Finding a Piece of Yourself

They don't happen very often. Maybe, it's never happened to me before.

Maybe they do, and you just don't notice them.

This time, it did happen and I saw it coming.

It is bitterly cold outside, and my hands are a little numb. They don't sell us hats or gloves in the TDC, but that hasn't stopped enterprising inmates from making both. I am a study in white thermal underwear.

It is well after midnight, and I have my lamp on, shining down on my desk: an island of putrid yellow floating in a sea of blackness. Open on my desk, one of my textbooks, recently arrived for the spring semester. Next to the book, a sheaf of papers: the results of nearly two hours of absorbing Makrov Chains and the minimax principle, numbers and matrices jumbled up into a semi-chaotic mess.

I pause for a moment and stop writing. For a moment, just a moment, I feel as if I can see myself from above. A quaint literary trick, perhaps; a symptom of an overly romantic mind with very few opportunities to stretch its legs. But for that moment - just a moment - I realize that I am exactly who I want to be. In that moment, I wouldn't have been doing anything else anywhere else in the world.

I don't think that has ever happened to me before. How odd: the boy who never studied has become a man who does little else. After the moment is over I go back to work.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, everyone. May your 2010 be full of epiphanies, and become the year where we all turn into what we were meant to be.


Some end of year notes

Here you can read a copy of DPIC's yearly report on capital punishment in America. Not that they projected 19 executions in the State of Texas. The total ended up being 24. Why anyone continues to low-ball the numbers around here is beyond me.


An interesting piece on the broken clemency system here in Texas.


Here is an interesting report on the economic costs of the death penalty in America, and how to better spend money.



And finally, here is the a link to the blog of a new acquaintance of mine here on the Row. I like his writing, and I really respect the way Roy handles himself back here. I hope you enjoy his blog as much as I do.




© Copyright 2009 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
All rights reserved.

The Truth about The_Truth

December 16, 2009

“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.”

Carl Jung

What a mood I’ve been in lately. I far overshot simple “jerk” status in my last entry, and proceeded straight into the realms of “Grade-A Asshole.” I regret actually mailing that one out. Even I thought I was being arrogant (which says a hell of a lot, I think). I am sorry. Some things built up. And some things needed to be said, though I certainly didn’t say them in the right way. I think that is a major problem of mine: using the wrong tone of voice to argue a concept which is fairly logically consistent. I’ll be paying special attention to this for the near future, I promise. I suspect that Jung’s “inferno of passions” gets the best of all of us, from time to time. (If you are ever bored, his descriptions of your “shadow” are really some amazing reading.) I do think that there is a bit of a double standard for people in my position to act with a level of nobility that few could actually sustain, but thems the breaks. That is what happened when you end up on DR, and decide to publish some of your private thoughts online.

It is with that focus that I am going to response to your post, "the_truth." (You can read the full post here.) Thanks for writing. You bring up a couple of divergent points here, and I will attempt to address them in order.

First, you are correct in your assessments of the guards. I have a tendency to focus on the lowest…oh, say 25% of the workforce here, and project the image that everyone in gray (and blue…the laws wear blue cotton shirts now, something new since you were down) are bullies. I don’t think that this was intentionally done, but I can see how you might think it was. Every time that I think about writing something positive about one of them, something comes up, or it doesn’t really fit the rest of the piece. I think you will agree with me that if I were to call out a guard by name, and say something positive about him or her, that they would be instantly transferred to another portion of the unit. Given the events of the past year and the consistent problems with contraband making its way behind the walls, any glowing character portrayal of an officer would cause the OIG to investigate. (To see an example of the continued issue of contraband in state prisons, see this story about an inmate who actually managed to get a gun behind bars.) You tend to see this a lot: a guard gets a rep for being “friendly,” and they get moved. Any hint of a relationship between an inmate and a guard is terminated with extreme rapidity.

