One Month Down

As I think I already wrote, I’ve survived my first month here in federal prison. Yay! One down, a few score more to go. However, I decided to return to the topic not because I wish to belabor the subject and not because I expect congratulations or huzzahs for merely biding my time, but rather to thank everyone whose given me the moral support to help me do it. 

Here at camp I am surrounded by people merely doing time, that is, biding their time for however many months and years until they are freed. The typical con who’s merely biding his time spends his days watching TV, avoiding his prison-assigned job, eating, hanging out around the bunks. If he’s feeling adventurous, maybe he’ll play a game of horseshoes or wander out to the weight pile.

My intent is not to denigrate anyone’s approach to doing time. Prison is a difficult environment and we each react to it differently. There are those who withdraw into their shells or act like Rip Van Winkle until their time is up. There are those who “hang out” from dawn to dusk. And there are those who spend their days complaining about how the system shafted them. 

But there are also those who manage to do more than just do time, who use their time to their advantage to improve and enrich both themselves and others. They do this, each in his own way, by participating in classes, AA, Toastmasters, religious services, tutoring, learning a language, reading, writing, yoga. While prison is not as enriching an environment as college, or travel, there are opportunities out there, opportunities that can be fairly easily accessed.

With all of your help and support, I came in prepared to use my time, not merely do my time, but to focus on self improvement, on reading, on writing, that I plan ahead as to how I will spend my time. This approach, this planning, has really helped me get through my first month – arguably one of the most difficult times of the whole experience – with fairly little trauma. Although I’ve still had my share of bad days, I’ve managed to remain fairly focused. I set aside blocks of time each day for writing, for reading, for yoga, for exercise – all areas I had planned to focus on before turning myself in. 

Take it from me: the last thing you want to do is to waste your time and come out so unprepared that you end up back here again. My prison advice: prepare well, do your time wisely and get on with your life. Prison can be destructive but, done right, it can potentially be transformative. Although I often hate the fact that I am here, I resist the temptation to look at this time as a waste, a meaningless hiatus from life. Through planning and setting goals, I’m determined to make it more than that. At the very least, it made the first month pass faster which, in prison, where time often seems to drag, is no small accomplishment.

Ad absurdem

Tuesday evening a short message appeared on the prison bulletin board: normal operations were to be suspended the following day and the prisoners locked down in their barracks the entire day. The reason? Bring your child to work day. Yes, that's right. Staff would be bringing their children to work and so the prisoners had to be locked down and hidden from view. 

I have nothing against the practice of bringing children to work. In fact, I think it's a wonderful tradition. I've done it myself in the past and took pride in showing my children the exciting life of a corporate lawyer (they were most excited about the vending machine down the hall). But if I worked in a prison I think I might think twice. You can hide the prisoners away but you can't hide the reality of what this place is: a warehouse for wrongdoers. I'd be worried that this reality might be a little too "real" for young children.

This incident got me to thinking about the larger absurdity of prison life. I've heard a number of prisoners joke that you have to leave your common sense at the gates when you self surrender. They might have something there. "Go figure," is one of the most common expressions.

For example, why do we have to stand for some counts and sit/sleep for others? Why do we have to wear certain clothes until 3 p.m. and other clothes after? Why does it take over a year to get an appointment with the dentist for a teeth cleaning? Go figure.

I'm not complaining. These are all issues I expected coming in: in prison we live inside the walls of a government bureaucracy, after all. Bureaucracies are not typically known for their efficiency and common sense. And as prisoners, we're not in a position to do anything about anything at all. 

But I suppose it still is worth considering in my spare time, before time takes its toll and the absurd becomes the ordinary. I already feel that happening, in fact, as I adjust to the realities of life behind bars just as Alice adjusted to the strange life behind the looking glass.

I suppose that's both a good thing - no sense in vainly flailing, like Don Quixote, against the system. But it could also be a bad thing: the more I adjust to this twilight zone the more difficult it will be to readjust to life on the outside. Some long-timers so completely adjust to this "reality" that they are unable to function on the outside. I suppose only time will tell if the absurdity around me eventually wears off and makes me absurd as well.

