I awoke in Pennington County Jail waiting for the door to open so I could get breakfast. I was conditioned to do so.
This jail had a window in every cell. It was like 4foot tall and 4inches wide. I was facing east and it was winter. It looked cold outside. I would awaken to the sun coming up over the clock tower that I could see from the window and I would get just about 10- 15 minutes of it.
I remember it being a feeling I looked forward to. Although I was in a dark cell that felt cold and empty, I could feel, if only for a moment the warmth of those rays touching my skin.
I had spent a good portion of my last three months sleeping. I would get these bursts of quick energy, and then it would pass.
I started doing push-ups and sit-ups when I would feel a burst and work it out till it left me. Trying to build a natural stamina.
I was depressed. I don't remember a time in my adult life where I had to deal with my feelings. My emotional dives were now sober. I didn't even get to have chewing tobacco like I did in federal holding.
I wasn't ever a fan of chewing tobacco but I was very glad to have it when I initially came down. Federal holding was more like a prison. This was a jail and that is just one of the many differences I had to contend with.
The food here didn't really suck to bad. But it did suck. Two hard boiled eggs, a milk, some bread and a little square clump of cold oatmeal. That was a usual breakfast.
I was beyond caring much about taste. Or warmth. I just wanted to feel it in my belly.
Most of my life so far had been about consuming stuff. Wether it was drugs, food, people, or just buying shit from the store. Why would it be any different now?
I just wanted to shove stuff down my gullet and go back to sleep. And that's how a lot of my early time went.
I had a very hard time concentrating. I was aware of things happening around me at all times. Conversations that were being spoken tables over during eating times and the television.
The worst part of being in this particular jail, was that there was no music. No radio. No music channels. Very little music played on tv.
Maybe you would hear some during a movie or during a show but only for a moment.
My mind wasn't catching up. It was like I was misfiring everything as it came. I was missing cues from the people I was around and from the guards.
At a table next to me a fight broke out behind me and everyone at my table looked up and over. Not me.
I just ate my egg and toast.
The guards came over and pepper sprayed these two men and I didn't even noticed till I started gagging. Pepper spray mists a whole room so every body in there got it a little if not directly.
We were all sent to our rooms and I got up and walked over like a zombie, laid in my bed after I slammed the door behind me.
I had a Mexican roommate who spoke very little English. I remember waking up to him kicking my bed cause I was snoring so loud. And I remember kicking my metal bed when he would do the same.
He wasn't a dick. We just had very limited conversation. He was a border jumper who got picked up coming up from Denver trying to get to Canada. He had a bunch of cocaine too so he was on a federal hold as well.
Federal guys never know when they're gonna go to court. We were just sitting in this jail waiting for them to call names of who had to be ready and when they didn't call our names, I just went back to my room and passed out till lunch.
From lunch to dinner, I sat with these three other guys who just played cards. I learned to play Gin, Spades, and gin rummy. We would play cards till dinner.
I think I say with these dudes mostly for their generosity of free coffee.
At first, I declined it. I didn't want to owe anyone shit. I soon realized that these dudes didn't act like that.
They would get their commissary every Monday and the whole jail block would be whistling. Just a bunch of happy jailbirds whistling tunes.
Everything echoes in jail. When those whistles started during the day, the other guys guys would try to put a stop to it because it was driving them crazy.
A lot of us were coming down off something. People in jail are way more angry than dudes in prison. None of us have nothing more than a little information about how much time we are going to do and the impending doom of a certain sentence.
Whistling like bird to show tunes would drive dudes crazy.
For some reason, I would whistle Patience by Guns and Roses. And the show time of MASH. I kind of kept it a secret though.
I enjoyed working the nerves of some of these guys. I would whistle while in lock down. And when people would get pissed I would go to my window and yell right along with them.
"SHUT THE FUCK
UP! WHOEVER KEEPS WHISTLING FUCKING PATIENCE, IM GOING TO PUNCH RIGHT IN THE MOUTH!" And then I would climb into my bunk and whistle my hearts content.
I'm in South Dakota. Nobody up here in this jail speaks Spanish and English. My roommate couldn't rat me out. He thought it was funny anyway. Even if it probably drove him nuts as well.
I would eventually become accustomed to the schedule in here and sleeping all day and night wasn't working for me.
My dreams were remarkably awesome. They were vivid and colorful and my world of dream was vast. I looked forward to escaping every time I closed my eyes.

It torments me to watch the video. Jajaja. This song reminds me of jail. I wasn't really a fan in the nineties when it came out. But a lot of my friends were.
I had an idea of what had to be done. Now that my mind was clearing, I began searching for a purpose.
I clung to the ideas of "the secret". I focused on an answer even though it wasn't coming. People that I had to talk to in jail were all focused on the same shit.
Who pisses them off. Who did them wrong. What they were going to do when they got out. Or their cases.
None of them wanted to chat in depth about what got them there in jail to begin with. No incriminating conversation was going to take place or much more, what was up with my complicated mind trying to reword itself.
When it came to being creative in jail, I was not. I couldn't drag a pencil across paper and make a picture. I didn't have it in me to be artistic at all. People didn't believe me anymore about making my way as an artist even if I did have a huge tattoo machine tattooed on my arm.
I couldn't even draw good roses or feathers or anything. I thought I would be able to make envelopes or something cool. But I wound up just sitting there with blank scraps not knowing how to compute.
I would look around and see these guys just knocking them out too. And I knew, I could do better but had little motivation to do so.
I guess I had a room in my brain where I was locked out of. It had been chained and pad locked and bolted and barred. With another door of steel which had been electrically locked with a brick wall built in front of it as well as very thick steel sheets of metal riveted to that.
I was going to have to contend on rebuilding a new capacitor in the mental if I wanted to achieve any momentum in the art department.

