Wednesday, July 28, 2010:

Every once in a while, I have to be reminded of the crimes I committed. After ten years, it’s easy for me to forget exactly why I’m in prison.

I robbed three banks. I brandished a gun in one of the robberies which earned me an additional seven years. I’ve robbed more than one pharmacy, strictly for the drugs. When the police attempted to arrest me, I fled, and led them on a high-speed chase.

I put many lives at risk. I traumatized many people, but none more so than my family and my wife at the time. And ten days later, in my final act of madness as a free citizen, I put a gun to my own head when I was surrounded by police officers. I was shot at fifteen times and hit four times.

Maybe I was trying to take myself hostage. Maybe I was trying to commit suicide by cop. I really don’t know because my drug-influenced mental state at the time did not foster rational cognition.

I’m lucky to still be alive and I’m lucky I only received a fourteen and a half year sentence.

All this because I only wanted to feel good. It was all for a feeling.

I continued drinking and getting high four years into my sentence, when suddenly, my desire to use was removed like a torrential thunderstorm finally blowing over.

Now the fog’s been removed from my head and I find myself with almost six years of real clean time. But I’m stuck. I’m stuck in what sometimes seems like purgatory.

I want to move on but I can’t. I’m frozen in time. I feel like a rocket sitting on the launch pad, anticipating the final countdown that will be a long time in coming. They won’t let me grow up. They won’t let me have my dignity back. Do this, do that. Don’t do this, don’t do that.

Time keeps marching forward, and I feel like I’m living in some convoluted, alternate reality. I don’t know what life is like out there anymore.

I know I deserve to be punished, but at some point, the punishment “took,” it had taken effect, achieved it’s purpose, but I still have superfluous years left to go.

I think I’ve made myself a better person, but I had to reach down and dig and do it on my own.

The mission statement of all prisons should be to make a person fit for society again, but our prisons do the opposite of this. Our prisons are breeding monsters, returning more sophisticated predators back on the streets after their prolonged business convention.

It’s difficult to stay focused and positive because it’s going against the grain. It’s trying to swim upstream when the river’s headed for a thousand foot waterfall. The pervading mentality is: I want what I want when I want it and I don’t care whose rights I have to trample to get it.

I struggle to keep a grasp on reality. I’m exposed to so many false beliefs and so much maladaptive and self-defeating behavior that I have a hard time discerning right from wrong, black from white, up from down.

It’s a daily struggle to keep the ship righted. This is why I have to be reminded.

Read my book Running Away From Me.

Monday, July 26, 2010:

From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson:

So how was it?

How was what?

Prison.

He laughed. Would you believe me if I said it was like having a paid holiday with all the time you wanted for thinking and writing?

I would. I don’t suppose there’s much difference between a prison and a cloister, and people have always gone to cloisters for self-reflection.

Well there you go…

Except for the fact that they’re talking about prison in Sweden, which is much more humane than American prisons, I have to agree 100 percent.

It’s hard to adequately describe what prison life is like. Television and movies make it look so much worse than it actually is (I’m not talking about county jails, which are probably worse, according to my experience). It’s not all bad, and as with most trials and tribulations in life, if it is approached with a positive attitude, and if you look for the silver lining, you will find it.

I’m also reminded of the “promises” in the Alcoholics Anonymous big book: No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it. We will see how our experience can benefit others.

When I am released back into society, I will not be able to afford to feel shame about my past. Shame was a major ingredient in my addiction. I will have to face the stigma of being an ex-felon with courage. I hope I can do that.

Read my book Running Away From Me.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010:

One of my co-workers, “Nittie,” made parole yesterday. He’s from Washington D.C. and was sentenced to twenty-three years to life in 1990 for weapons and drug distribution charges.

D.C doesn’t have a prison system, so their inmates do time in federal prisons. But D.C. inmates do have parole, which federal inmates do not have unless they were sentenced before 1987 when the federal parole system was abolished.

So Nittie’s been locked up for the last twenty years. He was thirty when he fell and now he’s fifty. That’s a long time and a lot has changed. But I’ve met no other person in the last ten years who is more deserving of this …I would call it a gift. Freedom is definitely a sweet gift.

It was his first time up for parole and he was lucky because the majority of D.C inmates up for parole the first time do not make it. It made me feel good to see something go right for someone in here, because I’m so used to seeing things go so wrong — lives derailed, and horrible choices that result in even worse consequences.

