairs) and glasses on the table for the officer search and walked slowly through the metal detector with my arms at my sides as a newly posted sign clearly instructed us to now do (DO NOT CROSS YOUR ARMS WHILE GOING THROUGH SCREENING! – these sorts of signs always make me wondered what the hell happened in the 2 weeks since our last visit). The screener went off. Damn. I went back through and tried again. No luck. I rarely set off the screener. The custody officer looked at me as if to say, well, what do you have to hide? And even though I had nothing to hide, I started to get nervous. This is probably a natural response to failing any test, but failing a test in prison can have all sorts of consquences, including being denied entrance for the night.

I turned out my pockets and took the two hairclips out of my hair (even though I’m pretty certain they are plastic). I walked through again. It screamed its alarm again. I had no choice but to look at the custody officer and confess: it must be my bra. I tried to remember which one I had on, since I know I have one with underwires that will make it through the screener. Which one had I grabbed that morning? White or black? I couldn’t remember, I only knew I’d gotten it wrong.

The officer is a relatively young guy and his cheeks flushed a little and he immediately stepped to the phone to call for a female officer. Oh, Lord. Officers used to use a wand (you’ve seen them at the airport, I’m sure) if you set off the screener. They ran it over your front, over your back, saw where it went off–like right over your breasts–and would assume that you were telling the truth–it’s my underwires. A male or female officer could use the wand because they didn’t actually have to touch you. Apparently, the wand is now old school. Now, you get a real search.

The officer instructed me to wait in the screening area while he took all the other volunteers into the prison. I said goodbye to my co-facilitator (we have a standing policy we don’t go in alone) and assured her I’d be right there. But we both knew in these sorts of situations there are no guarantees. I waited, and while waiting told myself there wasn’t anything I could do. I certainly knew I wasn’t smuggling in any contraband. I knew I’d simply worn the wrong bra, and once the female officer got there I assumed she’d understand (she must’ve gone through this a million times with the number of women who come to visit on family day) and I’d be on my way.

The original officer finally returned, female officer in tow. She had a strange way of not looking at me, which is awkward when there are only three of you in a room and you’re the only odd one out–not to mention the subject of all the fuss. I could only assume later that in anticipation of having to feel me up in a pat down she thought eye contact would be a tad too intimate. At any rate, I was instructed to once again go through the metal detector.

It didn’t go off.

Now you might think this is a good thing, but I panicked. Here’s why. They’d left me alone for nearly ten minutes. For all they knew I’d gone into the restroom and removed a dozen razor blades, or a shank or a nail (I don’t know) from my bra and flushed them down the toilet. I jokingly said, I promise I didn’t toss anything out while you were gone. I knew I sounded nervous and immediately regretted saying anything. Humor is not always a good idea in prison. But the male guard just looked at me and said, we know that–you’re on camera the whole time we’re gone. I should have thought of that, but I didn’t, and I was strangely not comforted by knowing.

I’m still going to need to search you, the female guard said. Of course. She took me down a short hallway, supposedly out of the sightline of the male guard. She told me she would explain what she wanted me to do, and that I was not to do anything until she was done explaining. Okay. They have a way of making you feel like a very small child…and an idiot. She showed me how she needed me to pull my bra away from my chest and “shake” it out. I stared at her for a minute. Okay. I put a hand up my shirt, and she was quick to assure me I didn’t actually need to lift my shirt all the way. Good, because I wasn’t going to. I awkwardly grabbed ahold of my underwire on one side, pulled it out and sort of jumped up and down simultaneously. She nodded. Okay. Then I repeated the gesture on the other side until she nodded again. It occurred to mid-bounce on the final side that if I were to be hiding something up in my bra, it would be easy enough to keep it from falling out for discovery. But I refrained from making any sort of joke about the illusions of security. I actually didn’t want to end up naked with this woman.

She then turned me around, ran her hands over my shoulders, down the length of my outstretched arms, under my armpits, down my sides, around my waist, down and between my legs and then simply walked away. I followed. They were going to let me in. That’s all I cared about at that moment.