05162016
I begin in the dark on shadiest streets you can walk on. Pushing my skateboard through crawling shadows.
Everything is lit in midnight blue as though lit by a full moon. I'm pushing to the fullest. Full strokes!
Full stride shoves! Remarkably I have breath! Full cuts and big G-turns. I'm cutting in and out of oncoming cars. The headlights blurring my vision for fractions of a second.
A car comes so close that as it passes me face on, my fingers trace the side of it. I'm zooming!
I see the sidewalk and I push to it with mad velocity. A small rise in the cement gives me the lift to reach the wall.
I touch the stuccoed wall as I ride it. I can feel the wind blowing through my hair and pushing wind through my eye brows. My eyes water through from the corners as this movement is in high pace.
Unbelievably how I maneuver through such obstacles on a long board. But I can even Olly!
I nose Olly over a curb. I switch stance and pop shove it over some steps and down a hand rail!
I'm astonished with my ease.
I'm calm with every push and turn.
I turn into this strip mall and a security guard try's to stop me and I kick him in the stomach as I'm trying to push my board and he falls to the ground.
Another guard comes out of the building and radios a call.
Red and blue lights flashing and sirens coming from every direction.
I start pushing through the alleys. A fence is laid down on its side with a couple posts still standing so it slated like a quarter ramp. I take it and to my surprise I the other side of the fence is an empty pool!
I'm pumping and grinding! I'm 50/50 on the coping of that pool. Grinning ear to ear as a side of my face is lit from the Sparks coming off my trucks. I pop out of the pool and ride the sidewalk down the side of the house and I'm on down the street.
Pushing my way to a downtown area!
I can see the lights of the high rises ahead of me. And a few very tall businesses where banks and realtors work. People in suits and dresses walking under the trees and street lights of this district.
"Click clack click clack click clack" the sounds of skateboard wheels running the sidewalk. I'm disrupting people on their lazy strolls through the city. Never wavering as I push through.
I look behind me and there's red and blue lights coming closer in the distance.
It's only a moment of time and they will be upon me.
Nose Ollie the bus stop bench. Grind the curb. Ride the down hill into a parking garage. Deeper. Another level deeper. A car pulled out in front of me and I jump from my board and run over the top of the car.
Up the hood. Over the carriage and down the trunk. Three steps in total and I'm back to my wooden platter. Rolling on polyurethane wheels and I cut the corner and come to the bottom level.
I stand in the dark a moment. Fluorescent lights illuminate the drop where I came in. I can see everything so vividly. This high I'm on is like no other I have ever felt.
There is a door way there in the shadows. I go to it. Push the button and it opens.
It's an elevator. I step in and await the the destination.
It opens and there is a man just in view of the door. I walk out and check both directions and since it's clear I walk over to him.
He is sitting in a Japanese rock garden. It's cleanly raked around him a perfect circle in white sands with no footprints leading into him. There are twelve rocks surrounding him. Each of a similar color and sized differently.
Some you could sit on as though the "thinking man", some were as big as plant pots. The sands were raked around them as swirls connecting them together like wind bars in a Japanese tattoo. The sky above us was tranquil with a galaxy above us. Vivid with technocolor.
I was taking notice of the magenta and green in what looked comparable to our own Milky Way. A satellite passed wrapped in gold foil and black windows. Antennas with blinking lights. It felt like a world apart from the one I had just walked away from in the basement of this lower parking lot.
The rock garden was surrounded by clear glass about three foot tall and the man inside it, in the middle had his back to me underneath a cherry blossom tree with these death moths flying around underneath it.
A death moth has a skull painted between its wings. My eyesight was precise with the details.
Cautiously walking the square of this garden, in hopes of catching glimpse of this person sitting so calmly in its arrangements.
Haunched over as if meditating with both palms on his knees. Sitting in Indian style, wearing combat boots, camouflage cargo pants with them tucked into the boots. Hair like a leisurely relaxed samurai. Pulled back tight on the top, and long and flowing over his back, he wore a Run DMC
t-shirt.
He looked up at me as I made my way around him to face him.
He was me.
He wasn't me. But he was. He was me.
He looked a bit far from me at the moment, but he was definitely me. Or I knew he was me. Or he looked like he was me yet you would never find me sitting around like this man, in a rock garden.
I like chaos. I like fast moving forced motions. This man couldn't be me.
"What is your name Demon?" I said. "What is this place and why are we here?"
He smiled.
I watched him as he kindly looked at me smiling with his eyes.
"Who are you?," I said, "and why do you have my face?"
He smiled and looked at the sand.
He picked up a handful of sand and it ran through his fingers.
"Much is different here. Don't you think?" He said, "As I pick it up, it runs through my grasping hand. I can not keep enough pressure on it all to hold it in place. It runs through everything, landing as gently as it was once more."
And as the sand landed back to the garden, the dip in the sand was filled as though he had never pulled it from its place at all.
"You call me demon. You conjured me." He smiled, with laughing eyes. " you have conjured me up. You're the magician." And he looked me in the eyes and smiled. His teeth were pearly white and perfect.
He was me. Like me. But not me.
"Why do you look like me?"
"I dunno. You should ask yourself. I've been waiting for you. I knew you would come. Eventually."
I said, "You knew? You knew I would come?"
"Yes, I knew you would come. You have been searching a very long time. The answer has been with you forever. I laugh now just wondering why you have been searching for something that you've always had." He laughed at me again.
"What am I looking for?"
He smiled, "you don't know?" Amused he picked up some sand again and let it fall through his fingers again.
"Well? What am I looking for?!!"
"We are a people comprised of every single person you have ever met. Ever read about. Ever watched on tv. We are a gesture that you learned watching family and friends commit to each other. We are every stereotype that has came before you. We are." He smiled with his eyes again. "We are you. And you have been searching for you your whole life."
"What do you want?"
I was nervous. Almost like shaking. You know, just line right before you get into a fight? Wobbly knees and fingernails digging into the palms of your hands. I was ready to fight. I was ready for something. Something to pop off.
An anxiety overcame me.
"You have been searching all your life for yourself and now that you're here, you're speechless?"
"Who are you?"
"I am you. And you have had me in some of the damndest places over the years. This isn't what I want. This isn't anything close to where I ever wanted to be. I cannot believe we have come to this place. The way we came to this place. It angers me."
He spun from cross legged sitting a full 360* degrees into a standing position. He looked at me.
Not at me. Just through me.
"You must be stopped! We cannot live like this any longer!" He said, "you must be arrested!"
He jumped over the glass and swung life away at my face.
I tried to dodge him, but he slightly connected the tip of my chin.
I stumbled backward and seen him try to grasp me again. He was like a ninja. Quick and speedy. Every move was a counter to my move and a connection. I tried to laugh it off but every time I did it was wasted energy, that I needed.
Kick. Punch. Block.
Kick, block, punch.
Grapple.
"Why are we fighting?!" I said.
He just grunted and kept throwing punches and kicks. Never ending never ceasing to connect.
The elevator doors opened and what seemed like a hundred sherifs and uniformed officers came out of it.
They just kept coming.
"You must die! So I can live!" He said, "I hate all that you've done to us."
I looked at the blossom tree and petals were falling to the gardens sands and as they fell the sand was eating them. Not allowing them to settle on its white ocean. The waves of sand ever changing. Eating them like ships in Neptune's Storm.
The law was overcoming me. Not only did I have to fight this dude, but I had to fight them as well. Night sticks in hand, they kept giving me blows when I was open. I was pushed to the edge of the building and I looked down.
The street below was filled with red and blue blinking lights.
I thought there was definitely no escape. Across the this roof was a building adjacent to mine.
I pushed through the angry cops and this fighting 'me' and ran to it.
I jumped to a fire escape from the building. I was for sure I had escaped. But I never made it.
I jumped. I did with or without enough power to make it. My hand just missed the railing.
I clipped my head on the next floor. And again on the next rail an with my body being mangled i hit the next one still. I remember just fighting for a hold on any one of those hand rails.
The steps were rusting at every level. And when my head would hit a cloud of red would disperse from the clatter.
*************

