Robbing The Jail of its Purpose

Hope

Friday morning, I was up with the sun.

I had succeeded in reverting back to a sleep schedule that had me rising with the sun.

Before sleeping 8 hours, I had spent 10 hours writing the blog post of the previous day entitled: "Houses By Ponds," or something (I don't have it in front of me).

Somewhere, during the week, I had put in 14 hours working on a music project in Audacity, and this had pushed the sleep schedule back to where it belonged (for a person who had purposed "in his heart" to find a job of some kind).

But, this had not come without a price.

I Am Become Death

Now I know how the pilot of the Nola Gay felt as he was dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki.

Because, I bought a couple of "roach motels," and placed one in the draw where I keep my silverware, and another in the cabinet under my sink.

After that, I couldn't help checking them every 15 minutes.

After about a half hour, the first hapless victim was stuck to the bottom of one, trying to run from me after I picked it up and it saw me. It must have been like one of those nightmares where it was trying to run but it was like it was stuck in some heavy kind of glue.

Maybe so many people have that nightmare because the cockroaches are actually the most intelligent life form on earth, barring even humans, and are trying to tell us something, through telepathy..

The next morning, there were about a half dozen trapped in the silverware drawer one, and about twice that in the one under the cabinet.

After one week, there was hardly any room left on the bottoms of either one, so I flipped them over in order to provide a "fresh" floor for them to stick to.

Eventually they were crammed in there like sardines, and I suspected that the newer members were roaches that were coming in to eat their own dead, attracted by the smell of death, and then had become trapped themselves.

That's what you get for wanting to eat your own dead. Even humans don't do that; they would boil them first...

I have seen fewer and fewer of them around the house, with the ones I do see being very small ones.

Very Little Wiggle Room

And, like the roaches trapped in the motel, I seem to have very little wiggle room, myself.

Things seem to fall apart very quickly after I fall into bad habits.

Like running out at 4 AM to get a bottle of wine, to return home with it and stay up another 8 hours getting things done, hoping that it will help me wind down and eventually get some rest.

The alcohol fueled rant against the employees at the Brown Derby store was kind of like a bottom that I hit, which I have hopefully ricocheted off of, and am now headed back (once again) in the right direction.

I think I subconsciously do some things to make matters so bad that I will guarantee myself saying: "enough is enough" and committing myself to better habits.

A second bottle of wine might give me a big enough headache in the morning, that I will go out with throbbing temples and put all my cash into cat food, a big bag of kratom, data for my hotspot, and stuff like laundry soap and potting soil, to insure that I won't be repeating the failed wine experiment again.

That way, I will be set up to be clean and sober and busy, and only be able to "wish" I had the money for a bottle of wine.

Thankfully, things seem to fall back together just as quickly after I get back to better ways.

I woke up and went to the blog to clean up the post, then downed a bottle of prune juice in order to flush the entire past day out of me both literally and figuratively, then took a shower.

But, then it hit me like a punch in the stomach: I was just about out of money.

Dissociating? Hadn't Even Considered It, My Mind Was Busy Elsewhere...

When all of my focus had been upon the music project and the blog post, I might have been "dissociating."

This is a term that I first heard when I was being accused of doing it, back in 1992, when I was in jail in Palmer, Massachusetts.

I had been able to substantially reduce my stay at that jail by availing myself to the many programs offered there, to get inmates out of their cells and into counseling and job training, religious activities, etc.

An inmate could wind up "doing" only 12 days out of each month sentenced, if he were to load up his schedule with these kind of things.

This represented some kind of breakthrough in corrections, with the jail I was being held in being a trailblazer in this regard; behind the theory that just holding prisoners in cells for x amount of time does nothing to reduce their "recalcitrance rate," once they are released.

This was all very new at the time, and had to be backed up by studies and statistics, in order for the taxpayer's money to have been diverted into such programs.

But, an inmate had to have the appropriate charges in order to warrant his inclusion in certain programs.

For instance, I couldn't knock an additional 4 days per month off my time by attending the anger management program because (darn it!) I hadn't beaten my girlfriend, and in fact had no domestic violence on my rap sheet at all.

But, I was able to get into the Narcotics Anonymous program, by virtue of a pot charge, and the S.L.A.A. (sex and love addicts anonymous) program because of an indecent exposure charge (which is a story for another post).

But, I almost got removed from the computer skills program, where I was knocking 9 days per month off my time, because the counselor from the S.L.A.A. program witnessed me working on one of the computers in the lab, making some kind of database using Lotus 123, where I was entering the stats for every single NFL football player, with as many subcategories that I could think of.

This kept me very busy and the days flew by; and I was able, with a few keystrokes, to tell you how many punters that weigh over 200 pounds went to Notre Dame and were born in Kansas.

But, Roy Dudley, the counselor and college graduate himself, watched me from afar and became very concerned.

He thought that I was using the computer to "dissociate" and was considering having me removed from that program.

Because when you dissociate, your mind is a million miles away, and you might not even be aware that you are in jail, and so you are not in a position to ponder the consequences of the actions that have put you there, nor can you feel the utter helplessness, despair and remorse over what you did and take full responsibility for it.

I was using the computer as an escape, thought Roy. I was robbing the jail of its purpose.

I wondered if he wanted to take all of the books, and maybe even the chess boards out of the jail for this reason.

I had the same accusation leveled at me as early as third grade when, I was sitting at my desk melting some crayons into balls, using my body heat.

I was tapped on the shoulder by Sister Mary Theresa, whereupon I looked up to see that I was the only kid in the classroom. The recess bell had rung and the rest of the kids were out in the yard.

"Do you notice that your the only one in the classroom, you didn't hear the bell ring and all the other kids go out for recess?"

This cost me a trip to the principals office and a (worrying probably) call to my parents.

Maybe I kind of did see all the other kids go out to mill about the recess yard and pointlessly kick balls around; but I was onto something. I was busy...

Sister Mary Theresa and Roy Dudley were made for each other; too bad one is a nun and the other probably a fag...

Coming Next: Hope; the story that I set about to write after entitling the post, but before getting "busy" writing about other things, like atomic bombs...