I don’t like walking out to the building where we have our class by myself. I mean I wasn’t alone–the male officer walked with me. But normally I’m one of a half dozen volunteers walking out together. And normally, we cross the prison yard before the inmates are released for movement (when they get 10 minutes to move from their cells to wherever they want to go for the next hour). But I was late. So, it was just me, and inmates were out and about in the yard, and maybe because I’d just been felt up and shaken out I felt weirdly exposed. Look, there’s a woman in the yard. I know all the men don’t think that, but there are simply some realities of being a female volunteer visiting a male prison. All to say, I was relieved to get to my building, and even more relieved to get to my classroom where 17 students smiled at me and teased me for being late and joked about what’d you try to get in, huh and then more quietly asked if I was okay.

I am, I said. I’m just glad to be here with the people I trust.

Class exercise – some writing from our students, post #1

We recently gave our students an assigment related to using description in their work. Not only did every single student do the assignment despite claims of it “being the hardest assignment yet!”, but they wrote some of the most powerful, vulnerable and honest pieces we’ve received to date. I’ll post a couple at a time over the coming days. Please remember these are only assignments, so rough drafts (you know how sensitive we writers can be). That said, I hope you will see the not only the work they put into the assignment, but also the raw emotion. Comments of course welcome.

The assignment: Write a 250-300 word description of your “house” (cell) without using the words, dirty, cellie, cold, steel, bars, clang and bunk. You can create a scene from your real life or a fictional scene, but put yourself inside of the “hero”–use his point of view. The idea is to be as original as possible, to use no cliches or stereotypes.

JH – serving multiple life sentences, already served 30+ years
I woke up in utter darkness. Not as dead as I would have expected, but hardly alive. My final resting place is louder than one would hope for. For a coffin it is crowded with obstructions and dubious amentities, but no less confining. How many others have lost their lives only to revive in this concrete tomb? My dead, atrophied claws fumble for a light. So many have met their end here. The aged paint peels away from rotted cement where updates could not reach. The greasy oil of ancient corpses seep out of corners where a body fell as it burned, staining the already dark slab. What horror in a victims’ death throes could leave fingernail scratches in stone and metal? How many dreams died here as the living dead slowly realized their fate? I can neither breate nor wake up, yet I can’t fall asleep or simply stop. For a century this casket has played host to the shambling undead, a rotating roster of hate for misery. Death is the ultimate punchline to the joke of life.

Elijah
I have a hard body with an appetite for destruction. I’m 6×9 with room for growth. I generally eat books and sip music but lately I’ve been dazed by days of TV. I’m cold blooded with a warm soul consoling 100 years of spirits. My life is the story that never ends. My breath is the burberry oil cooking on the flickering light bulbs that shine the pictures on the walls of my memories. Two seconds on, two seconds dark, two seconds light, the light has passed away. The pull of lost love has twisted my feelings into a dreadlock. The revolution rolling off of the nappy tongue of rap music plays in my ears. The secret deposits of vulnerability bark within me. I’ve witnessed every emotion. I paint the face of cowards to look brave yet they pray behind me for the courage to demand respect. I could pray all I want but every 30 days I am raped and pieces of me are stolen*. All I can do is watch the cops pull their pants up and buckle their belts. I have a sketch of their faces written with ecstacy in my memory and I’m paid with a search report in my pocket. I scrub myself for hours removing the cheap fragrance and stale cigarettes from my skin. My expectations faded their way down the drain and my imaginations are floating bubbles wishing heaven would hurry up cause I’m sitting next to alone just exist. It would take years to know me but 300 words to feel me. My name is B406, but you can call me house.

* the reference here is to a cell search — when custody offers enter a prisoner’s cell sometimes when the prisoner is there and sometimes not and “toss” the cell looking for contraband. Prisoners, as you can imagine, have many feelings about these cell searches, and though certainly an important protocol for prison safety, imagine, if you can, having to stand and watch your home be “searched” in this way with you having no ability to control what is removed or the reasons why.

If you knew he wrote it would you read it?