They say, if you die in a dream, you die.
I was asleep in my top bunk and in the dream, I jumped. In real life, I jumped as well. From my bed into a cinder block wall on the other side of the room.
From there I bumped my head on the metal table and then the stool that was bolted to the floor.
I was screaming in my dream. And I was screaming in real life.
I had a couple of goose eggs on the side of my head, and some cauliflower ear for about a week or so but everything went back to normal.
Physically.
Mentally, something happened as well.
I never want to face myself in a dream again. I can tell you that much.
I would like to think I did die in that cell. That something with in died for sure. I'm not sure if I will ever know.
  Needless to say, I have never liked sleeping on the top bunk ever again.
   My roommate was deported and still my fondest memory of him was how scared he was to awake to that.
   He thought he was going to get into trouble for it, but when the guard opened our cell door, I was laughing hysterically over the whole thing.
    There was an awkward breakfast the next morning as I had to explain the bumps and the dream to my cell mates. I'm sure there was a few who thought it was all bullshit.
   Whatever.
  Good night.

5172016

Funny thing about dreams like that is that there is a lot of truth in them. They stick with you. Even 9 years later I remember it vividly. I remember the smells of the street air. The dank moist moldy stench of the parking garage.
I remember all the colors of the universe above me in the sky. I remember the smell of his breath as he told me he was angry with me as he pulled me close in grappling.
I was surely angry about where I was. I had put myself in a real tight spot.
I was in jail, with no answer for how long I was going to be there. How long it was going to be for me to get sentenced and just go to prison.
I'm sitting in shambles. No money. 4 states away from anyone I knew and just waiting. In a place with no tobacco. No drugs of any kind. And everyone in here was angry.
And for what?
Not paying my child support? Really?
My daughters mother had told me that she was remarried and leaving the state and calling all the time, caused problems and that she didn't need anything from me anymore. They were moving and to not bother writing and calling or sending gifts.
I did cause problems. And if I didn't cause them, I certainly wasn't helping matters in her relationship. I wanted to be there but nothing was working for me there. There weren't any tattoo shops there at the time.
I was high as hell when she told me these things. It hurt.
We ended the phone call.
And years have gone by. Why would South Dakota be pursuing me after so many years. She said she didn't want anything from me and that I couldn't contact my daughter, so why should I pay? She cut me off and I should have to pay still?
I honestly didn't get it.
I don't get to have parental rights. Yet I get to sit in jail over it?
Maybe I was high? Maybe I had things all mixed up. Maybe I had a bullshit story. Maybe I had it all mixed up.
Yet here I was. In a predicament which has impeded any forward movement in my life. I may have had it sooo good getting wasted everyday and trying to get laid all the time and on course for definite self destruction, but I was way happier there than I was here.
I weighed in at 168 lbs when I came into jail. I was drinking everyday. I was hating my life totally. And I was happier still than I was being 3 months sober in jail.
At least out there I had the choice to run from my problems. In here I have the choice to count tiles or count bricks. Either way, there was no running from your thoughts.
Being in jail with nothing but time, you get time to look at all the angles. Think about whatever you did. Or didn't do. Which in my case, kind of ironic.
This particular jail carries only two rec room activities.
One was basketball. A very violent game of inhouse b ball was just too much for a meth head like myself. It left me out of breath very quickly and it hurt quite a bit with all the elbows and shoving.
If you want to get tough, play basketball. It's quite the work out.
The second thankfully, was a hackysack.
What???
That's right! A hackysack! Dude, that fourth month was so good. I didn't know for the first three months that they even had one. And they did.
It took a week for me to relearn some of the movements. Relearn some balance. Relearn how to move outside of 4x6. I kicked the crap out of the thing.
Every moment that the basketball court was open, I was in there kicking hacks. And I wasn't alone. There were some guys who were as happy as me that they didn't have to play basketball.
A bunch of hippy ass pot smokers and meth heads in one circle just kicking life away and finally enjoying our moments in jail.
New tricks were learned and some were made up. But connections were being made with me. Foot and eye connections. Mind and body connections were being made.
When I wasn't in the rec room, I was reading. I was reading a lot. I would read a chapter from every book I collected from the book cart that I could get.
Mostly 2 Louis la Moore books. A Joyce Meyer. Another one by Joel Olsteen. And of course the bible. And the holy Quran.
There were a couple self help books on how to be an assertive person. Or how to be assertive. I think that was the title.
The only books that revolved in that room were the Louis' books. They were generally short so a chapter went pretty fast.
I was building the foundation of a new home.