I suspect that when you were incarcerated, you were in General Population. You may or may not be aware of this, but guards are screened before being allowed to work in Ad-Sec. This is a very, very different world than what you were used to, and some comparisons between your experiences and my own are disingenuous. Death Row in an animal of a very different species than exists anywhere else in the system. One merely has to notice the electrical fence that surrounds 12 Building here at Polunsky. It is unique state-wide. So are the massive stadium lights which ring the building. The officers here actually apply to work Death Row. I suspect that there are many reasons for why someone would choose to work here, some of them good, others less noble. You might benefit from a few seconds of thought on the subject of what type of individual would actively seek to work with condemned men. Also, it might be of some interest to you that Polunsky Unit has ranked among the top 2 units state-wide for employee turnover for the past four years in a row. Some of that is on the shoulders of us men in white, certainly. Most of it, I think, is indicative of the men who form the management structure here on this Unit. This is not generally regarded as a good unit, by any means. I have friends on several other units, such as Ramsey 1 and Darrington. They would rather go to hell than to come here, and this is not a unique perspective within the walls.

I do take exception to your comment that I “challenge” officers at every opportunity. I have zero staff assaults, and I will never have one. Seeing as how you have never met me, I can’t see how you would really know what type of inmate I am, other than from the information I present here. I don’t believe that I have cast myself as an agitator. I will agree to the charge that I stand up vigorously for my rights, and the rights of the men around me, as these are guaranteed to us by both the state constitution of Texas and the federal one.

It should be an interesting (and frightening) point that within the walls, it is actually the inmates who are protecting the spirit of the Constitution. If the system decides to overstep its bounds, I view it as my duty to correct this encroachment. I suspect that when you were locked up, you knew people like me, and appreciated the things we did to make your life better. I think that your more…ah, “free” perspective has caused you to forget how bad things can get back here. Amusing that you called me an “offender,” though. That word tends to be used primarily by the officers. In fact, the sentence, “A good correctional officer has to be bright enough to see that challenge for what it is and keep control of the situation” sounds as if it could have been ripped verbatim from the Sargents Prep Course. It’s cool, though. It is amazing how a few years can change your perspective, huh? I know mine has.

You seem to have an issue about the food, as you have brought this up twice now in posts. Again, I think some points should be made here, to show that our experiences were different. First off, it is likely that you’ve been out for at least a few years. There was a time when the food in prison wasn’t all that bad. Maybe, in your day, the guards ate the same food as the inmates. They most certainly do not anymore. I know about the decline in food quality over the years from anecdotal accounts of the men who have been locked up for many decades. They also tell me that food quality greatly depends on the unit in question. For instance, at the Ellis Unit where DR resided until 2000, the food was much better than it was the moment they pulled up here. In just three years, I myself have seen the quality decline significantly. Let me be clear: I don’t really care about the crappy food. That is so far down on my list of issues to fight that I would have to use tunneling equipment and dynamite to even locate it. I have made a few sarcastic comments on the subject, as is my tendency, but you shouldn’t read too much into that. The ironic mind is often misinterpreted. I think, however, that you may be ignorant of the only truly salient point here: Ad-Seg does not get fed the same as GP. It never has. Ad-Seg is a punitive environment, and the use of food-loaf (or nutri-loaf) as both carrot and stick is well documented. We are given what the kitchen staff refers to as “punishment trays,” though I do not know if that is the technical term for them. I imagine that they have a more official sounding name when they are listed on the budget paperwork submitted to the legislature. (They were called “behavior modification and cognitive redevelopment plan meals” at Polk IAH, which is about as bureaucratic a title as you can put to food-loaf.) For instance, when you were locked up, you got fried eggs, right? How many did you get? Three, four? It used to be that many. It’s always been two since I’ve been here, and you only get this every blue moon. Recently, they pared it back to one, something that was not done in Population. When GP eats hamburgers, we get wet noodles and ground-up hamburger meat. Same with the pork-chops (Ha, if you can call them that…I’m sure you remember those, right?). When GP eats pork-chops, we tend to get noodles and pork. State regs require inmates to get dessert twice a week, which usually means a brownie or cake for GP. We tend to get Jell-O or sometimes pudding. Again, I am not complaining. That is simply how things are. You were correct in commenting that I put myself in prison. (Have I ever said differently?) I am humbly submitting to you that before you call me a liar, you investigate your claims.

You accuse me of writing falsehoods and of manipulating information to take advantage of the ignorance of my readers. And yet, is this not precisely what you have done in your posts? You demand that people suspend their disbelief towards anything you say, merely because you claim to have been incarcerated, and have given yourself the handle of “the_truth.” (Funnily enough, one of the biggest snitches here on the row is known as “True,” which is supposed to stand for “True to the game,” though we have, of course, made sure to give him another nickname.) I suspect – again, humbly – that many of these “lies” you claim me to be publishing are merely gaps in experience between us, something I mentioned earlier. At least consider that, sir, for a second.