The last two classes at the prison have been focused on publishing. For prisoners, the want to see their work in published form is no less of a desire than it is for the rest of us still waiting to officially and professionally move into the class of “emerging” writers. Yet, the barriers to their goals are significant. No access to the internet means no electronic submissions, no ability to research current contests, submissions guidelines or current information on agents. Everything they have access to is outdated–Writer’s Digests from 2008, if they are lucky. They have no ability to create a Word document and send it to anyone as an attachment. Most of them cannot afford to purchase a typewriter, and even if they can, a typewritten page now a days only gets you so far. Entering contests requires money, and as many of us know those fees have only risen in recent years. A $10 entry fee is a half a month’s salary for most of the guys’ in our group–we asked. Despite all of that we have spent two full evenings walking them through the process of what an agent is and what they do, what an editor is and what they do, what a query letter is and the difference between submitting nonfiction proposals and finished fictional work. We’ve covered literary magazines, and talked about e-books and self publishing.

Yet, the most pressing question, the one they won’t take our word for, is whether or not, if they were to say publish a novel, if you as a book buyer and reader, saw in their author bios on the back covers they had or were currently serving time for violent offenses of whatever nature, would you still buy the book or would you put it back on the shelf? Why or why not?–they really want to know. Does it matter what the content of their work is? That is, if they are writing a a novel about prison are you more likely to buy it than say if they have written a young adult novel about a zombie apocolypse (as one of our guys has done and it’s quite good)? Are readers only interested in true stories by prisoners about prison, or can a prisoner write something else and still be trusted by a reader? Does the background of an author matter to you at all as a reader? Why or why not?

The guys asked if I’d be willing to ask these questions of my readers here on the blog, and so I am. If you are so inclined to respond, not only would I appreciate it, but I promise they would as well. And they don’t mind honesty, I promise. I will share any responses I receive, but will remove any identifying information (name, email address, etc).

All writers doubt anyone will care about what they’ve written, and most of us experience moments of doubt about whether or not we even have the right to write what we do. Who are we to think we are more of an expert on anything than someone else who clearly is? Yet, prisoners are already doubted in most ways on a daily basis. In prison, they are labeled manipulators, liars and cheats no matter how hard they are working at their own rehabilitation (given that the prison system no longer focuses on rehabilitation, only punishment). Out of prison, they are ex-cons not to be trusted–not with a job, not with housing. Do we trust them to tell us stories?

Not about me, but sometimes about me

I went to the prison this past Tuesday with little of myself left to give. I had not slept a full eight hours, let alone four or five hours, in days. My emotional tank had been spent on the personal challenges I am facing (nothing life threatening, though possibly life changing). My head and heart were in a multitude of places other than teaching writing craft and the hero’s journey story structure. My goal for the night was simply: do not burst into tears for the next two and a half hours, no matter what.

The specifics of my own personal drama are not essential to this post, and are probably best saved for a future short story about how hard it is to both love another and live as you desire all at the same time. I will ultimately be fine. But I was not fine on Tuesday night. I could only tell myself I was going to do my best and be thankful that my co-facilitator was doing the bulk of the teaching for the night.

I often tell people about this prison work that I learn as much from our students as I think they learn from us. What I don’t always say is that sometimes I go to the prison only for myself. Tuesday was one of those nights. It can be a relief (and I recognize the sensation of relief is only possible because I can walk back out of the prison when I choose) to hear the various prison doors closing behind us as we make our way deeper into the prison, each one locking me further away, even if only for a brief period of time, from the outside world, from a life that momentarily feels out of my control. In the prison there are no cell phones, no email, no fucking Facebook. There are no partners, no family, no lovers. There are concrete walls, metal-barred doors, familiar security procedures and at least an appearance of control and order. For two plus hours no one from the outside can reach me, no matter the crisis.
I went to the prison on Tuesday wanting to be locked away for a while. That was my only desire. I knew I would not share any of my personal struggles with the group (not appropriate). I did not expect to walk out with answers or new insights that would help guide me through the coming days and weeks. I just needed to disappear. And I did, and it was exactly what I needed.

What I did not expect was the unintentional kindness of so many of the students. Kindness that manifested in ways they probably didn’t intend or recognize. M-, for example, when he came into the classroom, shook my hand as always and asked how my last two weeks had been. I said, “It’s been a little tough, but I’ll survive.” He said, “Shoot, you don’t have to pretend in here, we get tough,” and gave me a big smile that did actually make me feel a little better. M- also read a personal essay, which was both well written and powerful and clearly demonstrated he’d been paying attention during our last class when I presented a craft lesson on scene vs. narrative summary. I was proud of him and his work, and pleased with myself for maybe having reached at least one of them to help make a difference in how they think about constructing their words on the page.