All the while, I was writing long winded letters to my friends in AZ. About my dreams. About my thoughts and wild emotions.
I went to court once in all the time I was there so far. And they weren't giving me any hints about my next appearance or when that would be.
I was just happy to have a hackysack and I was starting to care less about wether or not I had an escape.
I was okay. I just needed a hackysack and my books and everything would work itself out.
I needed to learn a new way to live and I knew with all my heart that I needed to get it together. I made so many mistakes.
That's what I was there for. My mistakes and I needed to make less of them. For real though.

18
Picking up the news paper, I read about the weather that was coming for the week. It was going to be cold all week.
Like it mattered, I was going to be inside the whole week anyways, right?
I was not going to fight the weather at all. I wasn't going to be out driving in the snow or walking in it for that matter.
I remember looking down at the map of the United States and seeing weather forecasts in the water color print as they showed the different temperatures in each state and how the flow seemed to get hotter the further south you went. It was a 87 degrees in Arizona in the month of March and was going to be a blistering 91 in Florida.
I remember looking at the weather all over the United States wondering where I wanted to live when I got out of here. Where would I want to go?
Did I want for Arizona still? I did miss my friends. Or would I like to move to a place those friends would like to visit?
I don't know. Maybe Georgia? Or Tennessee? Maybe somewhere away from the population where nobody goes but wants to visit at least once. Like Alaska.
People are interested in visiting Alaska. Right? Sure it's cold, but maybe it has all those Northern lights. And 24 hours of dark or day. The sun just revolves around the town your in. And it never goes down really in the summer time. I've heard people talk about it.
How about Hawaii.
We watch stupid shows in jail. Like Americas funniest videos. Or ironically, cops. Some dudes are interested in MNBC's prison shows as they are scared of what they are in for and are taking notes on how things will be in their future.
I thought that shit was dumb. Some people watched Dog the Bounty Hunter. I would watch intently but not the Dog. But his surroundings.
Hawaii looks rad. Surrounded by ocean and palm trees. Ratty little neighborhoods and a mixture of old and new. The people seem so friendly there and want to help but still have some loyalty to their friends.
I wished that maybe I could live there.
My friends would come to Hawaii, right? Probably every chance they got.
Or how about Louisiana? That place looks like I could move there and make a good living. Who knows? A guy I was locked up with said that property was cheap there since Katrina. The hurricane demolished a lot of things there. And that cockroaches have taken the area over.
I don't know if that is true. But he lost me at cockroach. Those are scary.
I would rather battle mice than cockroaches any day. Arkansas might be nice though. It's gulf water seems like it may be nice.
I was living in my imagination.
Let me tell you some facts. I knew I wanted to escape. I wanted to lose myself in a fantasy. A fantastic one for sure.
I realize that I'm in a jail for a felony and that I had some recourse. I would not be allowed to get a passport. I wasn't going to be allowed to live out my life the way I was before. Being in jail was going to change the way I lived altogether.
Not being able to go out of the country was going to be an issue for me. Not being able to vote.....
Not a problem. I didn't really do any of that shit anyways. They give us two monkeys to choose as if it's a choice. The only choice I see is gathering with the millions of people who are going to hate the decision anyways for the next four years.
The question really for me was, "what was I going to live like when I finally do get out of here?"
Where was I going to live when I get out of here?
Then I realized that I thought that there was a life after all of this. And not one blown out of proportion, but a real life. All the sudden I was to make a promise to myself.
I was going to live large or be all out rockstar tattooer guy or whatever I thought I was. But I was going to get out of this. Eventually I would.
And what kind of guy should I forge while I have time to think about it. Where will I set course? Where will I end?
How was I going to do it?
I told myself to dream. Dream big and make goals! That's what assertive people do. Make goals and walk with purpose.
I kept looking at that map in the paper. Watching weather and looking at forecasts and watching the settings in the things I could see from the television.
How to carry myself was an issue. I had a hard time not talking like a biker/sailor/street kid. I needed a vocabulary.
I needed more. My brain became so hungry. It had been filled with nonsense for so long. I needed to delete a lot of stuff. I didn't know how.
By now, I finally found a BIG BOOK.
I was reading a chapter a day still. I had several books. None more helpful.
A chapter called THE PROMISES came up and it was the most uplifting chapter in the book for me at the time. And then the WIVES. It gave me much insight.
I knew I was a certain way. And I wanted all the promises that the book promised. I was lucky to have it.
Here is a little diddy that has nothing to do with any of these things. It's by Scrubius Pip. Called Broken Promises. Maybe you know about him. If not, you do now.

