SENTENCED, BUT NOT SHAMED

In a few hours my daughter and I will make the hour and a half drive to a small Kansas town and to a modest, slightly antiquated jail to visit my only son; her only brother.

He has been housed at this particular detention center for just under three months, although he has been a resident of two others previously since his arrest in early December.  So far, this one has been the worst.

I've groomed my outer sensibility to adjust to our visits ,such as they are, in these dim and claustrophobic places, and I've even acquired a sense of humor about the situation to help ameliorate the raw reality that begs my attention then mocks my attempts to sustain it.

 As I sit in the waiting area beneath the high front window where the visitors of the inmates must sign in and relinquish their driver's licenses or I.D.'s, I can look through the glass partition past the bored and mechanical movements of the officer on duty and scan the black and white security monitors that canvass the various sections of the facility.

I do this every time hoping to catch a candid glimpse of my son as he moves among the caged populace.  I want to see if he is smiling or laughing perhaps or whether he is in conversation with anyone.  I want to make sure he is not alone.

He is a very large young man standing nearly 6 foot 6 inches and weighing well over three-hundred pounds, so I comfort myself with the thought that certainly his size alone might help keep him safe.  I purposely don't make an effort to find out visually if I am wrong.

In spite of his physically mammoth frame picking him out from a grainy image among a dozen or so identically-clad men is more difficult than one would think.

When I see him we joke that far from the illusion of making him appear even larger, those horizontal stripes tend to produce the opposite effect. In this jungle that uniform is camouflage.  In this jungle, he disappears.

I have been making these journeys to various facilities for three years now with the exception of a short year-long respite between his first eighteen months and his current term.

As an addict to prescription pain medication, he cannot seem to quiet the accelerated cravings or stem the rampaging voices within him that tell him he is no good in this world just as he is; so that before too long, he is back in the crooked and loudly mad game of prescription fraud, outwardly hoping he will not get caught; silently praying he will.

I know far more about the conditions and protocols of detention centers than I ever wanted or believed I would know.

I know that when someone you love with all of your soul is locked inside, you also reside there.

I know that when you are looking through bullet-proof glass into the eyes you have known since birth and yet unable to touch the hand or face  or feel the faint trace of mottled air against your cheek after a son's kiss, holes are rent in your soul that applied optimism cannot repair.

I know that people judge; that in spite of themselves they can't overcome the grimy prejudice that those who heave in the belly of iniquitous delusion are immured by a mendacity only God can forgive.

I know that the guilt of the sinner is distributed among his loved ones like boxed meals of sorrow to be eaten without shame and carried without complaint.  It is the sacrificial supplication.

But out of reach I know lies the simple promise from the Cross.  The one that admonishes saints and sinners alike to put aside all pretension and disband the belief that in order to get to what is holy and good in this world one must be perfectly holy and good; that one must live only among the blessed and serve the meek.

I've seen the hollow eyes of ignorance as I move between the commonly accepted practice of moral living and the disturbing impenitence of those who share with my son the stagnant air of consequence in these inhospitable pens.

And I know now that these barbed and self-righteous appraisals  of who is just and who, condemned, are far more abundant outside the prison walls.

I do not fear the gaze from those others sitting alongside me in this sad institution awaiting our fifteen minutes of feigned happiness with our sons, daughters, husbands and fathers.  We greet each other in the subdued and humbled voices of the exposed.

Why we are there is never questioned.  How we survive the ride home always is.  But we don't speak of that.  It is rare that we speak at all.

But today I am making the long drive against the flat landscape of the Kansas plains and against the acceptance that I will be making many more of these sodden trips for an indeterminate period of time.

My son had court this morning and rather than being remanded to the extensive inmate rehabilitation program as was recommended by two other courts, he was sentenced to prison.

In August he will turn twenty-eight years old.  I will not know him again as a free man until he is well into his thirties.

There is a weighted measure of redemption here in spite of the staggering burden of hope denied, however; and it comes in the form of dignity.

To find within ourselves that thin offering of grace as it evolves within the purgative splendor of deep grief is crucial and is the determinant factor in a life well lived.

To recognize the inherent perfection of every soul on earth and refrain from judgment actualizes this principle.

To forgive is imperative and necessarily unceasing.

To know these things and to live by them liberates everyone no matter which side of the penitentiary walls we course.