I almost felt as if I had made parole myself when he gave me the thumbs up sign after the hearing and I imagined him walking through those prison gates for the first time in twenty years.

Nittie’s one of the few I’ve met who has developed the attitude that his time was given to him instead of taken away. He used his time to achieve things he would not have achieved otherwise and I’m glad to see the same attitude and outlook we both share pay off.

Monday, July 18, 2010:

This evening I was eating dinner in the chow hall when a child molester sat down directly across from me. There are hundreds of them here at Marianna to participate in a sex offender program. Most inmates are here for SOMP (Sex Offender Management Program) or the drug program.

Since most of the non-sex offenders are short-timers and are going home soon, no one messes with the “chomos” for fear of losing what little good time we get. But if these sex offenders were loaded up on a bus and shipped to Pollock, the high-security penitentiary where I spent five years, there would be a bloodbath not seen since the glory (gory) days of the Roman Colosseum.

Anyway, this skinny, pasty-skinned old man with coke bottle glasses, long, shaggy beard, and unruly, gray hair sits down across from me. The child molesters have their own tables. I don’t know why this guy wants to sit with the “good dudes.”

I’m debating on getting up and moving, because I’ve instantly lost my appetite, when Janus walks behind him and says loudly, What, the freaks are sittin over here now?

O.K. That’s how I do NOT want to act. So I treat it as a spiritual exercise, a spiritual push-up. I am a grain of sand. He is a grain of sand. We’re all grains of sand.

The guy sitting next to me almost chokes on his food, laughing, because he knows where I’m coming from. The “chester” finally gets up and leaves without finishing his food. I try to live by Judge not, lest ye be judged, but man it’s hard in here.

Thursday, July 15, 2010:

My cellie is from Pensacola, Florida. He’s in his late forties, is of diminutive stature, and wears glasses and tells me that I will be wearing them too if I continue reading in the dark. He keeps his graying hair closely cropped and stays relatively physically fit. He’s ran up to ten miles with me several times before.

He comes from a decent family; his father was a physics professor at Pensacola Junior College. But that didn’t stop him from becoming a drug addict.

A couple of years before he was arrested, he went out west and became addicted to crystal meth. He was homeless out there for a little while and once rode a bicycle from Cheyenne, Wyoming all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska. In 2001 he met a few guys who were cooking meth in Lincoln. He helped them several times by supplying (stealing) pseudoephedrine in exchange for a portion of the dope. After a couple of months, he decided to straighten up and return to Florida.

Two years later, in 2003, the guys in Nebraska were busted. Did I say two years later? In order to receive a shorter sentence, they ratted on everyone they had been dealing with, including my cellie, even though his involvement was minimal. He wasn’t caught with any drugs, he wasn’t caught with a wiretap or trying to make a sale or a buy. The only thing they had on him was the word of three meth cooks. And this earned him a ten year federal sentence.

Read about the events that lead up to my fourteen and one-half year sentence Running Away From Me.

Monday, July 12, 2010:

I had a conversation today with my Puerto Rican Friend, Polo. It was about the fight last week between the Mexican gangs (there’s been a rumor going around all day that one of them died). He said that one of his Christian brothers was one of the attackers.

Then he wasn’t a Christian was he? I like playing the devil’s advocate in these kind of conversations.

Yeah, he’s a Christian, but sometimes it’s hard, he said.

He may have said he’s a Christian and a believer, but his actions say he doesn’t believe.

I don’t know, I can’t be the judge of someone else.

That’s true, I had to admit.

It’s hard for some of these guys in here. There’s a lot of pressure. He probably didn’t want to do what he did, but if he didn’t, he might have been the one to get stabbed.

If it came down to it, I think I would rather be stabbed than to have to stab someone else…just don’t hit me in the neck…or the heart. We laughed at that, but it’s not at all a funny situation to be in.

Buckminster Fuller was an American engineer, inventor, and philosopher. He said God is a verb. I take that to mean that actions speak louder than words, and if you believe you act accordingly.

Read David’s Book Running Away From Me.

Saturday, July 10, 2010:

A few years ago, in one of my treatment groups in prison, the facilitator went around the room asking everyone, Are you a good person?

Yeah, I said.

Would a good person commit the crimes you have?

I didn’t have an answer for that at the time and I didn’t know what she was getting at, but it sure made me think. Was I a good person who did bad things? Or was I a bad person and I was just born that way? I’ve met plenty of murderers, robbers, and rapists who were certain they were good people, that everyone else was just screwed up.