I told myself a lot of promises. I dreamed up a lot of scenarios that weren't ever going to happen or actually did happen. Either way, it was a fine line between lying and dreaming.

                          19

    Oh the torment that the mind goes through while detoxing in jail. It's funny how time just gets to you.
    At first, I was content just sleeping away pages off the calendar. My dreaming very lucid. Dreams they were.
   The restful sleep that most people would question. I slept through meals. I slept between meals and now I couldn't sleep. I had to move, or I would be up through the night.
    I had to put in a lot of hack time. That's for sure. I would be up at two in the morning doing push-ups and sit-ups. Jumping jacks and burpees.
   I can't stand the idea of burpees today. Or kettle bell workouts. I hate those today. Or Spider-Man push-ups.
   We didn't have kettle bells in jail. But I had a pillow case and a shit ton of books. I was putting on weight. Not much. But enough for me to notice.
    But these things kept you out of your mind.

   Walking the block.
   Dudes literally walk the block every minute out of their room. They just wore a hole in the concrete floor as they paced the length of every wall. Pacing square around everyone while they watched tv or played cards.
   All these things happen to try not to think about anything real. I always thought these dudes were locked up and still trying to walk away from their problems.
    Eventually though, I would slip. And I would start the thinking.
   Was I wrong?
   Am I here cause I did something. Or is it because I did not? Should I have never stopped paying? Should I have listened to her? Was that something she actually said it was it some of the things I actually heard minus the other stuff she had said?
   How many other things are wrong with me? How many other times could I have found myself in jail over the thousands of other things I've done in life?
    How lucky am I? How unlucky am I?
   There were people in this cell block who totally deserved to be here. I felt as though I didn't.
   I didn't rape anyone. Or a child for that matter.
   I didn't beat my wife. I didn't steal from anyone's house. I didn't steal someone's possessions or vandalize anything. I didn't beat anyone to a pulp or get caught with drugs.
   Man, I was lucky to not be found with drugs. There were even a few guys in there who took phone calls and had a few photos of them with certain people.
   This crime is called conspiracy. Just talking to someone on the phone can put you in jail for a long time. Almost five to ten years just for thinking about selling drugs.
   But, I didn't do any of that.
   What did I do though?
    My conscience started working again. The more I read, the more I realized that I did do a lot of things. Some were a lot worse than any of these guys. The clouds were leaving my mind. The veils were being lifted.
   I stole from my daughters. I wasn't paying or helping out with their lives. I wasn't in their lives teaching them what a man should be like.
   I wasn't being much of a man at all even to my son, when I had him with me.  Sure I went to work, but I was never on my own feet.
   I was up but I was being carried by random romances and bags of forget. And oh, how I wish I could forget. I was at a loss.
   Sitting in my head. Looking at pictures and memories of old times wondering if I would have got locked up for that or not.
   Or should have got my head kicked in for that. Or not.
   Sometimes, maybe I should have kicked his head in for that.
   I thought about a lot of things.
    Maybe I was mad about. Or sad over. Or never thought twice about.
   Oh yes. When you sit in jail, you cling to all the things that were while you were free. All the things that happened before you got locked up. All the things that you loved. All the things that burnt you. All the things that made you who you are.
   And you don't want to lose that. That's who you are. You hold onto all these things.
   You could be locked up for ten years, and when you get out, hope it was going to be all the same. But it never is. Being locked up in a time capsule. While everything you know is getting old. Moving on with the flow of their lives and for the guy who is locked up, it's like he left yesterday.
    So, I found out that if you call someone from the pay phone, for the first time, they will give you five minutes free. That's enough time to talk to whoever and let them
Know your in jail and have them send money or whatever. After that, you have to buy phone time with that particular phone number.
   I was there 4 months before I found out. Jajaja I honestly didn't know.
   I called James and let him know, and he gave me a few other numbers. And the phone cut out.
   I called my my son and his mother answered. I wanted to talk to him. Hear his voice so bad. But he wasn't home. He was out playing with one of his lil homies. She listened. And she told me all the right things.
   You know. He's doing great. He's in grips hands and they didn't go without too much. He was doing well in school. And what not.
    Then she said, "Kevin, you really sound better. We miss you and I love you."
     My resentments got the best of me. "You don't love me, Cyndi. You never did." I told her and the phone hung up.
    Time was out.
    Her telling me she loved me just pissed me off. All the things I remembered just would t allow me to believe that she ever did. It hurt to know that she was further than she ever was.
   And she could tell me that she loved me? How dare her.
    I took it so personal. She wanted to get at me. Under my skin again.
   I am not writing about Cyndi.
   I'm writing about the mind of an addict just losing control of his mind while losing himself in jail. So I found it again.
    My insanity. The anger. The madness that made me feel normal. That even a few kind words, true or not, could set me back from any progress I had made.
    We haven't been together for two years. She laughed at me behind my back about getting stabbed. Kicked me when I was down more times than I care to share and her telling me that was just another knife in the back as far as I'm concerned.
   So no books were read that day. No letters were written. I just took that madness to the hackysack. Learned to roundhouse shoot and took it out properly. Then I would get back to my room and do a shit ton of burpees, sit-ups and push-ups. Dips.
    I had forgotten what feelings do to people much less myself. A very or happy we're my only two emotions. Or feelings. And before that phone call, I was contemplating weather I was different or indifferent.
   There was a clock in sight from my room. From everyone's room. They definitely wanted you to know that you had nothing but time. And a lot of it.
    No amount of exercise was gonna pull me from this familiar feeling.
   Anger is a fire. It makes you feel alive. It takes the dull and it blurs it. Heat and friction react with the mind like the oil in the engine turning with gasoline. It just seems to take you further.
   I grappled with myself over those words for weeks. How could she love me and turn on me and kick me when I was around? What's to love about me now? I'm in jail. I have no money. No drugs. I barely have myself.
    I eventually evened out.
   I went back to concentrating on my books. Searching for a spirit. I was happy if it was Devine, but I would settle for my own.
    There was a God. I was sure of it.
    I came across this in Hebrews 12.