Today will be hard, but not allowing myself to become transformed by this journey would be where the real shame would lie.  I can help carry the rest.

O.S.'s trig palin: What You Don't Know

This post was written for Open Salon in response to one trig palin had written about me yesterday evening.  I was compelled to set the record straight.  Those who read it on this site will undoubtedly be confused by it.  It was all tongue in cheek and meant to please the OS crowd.  If Open Salon is anything besides a writer's site, it is a social networking site.  I've already made some wonderful connections, and this particular one provided us with a new set of back steps as well as a new friend.
By the way, although I am sure it is obvious, trig palin is the name Steve Barber uses on OS....like I needed to tell you this....

Everyone on Open Salon knows and loves trig palin.

Okay.  Everyone knows trig palin.

For those who do, you understand.  For those who do not, you might want to think twice before revealing your true name and home address.

However, thanks to my impulsive resourcefulness, my husband and I know trig better than it is healthy for any sane human to know the insane.

But we had a problem.  Our back steps were collapsing.  It was a serious problem for me because they are just outside my studio doors and are my only recourse to our small patio and the promise of fresh air.  As fresh as it can get living in midtown K.C. anyway.

They say that desperation makes people do desperate things, and I have proven to be no exception to that theory.  Those warped and unsightly steps were having a major detrimental impact on my sanity as it relates to my ability to get the hell out of this house any day, at any hour, and for any reason and to do so from my own door.  I desperately needed an exit plan.


trig palin's expertise in that area was my ticket.  Of course, it was fairly obvious upon meeting him that the man had a few loose screws (many of which were used in the construction those back steps, no doubt), but he seemed like a good egg and after checking out his website:   Http://deckpro.atspace.com  it was clear the man knew what he was doing.  At least insofar as working with wood was concerned.  Ummm...Scratch that last reference.

 Trig arrived bright and er...um...early at nine o'clock on Saturday morning accompanied by his assistant, Nano, whom it was clear was the brains behind the duo.   For a man who stated outright that he is not used to having to get up in the morning until he was ready to do so, nine o'clock was like dawn to the poor sod; but he is a trooper and after two cups of coffee he got right to work.

Unfortunately, so did the fickle atmospheric conditions so that not long after the compressor was fired up, nail guns plugged in, saws and drills primed, the skies opened up in torrential objection.

This placed trig and myself inside the house for a well over an hour during which time I fed him bagels and coffee and let him peruse my portfolio while he feasted.  (Okay people.  Get your minds out of the gutter.  It was a legitimate portfolio.)

He asked me a lot of questions.  We discussed his music and watched a couple of his living room performances on Youtube.  For those who are not aware, in spite of his ongoing dance with insanity, the man is a wonderful singer/songwriter whose work is truly worth checking out.

But while we were sitting around the dining room table, I noticed that he kept fumbling with his cell phone.  Naturally, I assumed he had probably missed his shrink appointment or his group therapy meeting at Psychotics Anonymous and needed to reschedule, so I ignored it.  How was I to know he was secretly making photographic records of my artwork as well as my very movements?

And while Saturday was a wash, Sunday proved a very productive day for our trig, (he must have made contact with that shrink and picked up his meds.) and he, along with his helper, Nano, (who is hands-down the most adorable dog in the known universe!) worked like the madman that he is all the day long until the job was complete.

Nano palin

While I am now suspect of pretty much everything that oozes from trig palin's mouth, I must admit that he is a superb craftsman and is such a tenacious worker that I had to practically force-feed him a roast beef sandwich in between his nearly maniacal weilding of the nail gun, since he adamantly refused to take a break.  (No doubt the result of both missing the appointment with his shrink as well from guilt at having lied to me about the true reason he agreed so readily to do this job!)

And although our new steps are everything we had every dreamed they would be, having trig here for two days did take its toll on us.    

Bob and Susan before trig palin

Bob and Susan after trig palin

But just look at the end result!!  Was it worth it?  You bettcha!

I would hire this crazy artisan again in a heartbeat.....as soon as I am released from the rest home.

Why I Cannot Write Today

Last night the sky opened up and some celestial jokester let loose with over five inches of water in the overnight hours.

What does this mean to me?  It means the basement feigned the qualities of a swimming pool (which had probably been a life-long dream of the dreary little sub-space) ; a very filthy, hugely unsanitary swimming pool.