Frankly, to return to a point I mentioned briefly earlier in this entry, I have never claimed I didn’t deserve to be locked up. Never. I took the blame for my actions on the stand, and I have done so here, multiple times. It’s not really my fault that some people can’t be troubled to go back and read some of my earlier musings. My war is not with TDCJ as an entity; it is with the manner in which they apply their power. I seek a better, smarter, more efficient prison system for all: both for the men in white, and then for the society which will eventually receive 94% of us back into its ranks one day. There are different ways to be “held accountable” for ones actions. My argument is that all of us here could better replay out debt to society through hard work and deep personal reflection than with merely forcing us into an oubliette to rot until we are killed. You commit a grievous ethical error by stating that you had “no right to complain about any challenge (you) faced” when you put yourself in prison. Your original error does NOT give another the right to commit immoral acts against you. The consequences for crime should be both rapid and deeply felt. Prison is not supposed to be the Ritz. But there are levels to the degradations which another being may force upon you. For instance: when two female guards single you out for a strip search on the yard merely to ogle you: that is wrong. When my writings or copies of case law that I have collected (quite painstakingly, I might add) are tossed into the trash during a shakedown: that is wrong. Killing me to make the point that killing is immoral: that is both hypocritical and wrong, and merely pays homage to the more brutish, pre-enlightenment human tendencies which we all need to learn to evolve past. There are better ways to handle convicts, and I am sure that when you were in white, you had plenty of suggestions.

At any rate, I am glad that you got out, and have stayed out. That gives me some hope, even if you hate my guts. I think that you completely misinterpret me, if you think that I am a “wanna be CONvict,” however. I’ve never subscribed to the whole “convict ideology,” and I will not. That said, I have earned the respect of people who do cling to that eidos, heart and soul. I think that if we were locked up together, you would probably like me better than you do from out there. Modesty aside, I am a pretty good friend to have in a storm. (For some small sliver of proof of this statement see the comment by Sandra at the end of this entry.)

Thanks for writing, truth. I appreciate the input. Some people criticize out of spite, others because they believe a person is not living up to their potential. I hope you do so from the latter perspective, and I genuinely have an open ear to any suggestions you have for me in the future. Again sorry for my tone of late. All sins are attempts to fill voids.

Response to Gord’s post:

Yeah, yeah: the Red Wings bloody do well suck this year. (My Yanks, however, OWNED. Take that, Eric, you bean-town short-bus rider.) If you are the Gordon that I am thinking of, so does your Canuck mail system. I will try to write you again, now that I know you are alive.

Some recipes for food that the officers might actually eat:

Enchilada Pie and Kenny Bob’s Cookie Cake Surprise.

Please read:

An Open Letter to Justice Scalia by Keith S Hampton

© Copyright 2009 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
All rights reserved.

The Wheelchair Has Left the Building

December 13th, 2009

It is currently 4.30am. I am feeling raw and grumpy and terribly unhinged, and these are precisely the times when I make sure not to write anything, but here I am. I also happen to be way, way past caring, which may or may not explain all of this. I wrote in an entry many months ago about how my insomnia had “grown fangs” (or something to that effect), and this has never really gone away. I am as used to this as a person can get who is constantly exhausted. Or, at least I have accepted that this is life as defined by TBW, circa the latter days of 2009, and have become resigned to the task of carrying this cross. Lack of sleep is what happens when outrspecies of hairless apes try to cram far too much into their mushy, gray, three-pound thinking devices, which everyone seems to think are just the best thing to come about since sliced bread. The alternative to having too much on your mind is currently being tested out by a certain former governor from the Federal Park that is Alaska, and early results show that this might actually be far more damaging to a human being (and the country he or she calls home) than having an overfull noggin. More results to follow in time, unfortunately.

Anyways. Some problems in life can be repaired. Some cannot. Some you accept: some you fight. Wisdom, they tell me, is in deciding which battles to engage in, an which to let pass. I’ve spoken of what war, downy blanket that is noble indifference before, and wont waste anyone’s time repeating myself. It may be a mirage, anyways, for my complete inability to get close to it.

