Monday, December 29, 2014
Monday, December 22, 2014
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
A lovely present given to me by Tina Stenborg-Davies:
May the sun bring you new energy by day.
May the moon softly restore you by night.
May the rain wash away your worries.
May the breeze blow new strength into
your being. May you walk gently through
the world and know its beauty all
the days of your life.
-Apache Blessing
December 9, 2014
(even writing from a PC is a little
entertaining to this prisoner!)
I think I want the tiger to contemplate
the meaning of life……………and this cow…………………
Greetings to my friends and family.
This note finds me writing from a “Job
Services” Place, where, miraculously, I am able to use a computer.
It’s primitive compared to my MacBook pro, but ‘twill
serve”…………’twill serve.
I am currently employed at a
Seven-Eleven, an experience that is alternately hilarious,
irritating, and, most often, surreal. My employer is a nice man
named Rasheed, a Pakistani who employs many women from the Work
Release Center. I am making $ 8.25 per hour.
Yesterday, I was interested to watch
one of the managers remove his shoes and pull out a prayer mat to
pray to the East. Wow. Yes, in the Seven-Eleven. Kind of cool. The
other employees are mostly Turks, with some originally from Russia.
They are all Muslim, too. It’s fascinating when I am not feeling
pressured…which is pretty much all the time…as I learn how to
push “dat button…no! no! no!...not dat button…Dis button!
‘Scratcher wins! Scratcher wins!...”
I’m getting over a feeling of
humiliation…and, often, a feeling of despair….certainly not
because I am too disdainful about working, but because of the
sometimes superior and irritating manner of those who seem to radiate
a feeling elation at my position.
The snooty Muslim men behave,
nonetheless, with some levels of respect. And, when they smile a
little, it’s a rewarding sight. Still, they seem to revel in my
awkwardness at trying to learn to use something as alien as a cash
register or as I try to navigate the intricacies of the Lottery
machine…(ugh!)…then, they get angry because I don’t know the
prices of a “Slurpee.”
I’m doing okay, although…and I am
insisting that they teach me some “Urdu”…their Pakistani
dialect.
(PhoneticallY) Kay-ah Hahl-leh…means
“how are you?”
Some may wonder why I have settled for
this minimum wage job…Well, I must keep it in order to progress
through the “levels” at Work Release. (“Levels” are “earned
steps” toward freedom – whatever that is!)
The good news is that there are more
employment possibilities for me available…but, I must be cautious
how I do things and watch my impatience. If I hold off and stay in a
state of unemployment in order to get a job where I am more
comfortable, I may lose the ability to move through the graduated
levels that insure passes to go out from the center…and,
eventually, to see my family…
SO! I must grit my teeth and endure it.
Through it all, I find that I have many
rewards and, perhaps, insights…as hundreds of people whisk through
the store. While I sell cigarette after cigarette and lottery ticket
after lottery ticket, I find that my heart squeezes with compassion
more than anger or frustration at my own circumstances. When I
consider the levels of poverty throughout time immemorial….the
Depression……the potato famine…Dickens’ London…………American
slavery…whatever form of poverty or unfair treatment that has
existed throughout history, I regard the current American poverty as
a condition that wears strange beguiling faces.
Most people, I think, believe that they
have a sense of luxurious free will and self-determined destiny
because they can buy an $8.00 pack of cigarettes, some gas, and some
lottery scratchers or tickets. And most people (even – or
especially - prisoners) are extremely well-fed and warm and able to
navigate the Seven-Eleven or Walmart with relative ease.
What a brilliant marketing strategy
carried forth by corporations and the media…!!!!!
What seems to be “freedom” seems to
appear as simply another form of enslavement.
But…that is a treatise for a longer
venue than this Blog.
Nonetheless, I’m fascinated and,
often, disgusted by our American way of life…I am also sympathetic
with the victims of the “snow job” carried out by companies and
media darlings successfully advocating consumerism as the “right
way” to do things..the only appropriate way to act.
In other words, most people seem to
believe that, if we don’t give Walmart every penny and dime we
earn…and if we don’t go into debt to buy things we don’t need,
we are failing at our cultural positioning...we are “bad”
parents……I guess I’m turning into a Commie?
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