God Disciplines His Children
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,

"My son, do not make light of the Lord's discipline,
    and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
    and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son."[a]
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. 13 "Make level paths for your feet,"[b] so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.

   I was lost. I was lame. And I didn't like my situation at all. And since I had no father to beat my ass and set my course straight I was going to have to settle for this scripture.
  It was all I had.
    These words I still hold dear to my heart. I know, its real, because I experienced it.
    Reading the Quran, I was surprised to find similar writings including the rapture, and the story of Virgin Mary and Jesus.
    Life is crazy. Life in jail just drives you crazy.
    I went to jail and found Jesus.

20
Searching for light is a normal thing when you're in the darkness. Wether your looking for a light switch, a candle, or a damn match, we all search for it.
My life was in dire straits for sure. I had lived the replicas demise over and again. And each time further in depths.
My demise. Over and again throughout my life had lead me back into the grasp of the courts and now I was at the mercy of a judge as to wether there was hope for me yet.
According to well documented paperwork, I looked as though I had nothing. That I was doing nothing with my life and that I would be unfit to take care of myself without supervision! Much less anyone else.
I was unfit to take care of myself?!!
I'm a thirty+ year old adult!
I went to court finally after four and a half months. And when I went there they went over the documents of my failures to contact child support. Or to answer them. Police reports from my past ten years.
The financial report which claimed that I had no assets. No money. No home. No savings.
In those last twelve years I carried no bank accounts and no savings. They proved that I was not financially able to pay for my own lawyer and that they had reason to appoint me one.
His name was Grassby.
He gave me all the necessary copies of paperwork and came to chat with me to let me know that if I wanted to fight the charges, I would need a lot of paperwork over the years, I wouldn't have had a fighting chance.
I was over a barrel here.
I knew what I did. Or what I didn't do and wether I was told so or not, there was no record of the conversation and these proceedings have gone too far forward to ever go back now.
No calm before the storm. No recognizable spidey sense. I was just fucked. Like a fresh fish in prison, I was going to take it. All of it.
There is no amount of lying. No amount of manipulation. No amount of staggering stamina in any such fight was going to curve this into my favor.
The next time I was to see the judge, I was told it would be best for me to stay silent. Not to try and shift blame or tell stories. Just sit quietly and let Mr. Grassby do all my talking for me.
That next month went by with me waiting every morning for the name call after breakfast to see if I went to court or not. With them never calling my name.
I spent my days with routine book reading and letter writing. Burpees and regular exercises and hackysack. And more book reading.
My mind was hungry. It's like I had starved it for so long. Like a man walking out of the desert after a very long time finds a creek or a river, and just shoves his face in it and drinks and drinks.
This was my mind.
Reading out loud was teaching me to put some sentences together and as my comprehension seemed to get better, it seemed as though I was retaining most of it as well. I got up to reading like nine different books a day.
None of them taught me how to talk myself out of jail while in court. That one would have been great! But I do not believe that such a book exists.
I was a cliché jailhouse student. I wanted to be smarter than I really was.
I didn't know how good I really had it. I despised the very situation that I had been praying for.
I was clean. Detoxing from all the poison I was feeding myself. Away from all the distractions I found in people. Away from anything I had known that I found harmful.
I needed a light, and like King David, I found it in 'the delight of the All Mighty'. I was no prison messiah, I was no missionary.
I was like a child. Truly reborn.
Joyce Meyer was telling me that I needed to clean house. Joel Olsteen was talking to me through his delightful insights to God and how he was going to change me and my life.
It's funny. I would mockingly read his book in the exact voice he uses before ever seeing the evangelist on television.
I got a hold of a book of the Buddha called The Miracle of Mindfulness. Then I started seeing some similarities to a way of thinking that kind of fit me a little better.
There is a God. There are many of them. And the funny thing is they each have an evil deity that they battle with. Or many of them.
I needed to see this similarity.
They all want us to be obedient and subservient to only them. To be submissive and sober and clear minded. To be a people for the people. To be of service to your home and your community.
This book wasn't a lot of those things. But it was. It was all of those things just worded a lot less like commandments and more like common sense.
The common sense I have lacked forever. My friend Brian Bender practiced Buddhism and he always said these profound sayings that would just blow my mind. The kind that made me think about what I was doing. Or saying. My life was connected to many.
I hated where I was, but I was exactly where I needed to be. If they would have released me back to the wild, I can see myself doing what I know and winding up exactly right where I started.
Probably with yet another charge.