Of course, the entire aquatic transformation took place while my consciousness was wading through the deep waters of its own nocturnal delusions with these same wily gods taking hold of my attention in realms I have yet to find a map to.  So naturally, no human intervention was available till morning.  

However, the sump pump was a real champion and came to the rescue like some skinny, unimpressive, iron-based Don Quixote with too much time on it's hands...or components; thus sparing us the need for wet suits and water-wings.

Unfortunately, there remains yards and yards of oozing, black sludge, which the survivor in me keeps assuring my brain is entirely earth-based and not the blackened contaminates of raw sewage.  I choose to believe that story having spent several hours in it already.

I am sharing this because I can't share anything else.  I am too busy playing in the mud.

Yet in dealing with this natural bathospheric disaster, it occurred to me how many hats I wear.  Or, in this case, perhaps, goggles and scuba gear.  It is something we all share:  Flexibility.

So, during this little break that I am taking between doing the laundry and getting online quotes for submersibles, I went through some of my old, old drawings looking for this one.

It refers to that adaptable format of changeability, mask-wearing and the brilliantly distributed aspects of persona that have allowed me to be simultaneously both Susan, the writer/artist AND the sanitation-man's version of Jacques Cousteau.  Coincidentally, it even contains references to rubbish.

The poem is impossible to read in the illustration itself, which is why I learned how to type:

The faces that capture my eye

Pointedly fix on my need

To validate all that is human

Replete with my failures and greed

I court the world as a spy does

Varnished and fixed like the moon

Each gesture becomes a device

Befitting the face I assume

Suspect of everything foreign

I feign a contempt for debris

While secretly harvesting rubbish

To liberate remnants of me

* The drawing on the floor of the nervous smiley face confronting a gun has the caption: Go ahead!  Make me have a nice day!

The sun is supposed to return to us in full by tomorrow.  In the meantime, I'll be bailing.

OVERWRITERS ANONYMOUS

I have a confession to make:  In addition to being a word-aholic, I am an over-writer.  I write until I am so full of the words I craved in the hours before the feast that I cannot consider one syllable more without feeling decadent or risking serious intellectual heartburn.

So, I push myself away from the computer feeling a slight tightness in my head and a mild sense of bloating in my thoughts.

I worry that I probably wrote too much, that I've gained too much mental weight tasting all those rich vowels and salty consonants and wished I had exercised a little more restraint and avoided indulging in that one last sentence; however reduced in content I fooled myself into believing it was.

And then comes the inevitable and I say to myself:

"This is it.  I'm expanding inside like the universe and can't get my thoughts down fast enough to burn off the excess ideas.  I don't want to lie awake again tonight with literary indigestion; ruminating over that verbal concoction I devoured with such heady passion then tossing and turning against the burn of what was left unsaid.  I'm getting fat with ambition and if I go on like this, I'll be as big as a thesaurus in six months.  The expanded edition."

Yet by dawn, I am starving again.

And on it goes.  Day after day after day.

It is getting to the point that I think of little else.

I watch the chocolate sky before a deep summer storm and see poetry.

I listen to the velvety chatter at a party and hear the smooth blend of phonics usher in the delectable topic sentence for another blog.

I hear the buttery curl of words as they unravel in a foreign tongue and despair that I don't understand this extrinsic food.

I digest juicy, real-life stories and ponder name changes and clever obfuscations to broil a safe tale where no one gets burned.

I know I should enroll in Word Watchers, but isn't that what I am already doing?  How could watching them more make me crave them any less?

So, here I sit.  Plump with ripe options for this fruitless indulgence never minding that I often have to feed alone.

Not caring that fewer and fewer are able to stomach my distracted company and tend to recoil from the excessive girth of my ample vocabulary.  The one that I deliberately amassed one word at a time over many years through my gluttonous frenzy.

Lately, I have forced myself to consider cutting down on my intake of thoughts and the subsequent word-laden repasts that I share with such abandon.

No one else should feel obligated to ingest this much confessional food just to please the hostess, and I don't want any psycho-intestinal flare ups to occur in anyone after leaving my prolific table.

Which is why I am considering a fast.

Perhaps indulging only in soup.

As long as it's not Alphabet Soup, I think I'll be fine.