The Lonely Traveler's Guide to Lompoc, Part 1

I slept in, for the first time since I arrived at camp. Until 5:45! I feel very rested but as a result have too little time to write a long post. Weed whacking awaits. If it's any consolation, I dreamed a wonderful post last night as I slept in my little bunk. If only I could remember it.

I've received a number of requests both to describe the camp itself and to write more about my fellow prisoners. Because it's easier to do in the few minutes I have before the bus leaves for Vandenberg, I'll start with a description of the camp. I hope that you may find it useful should you ever decide to (hopefully voluntarily) visit.

Lompoc, to put it politely, is a bumfu$@ town (as we used to say growing up in Wisconsin about the neighboring bumfu$@ town down the road) located more or less in the middle of nowhere. To be more precise, it's located about 2 1/2 hours north of Los Angeles, well beyond that city's endless urban sprawl. Beyond the furthest reaches of civilization, in other words.

Unlike its more famous brethren along the mid-California coast (think Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz), Lompoc is nothing to write home about. Not only is it a two stoplight town (with no public restrooms as we learned on our first day here), but it is not even on the coast. The ocean is somewhere across the fields. Lest I paint too dismal a picture (I don't want to discourage anyone from visiting me after all), we are part of the coastal climate, meaning cool mornings, occasional fog, drizzle, the smell of the sea. The occasional wayward seagull stops by as well.

Should you find your way to Lompoc and decide to stop by the camp you make your way down the main street, past the two stoplights, a 7-Eleven and some abandoned buildings, until you come to a small road, aptly named Farm Road, surrounded (you guessed it!) by farms. There you turn right and continue along for a mile or two until you happen upon a sea of barbed wire and watchtowers to your left.

Although a hill conveniently blocks the view of the prison from the town itself, don't worry. You won't miss it. In case you do, the big signs that reads "UNITED STATES PENITENTIARY LOMPOC" should be enough to get you back on track. It was this vista that greeted - and shocked - my mom and I the day I came to self surrender. Let's just say that the site does not exactly create a warm and fuzzy feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Luckily enough for yours truly, these worst, most stereotypically prison-ish (is that a word?) buildings that greet you on your arrival are not, in fact, part of the camp. They comprise the other two complexes at the complex - confused yet?: the Medium Security Pen (designed and built to replace Alcatraz) and an adjacent low security prison for the model prisoners from the medium security prison.

Everyone who's spent any time in these enlightened places of confinement says the same thing: if you don't absolutely have to go, don't. Having checked into the Medium Security Prison on my first day, I can say that I wholeheartedly agree. First-time visitors often end up at one of these other places and are shocked and appalled that their loved ones could be there.

My home, the camp, is tucked back behind those other two buildings, barely visible from the road. From the outside looking in it doesn't appear anything special (actually, the reverse holds true as well): a large plot of land covered with grass and cyprus trees, a bunch of squat, low buildings painted green. What it looks like to me from a distance, given my background, is a typical Midwestern farm minus the farmhouse itself: a bunch of low outbuildings and fields.

Upon entering, what you see first is the camp administration building, the nicest building on the lot, surrounded by green grass and flowers. This is the home of our fearless leaders and, befittingly, we prisoners mostly keep away. To enter, if we dare, we must knock quietly on the door and linger at a bus stop across the way until we are noticed.  Next to that is the chapel building, one of my favorite places, not because I'm a god-fearing man but because it's a nice quiet place with rooms to write and contemplate life. Most importantly, it has the only non-barracks bathroom, a quiet normal one-person space where you aren't surrounded by 20 prisoners doing their business.

Well, it turns out that I had more to say about the prosaic surroundings than expected. Time to go earn my 5 cents/hour. I'll return to this topic in the next post next week. 

Have a great weekend out there in freedom-land.

Ad absurdem

Tuesday evening a short message appeared on the prison bulletin board: normal operations were to be suspended the following day and the prisoners locked down in their barracks and bunks during normal business hours. The reason? Bring your child to work day. Yes, that's right. Staff would be bringing their children to work and so the prisoners had to be locked down and hidden from view. 