                             21

   They were all in the living room. I recognized some of them others I called uncle or auntie. Cousin, brothers and sisters.
  Evidently there was an intervention going on and it was in my house.
   My mom was directing traffic. She was assigning family members different rooms. She gave my great grandpa the upper levels and gave all my cousins the lower levels. And all intermediate family members the main floor.
    I was grumbling about what they were proposing to do. They were going to clean my house up. My mom said that if it looked like junk, just throw it out. Make room for new stuff.
   My cousin Tony was supposed to keep me busy while it was all going down.
   I walked down the hall. I remember being pissed about what my mother was saying. If it looked like junk, it needed to be thrown out. How could she possibly know what was junk. She didn't know me.
   Hell, I had never seen her in my house ever. I have never even invited her to this home.
   I had family members pulling up carpet in the hallway. I could hear the carpet nails releasing carpet and it angered me. I could see all the spilled drink stains as the dust cleared in the hall. My sisters were pulling old paintings off the wall.
   "It's smut Kevin. You don't need to be looking at this stuff all the time."
   They were throwing painting out a window and down to a dumpster.
   I remember wondering when I got them. I don't remember even having trashes cans in my house let alone dumpsters outside.
   With all the windows open and all the curtains pulled back, sunlight was illuminating everything and I could see a lot of these things for what they were.
    I must have passed 40 doors as I hit the stairs. I had some mint paint on the walls. It was smoke stained from all the cigars and and cigarettes and weed smoke. It was like brown on top of mint and in the corners and the base, and as I slid my hand down the handrail, I found it to be somewhat sticky. Unpolished and rough. I walked the into a room.
   There were people I had never met before, in my house, just removing things. Things like clutter. Dirty clothes and lost items. Flower vases. Knickknacks. Trinkets and what not.
  Some of these things, I had heavy attachment to. I didn't want to let them go. I kept grabbing them and putting stuff into keepsake boxes.
   I didn't want these people in my house. They were throwing my things away.
   I went room to room. They were scrubbing walls or pulling wall paper. They were cleaning my house. Finding things I thought I had lost. Uncovering things that I had swept under the carpet years ago.
   I would walk through these many rooms and just look around. Noticing the emptiness in each of them. I would grunt and I could hear it echo through the rooms. I felt like screaming.
   But I respected these people. I didn't want to offend anyone. And they were helping me out.
    I decided to open a door in the wall. It was a secret passage that was dusty and cobweb covered. I could see the studs that ship lap was nailed to.
   Left turn. Right turn. A set of stairs leading up under the stairs and up. Then a right turn and down a corridor and then a t off. I choose right.
    I walk down the corridor and quietly step up to the end of the wall. I peak as the bookshelf pushes out and nobody is in this room so I step out and shut the book case behind me.
   I walk into the kitchen.
  My mom is throwing everything out. My spices. Old food.
   "This is all rotten, Kebin. Dis table is junk! Chrow et away!"
   "Do you know how many parties this table has seen, mom? How many times I've sat at this table by myself and drank myself into oblivion?" I said, "I could never throw this away."
   "It's chit! It's supposed to have four legs! It has three! It is no good. None of da chairs match, Kebin. Chrow it all away! It's no good."
   "You just want me to throw everything I love out mom!" I was pissed.
   I walked into the entertainment room. I knew this room would comfort me. I've had so many parties here. It was always my favorite room. Filled with game consoles and billiard tables and bar room games.
   The memories made here.
   I walked in and it looked so different. They were bricking up the broken pieces of my favorite place to get high. The entertainment center. Where I hid a lot of liquor. Where I snorted a shit ton of lines. Where I kept my water bong!
    NOOOOOOOO!
   I looked to my left and they were carrying my bed out to the dumpster.
   My bed???!! No not my bed.
   My ancestors dumped the bed on the side of the dumpster. In the light it proved to be used. Stained and dirty. Dried puddles of god knows. It should have been thrown out years ago.
   The dumpsters were filled to the tops. Everything I ever collected,  junk or not, was stacked in huge piles.
    My mother and Tony came out carting some more stuff. I was like, "you threw everything away! What am I going to do now, mom! I have nothing now."
   "You neber had anyting! It's all junk! Now you hab room pot new tings!" She said, "Dis is sad now. Jewel see! Poor better tomorrow's!"
   They walked away and back into the house. I moved the mattresses off their sides and laid there a moment. I starred into the sunlight and then a shadow arose above my head.
   It was the sound of an angel as she said, "Kevin?"
   The black silhouette of a woman was standing in the way of the sun. And I recognized her well. Her blonde hair and fair skin.
   She spread wings of feathers. Golden  lined wings, the feathers illuminated by the sunlight and translucent enough to allow the light of day to shine through.
    "You have come so far. Now that your house is clean, there is so much work ahead of you. Find God. Know him. He has been with you all along. You have a long journey ahead of you.  So much is possible. Make straight paths for your feet and put yourself in HIS hands."
    "Okay." I said.
   I laid in the bed and started more at the sun and tried to go to sleep. And the farther I feel to sleep the more I awoke in the bed of my own cell with the sun protruding through the window.
   Just in time to eat breakfast.

