My Literary Journey
There is nothing like being thrown into a maximum security prison, released from the protective shield a juvenile block offered, the day before your 18th birthday. Already years had passed and I had nothing to show for them. The absurdity in which I lived became a shot to the chest. By the time I was 19 the buckshot in my heart must have weighed at least 100 pounds. Walking wasn't a problem because the momentum was already there. Having the will to get up every morning and subject myself to the same Hell is another story. When there is no meaning, there is no moving. Without the two, a man is nothing more than a stranger to his own soul, locked in a pillory under Sharia law suffering the pain from each stone cast. Walking out of my cell was like entering a Stygian arena with no rules. I stopped leaving.
They say a mighty fortress can become a tomb. Well, I turned a tomb into my mighty fortress: a fortress that saw the crimson sun of Homer's horizon, that tasted the sweet breeze caught in Captain Ahab's sails, that experienced the Lotus blossom of Chuang Tzu, and that was once bathed in the contemplation of Merton's love. With light must come darkness. I'd be lying if I said that same cell never saw Raskolnikov's illogical reasoning, that I never knew Celine's attitude, or the disillusioned decrepitude of Gatsby in his final hours.
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As my world revolved around me, and the world around it, I slowly began to build my sanctuary in that city of frozen dreams. It started with the hunger that arises from a monotonous solitude, solitude quenchable by little available recourse. First came literature. I read and I read until the lights burnt out. Stacks of books accumulated around me. I had a library more intriguing than the prison library. From sun up to sun down and beyond I’d read, becoming a spectator inside the stories, becoming a philosopher trying to understand the theories applied to the stereotype I am judged under. Many books I read with a dictionary in tow, rereading chapters with new definitions at hand.
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Then came support. It is a double edged sword knowing there are people who love you yet you can't be with them. They brought the world back to me; again the rapier but clean. The dismay reflected back at me when I compared myself to the World precipitated continental fracturing in the false ceiling I had built, shedding new light on potential and leaving me floundering in my dead assumptions as the same voices that shattered my nightmare pulled me forth. No goal is rightly set without relation to the whole.
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Third came the ubiquitous and omnipotent consciousness of love. As I swam down further and further into this placid lake of stale tears it came to me like a rapture of the deep. Even violence in the name of self-preservation became a sickening thought. I began to silently whisper "I Love You" to hubristic fools on passing, seeing beyond their steely eyes and inbred smiles to the primordial blood that related us and the undefined potential that makes us equal. All blood spilled became my own, leaving me in an anemic chill with every act of violence I witnessed. And even when the blood was physically my own, I entreated in every direction to cease the fool(s) who would force my hand.
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Love does not just bring joy. It brings pain. I shed the onus of a 36 year sentence overnight like a butterfly does a chrysalis, reborn anew in the belly of the beast, shrouded in the pain of love. I realized a condemnation from a Judge was meager in comparison to the crucifixion a conscientious man subjects himself to in accordance with a regrettable past. When the nascent of love grows across the barren heart of a criminal, sowing truth, entwined within the rose blossom is a monstrous pain sprouting from memories of action scrutinized under new eyes. Such a pain, a rejection of one's entire life up until that point, is more than most can handle. But it's never harder than in the beginning. The yoke has been known to drive one into the dirt. I bore the weight as a necessary evil and thus grew stronger with each step. Never have I loved more, but never have I felt so much pain.
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With the knowledge of love comes responsibility. Every human being is equal in potential. As I began to love all for their potential, regardless of their current states, the nexus of humankind came into view. Selflessness spurred an understanding of responsibility. I have to be the best person I can be and play my part in the whole. It was a beautiful moment that forever lives within my memory as a dispenser of hope. All my dreams and goals queue up to get the necessary survival ration. The ripple effect reverberates farther than the mind can imagine. Knowing this makes the little things worthwhile. Is it too much to want to leave this earth with a positive karmic account? For years I toiled away destroying peace. The responsibility I now clench provokes me to fulfill my duties as a human being.
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