Problems, troubles, worries, lamentations; I am awash in my fair share. Most are my own bloody fault. Some are not. Forgive me for how crude and blunt I am about to get, but I am actually going to use this blog in the manner popular culture has deemed to be most acceptable: to bitch and moan. I’m out of options on this issue, though. Some of my battles have no place in the public eye, in my opinion. Most, probably, do not. I think this one does, mainly because I’m buggered if I know how else to deal with it.

Penpals. Penpals, penpals, f-ing penpals. The practice of writing to so many people has long been a bittersweet activity for me. It’s nice to have some friends, especially when most of the world hates your guts. Even pseudo-friends help pass time, even as you know they won’t last long. That is what you sign up for: to be a friend. In life, sometimes that ends up meaning you get converted into a crutch. That is cool, because that is part of the deal, a piece of the “friend contract.” There is no feeling quite like helping to pick someone off the dirty floor. You know what isn’t in the contract, though? Being converted from a crutch into a f-ing wheelchair.

This is how it starts: a small issue comes up in a letter, and you offer what you believe to be a reasonable solution. You don’t claim to be right (at least, you don’t if you aren’t an egotistical bastard). You are simply listening to a friend and offering a solution based on your own life experiences. And it works out. You helped solve a problem, or, at the minimum, you were at least there to listen. And that is exactly as it should be. Here is the problem, and it has cost me much to learn this: some people do not want to have their problems fixed. Before you know it your correspondence has converted into one long, misery-drenched proof io the shittiness of human existence, and you are instantly sucked into the black hole of their morbid self-absorption. You don’t know how the hell you got there, but you do know you never intended for that to happen. You still want to help. And so you keep offering advice, as much as from a desire to see a ship righted as to get the hell out of there in one piece. Only, now that the problems have gotten worse, more raw, the other person no longer wants to listen to your solutions. As I mentioned, some people cannot live without their sadness, their loneliness, their complaining. It has become part of their mode of existence. It’s who they are, down to the core. And since misery loves company, you are welcomed to the seven-course dinner of their concentrated wretchedness. Fine. I think that is a terrible way to go through life, but that is your call.

Here is the thing, though: I am not your psychologist. I am not even remotely qualified to hear about your suicide attempts or your daddy issues or how that bitch Wendy keeps sleeping with your boyfriend and your uncle, sometimes simultaneously. I will help where I can, but look at where I am. Good judgment is maybe not my strong suit. And in any case, I just might have a few teensy-weensy issues of my own to deal with. Problems are relative, and I am not minimizing anyone else’s. I am not saying mine are worse. I am saying that I am at my limit, and I cant handle anymore. I have four people now who are depending on my stupid, slow, brutally deficient, unqualified brain to save their lives, now that their attorneys have gone and buried them. I cannot even begin to explain how insane that type of responsibility makes you feel, especially when you never asked for it. But in lieu of someone good, they only get me. On top of that, I have a few of my own demons to deal with during this time of the year. Please, please, please: solve your own problems for a while. If I were the type to have a nervous breakdown, I would be having it right about now. I can not save you! No one can! You have to figure out how to save yourself. That is life.

This pen-pal thing has gotten out of hand, once again. It deteriorated in similar downward spirals a little more than a year ago, and it looks like I didn’t learn my lesson well enough. Facebook and Myspace are likely soon to take the path of the dodo. I was never all that comfortable with having them in the first place, but when you are desperate, you will try anything. I mentioned that I thought it was pretty much just a world of tweenage girls hormoning and “OMG”-ing about the guys on the latest mind-numbingly stupid program on the CW, but I was told that real, serious business gets conducted there. Really? Could have fooled me. I’m sorry Tracey. You did an awesome job creating those sites, building a place for real, substantive conversation. I’m sorry that people converted them into a gossip board. I don’t know why you put up with me, or the hassle, sometimes.

From the printouts I’ve seen lately, it has become a place for people to ask how to buy illicit drugs, or for nut jobs that I have never met to claim that they are in love with me. That last would be somewhat amusing, if it wasn’t so sad. Or sick. I was never popular with the ladies in the world. Not like this. And here if the thing: I am not now, either. These people don’t like me; they don’t even know me. I am just a stand in for something else, an image reflected from their own lives to take a form that is easier to deal with. That is horrible, and I can sympathize, but that is not my problem to solve. Stop playing with my name! I’ve worked really, really, really f-ing hard to be better than I ever was in my old life. To get over the years of self-hatred and the thousands of ccs of poison I pumped into my veins. When you post that wacky nonsense about being “my girl,” you trash all my attempts at reviction. Good, true people whom I genuinely know and like have a hard time trusting me because of your insane ramblings. Go. Away. I don’t know you, and I don’t care to. Find someone else to stand in for the bad-boy who rode a motorcycle and who never paid attention to you in High School.