  So many things to ponder. So many things to over think. But the funny thing was, I didn't want for anything after that dream.

                        22

"You can't soar with the eagles, if you're pecking the ground with the chickens!" ~John Wayne

     There's some truth to that.
    I didn't want to get cooped up with all these cocks running the yard in this cell block. It's easy to get caught up in the little dramas unfolding when you're bored in jail.
    He said- he said and the other stupid intimidating things with people facing short periods of crime time. It's easy.
   It's easy to get offended. It's easy to get mad when everyone could care less about your case than you do. Nobody wants to listen to your shit.
   When you're in jail, you don't want to let people know something pisses you off. You don't want to let them know you're scared. You never want to be known as a pussy or a fag.
   Sorry if your gay.
   But in jail, you don't let anybody call you fag. Even if you are one.
   Being gay in jail isn't as acceptable as it is in prison. There are a lot of homophobic little fucks in jail. And everyone is so easily ready to prove that they are all heterosexual and manly. Enough to point out any feminine feature you may have.
    There was a lot of this stuff going on around my cell block. I thought it was pretty dumb. And there were a few dudes around who were likeminded.
    I would go to my room a lot. Stay away from trouble and do my whistle thing.
    My lawyer came to visit me and check in and tell me my case was going to be on hold for awhile. That I was up for evaluation and that if things went well, there may be better options for me.
    So a lady came in to see me a couple days later. Asked a bunch of questions about my life and my relationships and more importantly my relationship with drugs. After all, the reason I was in my predicament was for failing a drug test.
   A week later I went to court. They believed it may be best that I endure an intense drug treatment program and while doing so, I was to refrain from doing drugs, refrain from committing any crimes and to not associate with any felons committing any crimes.
    I was elated. I had been in jail for seven months and I was going to have to do six months in a half way house.
    I didn't know anyone. I didn't have a friend anywhere in the state of South Dakota but I did have one to call.
    I called James.
    James and Gilbert were some lads that came through for me. Sent me 200 hundred bucks and boy was I grateful.
     One of the techs took me around to Walmart so I could get a few clothes since all I had was some elastic band khakis and a white t-shirt.
   I also bought a few cheap acrylic paints and some brushes. They say forever.
   The house is no longer there, but it was called The Friendship House. It housed thirty to forty dudes all taking classes and trying to follow through on their promise to do the same as I. Get better and find a way to live without getting high.
    This program offered a lot. Corrective Thinking classes. A class on criminal behavior. This class taught me more about myself than most. Now I knew why I got off on getting away with shit. I always did.
   It offered a parental class.
   A relationship class. A class teaching healthy boundaries in relationships. How to set them. How to forget them. And how to be flexible in them.
   A grieving class. Learning to deal with grief was a big trigger for me. I was grieving a lot of things in my life.
    A step work class. Concentrating mostly on the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
    They made us write so much stuff about ourselves. About things that pissed us off. How we dealt with our issues.
   There was so much writing.
   When I graduated the program, top of the class, I was allowed to go home. And I did
   I went back to Arizona and James let me stay at his house. I went to the fire pit and burned everything. Or I would have so much more to write about.
It was like releasing it. Never having to go down that road again. Never having to cross those bridges ever again.
    Going to treatment for my drug abuse was the best thing I ever did. The closest I ever felt to going to college. Going to jail first cleaned me up enough to know, I didn't want to go back there. Being in treatment knowing that this was my way out of a lot more than just going to court. And the government payed for it. I wasn't going to waste their money.
    I whole heartedly swallowed everything I could from that experience. I had 14 months to put everything up. To give myself a break and learn more about who I was than any other time in my life.
   Christmas came. I got triggered by my ex and my life went runaway stupid for two weeks. I was back in Rapid City January 6th and restarted my clean date.
    Tucson wasn't going to work for me.
    I had to put myself as far away from there as possible if I was going to follow through with any promises I told myself. Cyndi was my trigger and in rapid city, I felt safer. Nothing was going to work for me doing what I was doing.