Everything that I’ve been reading lately says there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person. My books on self-hate say this, and my books on Tao, and of course the Bible says that everyone is a sinner and everyone can be forgiven.

I think it’s easier for some people to be “good” than for others. The conditions they grew up in, their current environment, and many other things exert positive or negative influences on them. Just like a tree with nutrient rich soil and plenty of sunlight will grow taller than the one growing in rocky soil with less sunlight. And one can’t understand the other — What’s your problem? Just be a tree.

Buy my book Running Away From Me.

Thursday, July 8, 2010:

Hello again. Sorry I’ve been away so long. I’ve been locked in my cell since Wednesday, June 30th. 24 hours a day. Fun, fun, fun. One of the more wonderful aspects of doing time. Taking showers in my sink, using the toilet with my cellie in the cell (and vice versa), and eating a lot of bologna sandwiches.

We’re locked down because of a fight between two rival Mexican gangs — the Paisas and the Surenos. Actually it was a slaughter because there were about 150 Paisas and 25 or so Surenos. This is not a common occurrence in Marianna, but it was inevitable due to the influx of ever increasing numbers of Mexican gang members.

The leader of the Paisas, the “shot caller,” was my cellie for about five months. Everyone calls him “Chaparro.” Chaparro’s short and stocky, in his late-twenties, and displays a lot of machismo. He’s also from the Mexican state of Michoacan and a member of the notorious drug cartel, La Familia.

La Familia gained their notoriety in 2006 when they beheaded five rival cartel members, the Zetas, and rolled their heads onto the floor of a disco. Just last month, they ambushed a convoy of 40 federales in Michoacan, killing 12.

Marianna is a fairly peaceful, easy place to do time. In my two and a half years here, nothing like this has happened, and I’m sure it will be peaceful once all the gang members involved are shipped to other prisons.

Friday, July 9, 2010:

One good thing about long lockdowns in prison is that I get to do a lot of reading. I read a lot anyway, but when I’m locked down, it’s all-day, all-night marathons. I finished 2666 by Roberto Bolano, There’s Nothing Wrong With You by Cheri Huber, You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier, Child of God by Cormac McCarthy, and I started on Tao: The Pathless Path by Osho.

2666 was 900 pages of schizophrenic storytelling with five parts that seemed totally unrelated until the very end. The murders of women in the fictional Mexican border town of Santa Teresa was the one common thread running through all five parts, which could have been five separate novels.

There’s Nothing Wrong With You was more self-help for my self-hate with a big emphasis on meditation.

You Are Not A Gadget was scarier than any Stephen King or Clive Barker novel even though that’s a different genre. Jaron Lanier is known as the father of virtual reality technology. His manifesto about internet culture and technology and how they could possibly lead to the end of life as we know it was a real eye-opener.

Child of God was the second book I’ve read by Cormac McCarthy. The Road was the first and one of the best books I’ve ever read. I like any book that deals with the dark side of human nature and Child of God was pitch black.

And so far Tao: The Pathless Path is shining some light back into the void.

Read my book Running Away From Me.

Sunday, June 27, 2010:

Here’s how my week went: Last Sunday morning, I ran ten miles. During the winter and spring, I was running twenty miles at a time, but the heat and humidity of recent has cut that in half.

On Monday, I went to visitation to take photos. I had to fill in for Muhammad, who was sent to the hole for talking back to an officer, or not obeying a direct order, or something like that.

On Tuesday, I received the fourth letter in a week from my cousin Barbie. She sent me some photos with the letter. It was one of those moments when I say, God I’ve been locked up a long time. I also ran eight miles in 54:12.

On Wednesday, I let one of the child molesters I work with get under my skin. There’s hundreds of them here because they have some kind of treatment program for sex offenders. I vacillate between hatred and disgust for them and accepting that I’m no better than they are because we’re all in the same place — a garbage can for humans. And there’s also that judge not lest ye be judged thing that I struggle with.

Thursday, they let Pittsburgh out of the hole and locked up his former cellie, the scandalous scumbag Sully. Sully was taken to the hole for having a hole in his wall. The former hole was for punishment; the latter hole was for hiding contraband. I ran ten miles that evening.

Friday was uneventful except that I started catching a cold.

So on Saturday, I struggled through my second job of taking photos on the rec yard and I practiced my guitar scales. Good day.

Purchase my book on my web site www.RunningAwayFromMe.com.