Letters from prison #15

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October 24th, 2001

Dear love of my happy life. I received the tape - YAY! THANK YOU - so last night was the best night I have had in prison. Thank you for reading out the diary of our Palm Springs holiday. I had to use my T-shirt pressed against my mouth so that the other guys wouldn’t hear me laughing. It felt wonderful to be laughing with you. And it seems like your letters are only taking four days to get here at the moment. DOUBLE YAY. I tell the blackbirds how much I love you every day and I see them fly towards you.

I should buy a ‘property box’ to organize your letters, but they’re almost $3, and my cash flow has been pretty sporadic. By the time I get my money lately, it’s already spent three times over with basic necessities, and certain items (like boxes) have to be registered to the inmate, so I have to purchase them myself instead of getting paid with it through my art. I feel really psyched up to quit smoking tomorrow. Better than I have since I started again. This will save me $8 a month, in addition to removing the dark possibility of a stupidly shortened life from our future. I’m so glad I have you. I want to live a fucking long time with you, darling.

Oh man… I just got back from chow, and it was pizza (ok) and THAT MINESTRONE SOUP. Getting a serving of good food in here is like a window opening briefly in a dark room. The smell of the air and the sight of the light, and to know it’s still out there.

Fuck. There’s been another fight, and now the yard is locked down.

10/25

Something funny from yesterday. I was hanging around after morning chow with Gus when Wyatt walked up. He had a hard candy (butterscotch lozenge) in his mouth, and after sucking it down a bit, he chewed it up - crunch crunch crunch - and then said, “I sure wish I had some candy, that’s just my teeth.”

I’ve added your number to my phone list and dropped it in the box today. Sometime next week, you should get a call from the DOC asking if you’ll accept calls from an inmate and as soon as you give them clearance, they’ll enter it on the computer and “we’re on” (prison slang). We can handle this. I can’t stand the idea of not talking with you until I get out of here. And no phone call could be harder than that last one we had on July 18th. I am still holding firm on the no visits though. Please. That I could not handle.

It makes me feel good to visualize our future. The photo you sent of the West of Ireland coast would be worn out if eyeballs could wear things out by looking at them.

As bad as this is, things could be worse. It’s fucking nice to have friends. Robert always wanders down to my house every night while I am writing these letters and goes, “Oh my god. WHAT the fuck are you doing now? No, let me guess.” Hehehe. I let him listen to about ten seconds of you speaking on the tape, and after he gave me back the headphones, he said, “I want one.”

10/27

Everyone is all jazzed up in the hut because the AZ Diamondbacks just whupped the NY Yankees 9-1 in the first game of the World Series. I’m just lying here, wrapped in you, quietly writing, with the smell of wet woodsmoke from the sweatlodge filling my senses.

Instead of having the first three hours of the day with you, I had to spend the time doing “point” (lookout) for Wyatt, who was tattooing in one of the huts. My ‘mechanical arm’ design had cheese skin opening up, to give the illusion that the arm was made of gears and wires and hydraulic rams. I saw it on the inmate/customer, and it’s fucking awesome. I’m really proud of myself. The actual piece is much more intricate and detailed and larger than this example but it gives you the general idea.

I fucking smoked. I’ll keep trying until I get it right, but I am not going to talk about it until I have successfully quit. I don’t want to put you through that rollercoaster. This is a tough environment for quitting.

10/29

I love you so much. We’re locked down again. Two nights in a row. Tonight it’s not from a fight though. What I heard (as opposed to what I know - prison rumour is insane) is that a guy had his name and DOC number show up in the return address portion of an outgoing letter that contained white powder that they thought might be anthrax. The guy got rolled up, and 15 cops and the warden tore his house apart.

10/30

Tomorrow is Halloween, the one day of the year that I’m dressed appropriately in these clothes. I’m surprised at how much I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll go as a carrot, but I won’t tell anyone what I am. Even though I’ll look the same as everyone else, I’ll know the difference.

Almost all of the Black and Native American inmates are calling “anthrax” Amtrak. Almost all of the white inmates have grown tired of correcting them to no avail and now just mutter “anthrax” every time they hear it. I don’t mean this as a put-down of the non-white inmates. If anything, it shows the stubborn refusal of the whites to accept the assertion of difference in culture made by the Mexican, native- and African-American inmates in their “mis”-pronunciation of the word. They refuse to use the “right” word, and the whites refuse to accept the refusal. Sometimes I can hear four or five white inmates mutter “anthrax” all at once when they hear Amtrak. I don’t even think they’re aware they’re doing it anymore.

As I lay here writing on my bag of dirt in the gloom of my hut, there are eight other inmates gathered around two TVs watching game three of the World Series. The score is 1-0, NY, and the noise in here is amazing. The Diamondbacks are an Arizona team, so the sentiment on the yard regarding the team is split about 50-50. Half the inmates are in full support of the “home team”, while the other half hate everything about the state that holds them in prison and that includes the baseball team.

I’m not a big sports fan, but I bet against the Diamondbacks. I don’t hate Arizona, but I kind of favor the Yankees so I made a light bet so that the outcome would be a little more interesting. There is an incredible amount of gambling in here, and on Sundays the yard is deserted while all the convicts watch football in the huts.

Mr. Clark just now sang a few bars of something he was watching on TV and said, “Man, you caint watch too much sadness in this here prison... It’ll make you cry!” A couple of the other inmates are hanging out with him (watching a tribute to Patti LaBelle), and Anthony said, “Yeah, sometimes you cry even if you’re tough”.

The moon is almost full. It shone through pink clouds that blurred its edges at sunset tonight, and I stopped reading a letter from you to watch it. I looked at the beautiful light that was still probably shining on London town, where you lay sleeping, and for a moment I was far away where there are no hard edges.

When I came back to this reality, I noticed several other inmates standing still, quietly staring at the same moon, and I wondered if maybe they were thinking about it shining on someone who holds their heart the way that mine is so gently held.

We humans all have more in common than anything that separates us, and sometimes it’s nice to know that we still share the same moon that shines on this lovely blue planet.

We are headed into another month. This tough motherfucker will be done by the time you read this, and November brings us closer. I love you with all my everything.