At the break, J- asked if I wanted some tea. He’s been bringing extra with him for us volunteers. I said I’d love some (I needed the caffeine), and then when I wasn’t paying attention because we were calling the group back to order for the second half of the night J- placed in front of me a hot mug of water, a tea bag and two sugar cubes. It was the sugar cubes that nearly undid me. Such a simple act of kindness in such an unkind environment on a day when I was feeling like the only person I would ever be able to depend on again was myself. Sugar cubes. I almost cried. Instead I said to him, “You just made my day, seriously,” and meant it.

J- is serving consecutive life sentences for some gruesome murders.

J- brought me sugar cubes.

We laughed a lot on Tuesday night. I got excited about an opportunity one of our students has to explore his fascination with fire when he was young, and somehow got myself pegged as a closet pyromaniac, which made me remember the time I got grounded as a kid for giving matches to another kid. That in turn made me remember I was once a kid and I made mistakes then just as I do now, but it still all worked out eventually.

I left the prison, walking through mechanized door after mechanized door, feeling better. Nothing had been resolved. I was headed back to my life where the same issues I’d left behind a few hours before still waited for me. I had no new good answers. But I felt cared for and respected. I felt like in a life filled with chaos at the moment, I’d found a small sliver of something that felt normal. And most importantly, I’d been gifted the smallest acts of kindness in a place and at a time when I expected none. In a small way, those sugar cubes fortified my resolve. Life is hard…and occasionally still sweet.

Returning…six months later

The First Time Back

There’s an agitation in the air. That’s the first thing I feel. At the front desk, our group’s paperwork had not been processed properly. For fifteen minutes it seemed we’d made the trip up to the prison, full of anticipation to get back in after our sixth month absence, for nothing. We’d told ourselves to prepare for just this sort of thing. When dealing with the prison system it’s best to not let your expectations get too high. Best to come with patience…endless patience. After several calls with a lieutenant on the other end of one of the custody officer’s radios someone, somewhere, found some piece of paper clearing us to go inside.

Is it strange to say I was relieved?

The check-in security procedures are about the same. I don’t know what I was expecting. More comprehensive searches? A renewed list of items we can and cannot bring in with us? We proceed through the normal process of shoes off, bags on table to be searched, through the metal detector, shoes back on, volunteer sponsor badges attached, invisible stamp on the hand, back downstairs, through the sliding metal doors (one at a time, so for a minute you stand inside a cage, waiting for the next door to open), sign in to the book letting the officers know who is in the prison, where they are going and what time they came and left, flash the invisible stamp under the black light for the guards behind the enclosed office, through the gated sliding door (like a cell door), down the long hallway, past the cafeteria (I did not miss that smell), through the sliding metal door out into the causeway between the building we’ve just left and the turn-style gates to the classroom building, past one of our students being patted down by an officer, in his hand his notebook, I wave, which is stupid, and he knows better than to wave back while the custody officer is still running his hands down his back, shaking his pant legs, J- has killed, J- is a good student, J- is an amazing artist, J- is in for life plus some, J- will have made sure all of the guys in our group knew tonight was the night we were coming back, past the now two guards at the front desk, one a familiar face, he does not like us, nor the prisoners, and likely not his job, and that was true before the murder, the other a quiet and young looking kid, down to classroom number one, our classroom, move the tables and chairs into the configuration we like, and wait.

First Jo-, then T-, F- and M-, B- and JD come into the room. It is good to see all of these familiar faces, a relief to know we have not lost them all. We cannot hug these men. I understand. I shake each hand, one by one, saying, “It’s good to see you.” It IS good to see them. I have a million questions. I weirdly want to tell them about my grandfather, who fell ill the month before and who we thought might die, but who is now recovering in a nursery home and was coherent enough to understand me when I told him, “Grandpa, the prison is going to let our program back in,” and he was happy for me (it’s not easy to garner the support of friends and family…I try to understand that too). For six months I’ve only been able to imagine our guys’ lives. For six months I’ve worried they have thought we didn’t want to come back because we were scared. That we’d abandoned them. I’ve worried about who’s been shipped off to another prison, and who’s spirited has been weakened by the lockdowns and changes in rules since the murder of Officer Bindel, who has behaved and who has not, who we have lost to the system for good. I’ve prayed for them to keep cool heads. We’ve lost W-. No one knows where he was shipped. W- whose grandfather sent him to the store at age eight to steal a forty. W- who asked if we could be friends and I had to tell him no, not in the way he was asking, the prison doesn’t allow it. They say Mal- will be back. I have a piece of his writing to return to him.