I have nothing against the practice of bringing children to work. In fact, I think it's a wonderful tradition. I've done it myself in the past and took pride in showing my children the exciting life of a corporate lawyer (they were most excited about the vending machine down the hall). But if I worked in a prison I think I might think twice. You can hide the prisoners away but you can't hide the reality of what this place is: a warehouse for wrongdoers. I'd be worried that this reality might be a little too "real" for young children.

This incident got me to thinking about the larger absurdity of prison life. I've heard a number of prisoners joke that you have to leave your common sense at the gates when you self surrender. They might have something there. "Go figure," is one of the most commone expressions. For example, why do we have to stand for some counts and sit/sleep for others? Why do we have to wear certain clothes until 3 p.m. and other clothes after? Why does it take over a year to get an appointment with the dentist for a teeth cleaning? Go figure.

I'm not complaining. These are all issues I expected coming in: in prison we live inside the walls of a government bureaucracy, after all. Bureaucracies are not typically known for their efficiency and common sense. And as prisoners, we're not in a position to do anything about anything at all. 

But I suppose it still is worth considering in my spare time, before time takes its toll and the absurd becomes the ordinary. I already feel that happening, in fact, as I adjust to the realities of life behind bars just as Alice adjusted to the strange life behind the looking glass. I suppose that's both a good thing - no sense in vainly flailing, like Don Quixote, against the system. But it could also be a bad thing: the more I adjust to this twilight zone the more difficult it will be to readjust to life on the outside. Some long-timers so completely adjust to this "reality" that they are unable to function on the outside. I suppose only time will tell if the absurdity around me eventually wears off and makes me absurd as well.

You Know You're in Prison When...

You Know You're in Prison When:

- You get insanely excited about a hot dog dinner
- You have to carry your toilette paper with you to the bathroom
- Copies of Playboy cost five tins of mackerel
- Someone teaches you how to make taffy out of coffee creamer, sweet 'n low, milk, peanut butter and jam (it's actually pretty good)
- The man behind you in line for chow says that the US government has bonded his birth certificate and holds him in perpetual indentured servitude
- A guard gives you a random breathalyzer test as you lay on your bunk (you pass)
- You don't have a pillow because they "ran out"
- You are told, "Because it's prison, that's why" in answer to every question
- You sleep in a room filled with 180 farting men
- You receive a serious, lengthy lesson on "how to weed whack" (hint: it's all about how you hold the head)
- You can only go shopping once per week
- You are not allowed to try on your clothes or shoes before purchasing
- The coffee is made out of acorns (or something else most definitely unrelated to actual coffee beans)
- A guard asks you to strip so that he can examine your body for bruises (to see if you've been fighting)
- You begin to learn Spanish by osthmosis
- You wake up in the night to a flashlight shined in your face
- They give you a locker for all your stuff, just like in high school
- A helicopter lands nearby and they lock you down, for fear that someone will commandeer the thing and escape
- A guard pronounces your name "Legs Spread" at mail call
- You begin to forget what women look like
- You wait for the corner shower even though the middle showers are free (though you're not quite sure why)
- A metal folding chair is turned into a weapon to break a nose
- After you're done eating you knock on the table three times before leaving (though you're not quite sure why)
- A DUI for walking is just as bad a a DUI for driving
- You walk around the track, do yoga and play badminton and actually have a pretty good day
- You have time to read to your heart's content
- NPR becomes your vicarious connection with the outside world, although before long, you realize you could care less what's happening in Nairobi.

Week 3 at Camp Cupcake

People have been writing me and asking: so how do you spend your time in federal prison? What do you do all day in federal prison? Good questions, and seemingly easy to answer: I wake up, eat breakfast, whack weeds, take a shower, exercise, write, complain (yes, it’s true, but only occasionally). As time passes and these prosaic activities attest, my life behind bars in federal prison is coming to feel less extraordinary than ordinary. But when I started to think about the proper responses to these questions I realized that they were harder to answer than I initially expected.