I have a few years left in this world, and call me selfish, but I am not spending this time putting out brush-fires in the lives of a hundred different people. I spend hours a day on this, everyday. Have some self-respect. Solve your own life, or stop complaining. Fix the problem decisively, as I am doing here. And have some respect for me, as well, by not making me hear about it incessantly, when you never intended to take my advice in the first place. I've got real things to do with my time, and I am tired of always running out of hours for the things I want or need to do for myself. Grow up. Life sucks sometimes. Get. Over. It.

Or don’t. Your call. Not mine.

The really damning thing is this: only a few times on this site have I ever asked for anyone’s help. Three, that I can think of. The first, was when I attempted to get some of my readers to write to a certain state rep here in Texas, in an attempt to institute a program where Texas prison inmates could legally donate kidneys. Four people wrote emails. Four people believed in me, and tried to help me save some lives.

The second, was when I asked for people to write a letter of support for Kevin Varga. Seven people answered the call, according to the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

The last, was when I shamed myself and asked for a little help paying for my next semester of university classes. Five of you stood by my side, and I will never, never, never forget you. Don’t think I am asking for money. I'm not. It’s not about money. It was about how many of the people who come here were willing to do more than post a comment or two. To see who was willing to stand by me and believe in my goals and in me. And I got my answer. I write more than 100 people. Or, to be more precise: I did.

Maybe this is a nervous breakdown. Whatever it is, things are going to be different around here from now on. I fully intend to address this issue with the people it applies to. Don’t automatically assume that I am talking about you, because I may very well not be. But I felt this needed to be broadcast in general anesthetic form, before I get the scalpel out and do the actual surgery.

I am not saying that I don’t care, or don’t want to help people. I am saying that I am only human, and emotionally not equipped to deal with some of the information being forced onto me. A perfect, recent example: a few months back I helped a lady-friend make a very tough decision to do the right thing for her recently divorced ex-husband. It dealt with a lot of money, basically, and she needed to do the legal thing. I was able to give her a nudge in the right direction. I got to hear way more details about how she still simultaneously loves and hates her ex. For 15 letters, I heard about this. When she finally did the noble thing, I was pleased. Exhausted, but pleased. Then, she actually asked me if there was anything that I needed, and I admitted that I could use a lousy two bucks for a new typewriter ribbon. Her last (and believe me, final) letter scolded (actually scolded!) me for being too materialistic. Can you imagine!

I am sorry if this seems cold-blooded and selfish. I feel however, that I have the right to determine how I spend the last couple of years on this rock, and I cannot tell you how many personally important projects I have had to shelve or abandon because I spend six hours a day playing armchair shrink. A friend will carry the weight of another, until the person learns to walk again. A person who takes advantage of the free ride beyond the point where they can move on their own, all the while knowing the other already has a large load tied to their back, isn’t worthy of the title or the effort in the first place.

“Life, being how it is, isn’t necessarily how it is. It is just simply how you choose to see it.”

16 year old Heshu Yones,
before being murdered by her father, Abdullah Yones, in an “honor” killing.

On a lighter note:

#4 on the Top 5 List Of Shit Not To Put On Your Head


This shampoo falls right behind: ionized gaseous plasma from the center of a star, liquid magma, hydrochloric acid, and followed by Highly Enriched Uranium. Texas Correctional Industries, in case you were wondering, is the “company” that produces virtually every product manufactured by inmate “workers.” Since no one is paid for work in Texas prisons, “slaves” might actually be the correct terminology here, even if it is a somewhat loaded word. This product costs two dollars on the commissary. Mmm, more ethylene glycol monostearate, please! (In case your chemistry is a little rusty, allow me to show off the superiority of my DorkNess: ethylene glycol is a colorless, viscous hygroscopic liquid used, as it happens, as an antifreeze. Also, this chemical is used when making polyesters and in the preservation of waterlogged timbers. No wonder I am going bald. Federal oversight, anyone? Please?)



© Copyright 2009 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
All rights reserved.