We’re prepared not to talk about the last six months. These guys, we know, sometimes want to talk about anything but living behind the walls. We go around the room one by one and ask them to answer just two questions. How are you? Have you been writing? None of them are well, even if they say they are. All of them look pale, like they’ve either lost weight or become harder in some other way difficult to define. There’s an anger about the last six months. There’s grief, but they don’t know that’s what it is. They don’t understand the officers are also grieving. It’s not an excuse for anyone to behave poorly, but try to understand. J- says he worked with Officer Bindel and says had another inmate been there in the chapel on the night she was murdered the attack would’ve been stopped. “There wasn’t the normal satisfaction of seeing an officer hurt,” he said, “I mean, it was in the church and she was female. He was just a messed up guy.” T- has been to the hole. He tells us he planned to get in enough trouble to be sent, “Anywhere but here,” until he heard we were coming back. As he speaks he both looks like he might cry and like he is still so on edge if someone looked at him wrong he might still snap. He says an officer told him we weren’t coming back, we didn’t want to, and I can see the hurt he felt even though he knows better now that we are all sitting around the table again. Before he leaves at the end of the night I shake his hand again, tell him I expect to see him again in two weeks, he tells me not to worry, he’ll be here.

Granta piece: “On Riker’s Island” by David McConnell

A member of the Granta magazine team sent me the link to this piece recently published by Granta: http://www.granta.com/Online-Only/On-Rikers-Island

The piece is short, but also directly powerful. Honest. Unafraid of the prison powers-that-be that might read it (an issue I struggle with here on the blog and as I consider writing more formal pieces for publication). I was drawn to the phrases “air of infinite weariness” and “oppressive lethargy” because they are accurate descriptions of the mood that hangs over any prison complex. McConnell is right, you feel it as soon as you step onto the prison property (and you feel a sense of desperation to fight against it, to wake up the men you meet). A blanket of deep tiredness. Within the prison there are certainly men who fight against such lethargy and weariness (we had several in our group). The institution itself seems to promote it, preferring indifference and sluggishness on the part the prison’s residents (and maybe one can’t wholly fault the institution for this promotion as imagine trying to “guard” hundreds of motivated, inspired, and determined men).

I sympathize with McConnell when he writes, “For some reason I’ve always got along with social castoffs, not the people who nuture their marginality into some marvelous and fecund inner freedom, but the people who can’t: the damaged, the uneducated, prisoners, run-of-the-mill criminals.” I too am attracted to work that brings me into contact with people who seem to have the longest hills to climb to make something of their lives (“make something” as defined by who and against what standards I still don’t know). I am not yet as cynical as to believe that there are people who “can’t” as McConnell writes. I still believe at least one or two of the men from our program will succeed upon release. But I’ve certainly met people who “can’t” or “won’t” and I am equally as fascinated by their stories as I am by those who are struggling to prove they can. These relationships with people who have been written off–prisoners, specifically–make me ask so many questions: what makes a life? what makes a productive day/week/year? where does ambition come from and if you don’t have it, do you miss it? can you choose not to give a shit? about laws? about others? about yourself? and if you answer yes, are you lying? I think we consider prisoners easy to define–simple, uneducated, anti-social and not interested in playing by the rules–but I argue that to be so is in fact to be strangely complex…baffling even. Perhaps because I didn’t have to struggle nearly enough growing up, and now in adulthood have still managed to avoid the worst of circumstances visited upon others, I am drawn to “the damaged” not the way a passerby rubbernecks at a car accident, but the way a student, preparing for an exam she is certain the teacher (life) is going to give, desperately searches for answers to questions she can’t possibly know until the test actually lands on her desk (by way of tragedy, illness, death, violence). I feel the men in prison know things I won’t ever learn without them, important things, survival things. Perhaps that is McConnell’s fascination with “social castoffs” as well. Thrown out of the larger, socially acceptable, law-abiding (depending on your definition) tribe, who are these “castoffs” and what unique knowledge do they take with them when they go?