As I’m lying in my bunk before lights out I usually try to think back on my day. It’s an old habit from well before prison: reflecting on the day just passed before closing my eyes and waking up to a new day. It helps me fall to sleep as I tally up my successes and mistakes and prepare for the coming day. Out in the real world I had little trouble thinking back on the minutiae of my day: the ups, the downs, the good, the bad. I tended to dwell on my various failures in an attempt to learn something from them, improve myself.

But here in federal prison, I realized, I often can’t quite remember what I did: it’s all a jumble. Only half facetiously, I dubbed my confused nighttime rememberings the “fog of imprisonment”. In my fog, images of dinner cross my mind, weed whacking, writing, walking on the track, playing Hearts with fellow inmates, reading, talking with my bunkie. But suddenly I realize that I’m not quite sure whether I’m remembering what I did today, or yesterday, or the week before. In federal prison, life can become a treadmill, with days sliding into weeks sliding into months sliding into years: the prison-house version of Groundhog’s Day.

I’m not sure if my evening confusion is a result of the continuing newness of it all – the mass of impressions and jumble of thoughts and feelings. Or whether it’s because of the monotonous, repetitive nature of prison life, including the stultifying boredom of my daily job whacking weeds. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. In any event, I decided to highlight this fog in my third post from behind bars, in order to flag it as an issue to return to as time passes.

I don’t want my time in federal prison to turn into a vague, endless fog. Fog implies monotony, drudgery, grayness: not the feelings and impressions of an exciting, fulfilling life. To help better track my days, remember my thoughts and feelings and impressions, I’ve decided to keep a daily journal in addition to these blog posts. It should be interesting to see whether that helps me avoid the fog of imprisonment in which every day seems pretty much like the day before it.

As time passes I’ll try to think of new ways to guard against the fog. Writing is one obvious example of how to guard against it: when I’m in the groove I end up in my own bright little world of my imagination. As time passes I’m sure I’ll think of others. Thoughts and advice, of course, would be welcome.

Memorial Day Redux

I'm willing to be that my Memorial Day, my first holiday in prison, was both more boring and more exciting than most. 

On the boring front, not only did I not go anywhere (surprise, surprise) but I spent most of my time reading and writing. For excitement, I watched a bit of badminton and walked around the track and played a game or two of Hearts. Mind you, I'm not complaining. It was nice and relaxing and I got a lot done. The weather was nice and we were even served a special lunch: hot dog, hamburger and (most importantly) ice cream.

Apparently, however, not all the prisoners were willing to let the holiday pass un-celebrated. The first hint of trouble came on Sunday afternoon. The guards began to roam the grounds, breathalyzers tucked under their arms, searching for drunk inmates and contraband. To my surprise: their search was successful. A while later I saw them returning to their office with a large unopened bottle of vodka under their arms that they found somewhere on the grounds.

Then, Monday, the real excitement began. I emerged from my early-morning yoga class to find the camp in an uproar: groups of prisoners stood around pointing and whispering. I walked up to a few acquaintances and asked what was up. As we stood there, a young man walked by with a bloody face, holding his nose and looking very upset.

I'm going to self-censor myself here but suffice it to say that his injuries were apparently not the result of an accidental fall or a run-in on the soccer field.

The result?

Lock down for hours as we stood alongside our bunks and the guards stalked the aisles. We all had to remove our shirts as the guards searched our hands and bodies for bruises. Eventually, an ambulance was called and took the guy away. This was followed by random breathalyzer tests, including of yours truly. I'm happy to report that the Diet Coke I'd been drinking did not set off the machine. The whole event was a vivid reminder that we are, in fact in prison. It also drove home the fact that the actions of one can affect the many.

Finally, Monday evening, just before count, a trio of guards ran through our room chasing after a speeding inmate. I have no idea what happened or why or even if they eventually caught the guy: when something bad happens we inmates are typically left standing around gossiping, wondering what just happened. But there we went again: another lockdown, another count. So much for getting to sleep early in anticipation of the work week ahead.

Now it's Tuesday morning, the long weekend is over, and we all survived intact. Time for a return to regular life, or what purports for that around here - weed whacking, chow hall, air force base. All's well that ends well.