"No Touching" - part one of a triptych of prison blogs.

No touching -- The theme of my life. And, incidentally, the perfect phrase to introduce the primary, and overwhelming force in my life right now, and the reason I want to start blogging again.

For the past three months, I’ve been working with a team in the Civil Rights Clinic to represent a prisoner incarcerated at the federal Supermax prison. (Supermax does in fact mean exactly what it sounds like – the Bureau of Prisons has little stake in the art of language, as you might imagine) Our client is undoubtedly one of the kindest, loveliest individuals I’ve ever had the privilege to meet, but one who also happens to be, er, an international terrorist of sorts. He’s faced myriad injustices, which failed to cease the moment he arrived in The Land of the Free. Since mid-August, my thoughts are devoted to figuring out how to help this man to get some modicum of justice, a mere fraction of that which he has been denied for so long.

Donna, on culling a list of candidates for Presidential pardons:

“You tell me? Do we toss out Daisy Aimes, mother of three who had a boyfriend who stored a kilo in her closet. She's done eight years and is facing eleven more. That's longer than rapists and child molesters get. I don't see a list anymore. These are people.” (“The Benign Prerogative”).

They are people. I’ve met one of them. I ingratiated myself with him by telling my usual repertoire of self-deprecating jokes. The last time we had a conference call, he told us about 6 jokes in his charmingly halting English that he has devised about tall people from Texas. He had written them down and brought them with him to the phone. I was so delighted and moved, I was practically weeping with laughter.

The situation of the average prisoner in the United States is something I knew literally nothing about before I applied for the clinic. Nevertheless, I have never been one to buy into the bullshitty propoganda that prisons are vacation homes, serving duck pate and serving up premium cable channels like a fucking Hilton. I’m not concerned that our (read: Bryce’s) hard-earned tax dollars are going to buy feather beds for violent offenders.

Note: If you are the kind of person who believes prisons are too cushy for the people they house, and that all prisoners should be put down to keep taxpayers from having to support them, stop reading and go fuck yourself. I’m too enmeshed in this prisoner stuff to have patience for people who are wrong. Or, in the alternative, swing by charming Florence, CO. In addition to housing “the worst of the worst” [their slogan not mine] it’s a antiquing mecca.

I digress. And all I really want to say is this: People do bad things, and it’s fine that they go to prison. That’s how it should work. (non-violent drug crimes being a topic for another time). But in order to maintain that order, the order that says they should be in and we should be out, we have to make the right decisions for those who have lost their freedom. Because treating people humanely should be how we earn our freedom.

*Note: My one and only tat should give an indication which way I lean on this subject. If, after reading this post, you feel my idea of prisoners’ rights is hopelessly quixotic, then remember, I did have “justice” carved into my forearm by a 300 pound man named Butch.

Today I re-read letters from our client’s family entreating the parole board to let him come home and spent his remaining time with his family. No matter how much I think about this case, no matter how much I feel convinced of the injustice of the situation and the righteousness of our client, I will never be able to read those letters and not be moved to a point at which I am forced to realize, yet again that I cannot empathize enough.

“She said that after he missed one birthday, one Christmas, one fly-fishing season, the following years he’s spent in Leavenworth have been a frozen hell….She said if it would help she would get down on her knees. She begged for your mercy."

Understanding another's personhood is the best way to become an advocate for them. It helps me to know our client -- Prisoners are not statistics. They are like Texans -- only much shorter.

The Case of the Missing Keys

i have a bookmark that i've been using during my spring break whirlwind tour of fantasy/mystery fiction.  It depicts a cartoon rabbit wearing sunglasses, leaning against a tree reading a book.  At the top, a thought bubble reads, "Some of my best friends are books." This rabbit is me, from its ridiculously large cartoon teeth right down to its abnormally proportioned feet, but most especially in it's thought process.  yet, if this were me, it might say something more like, "Other than bear and bryce, books are my only best friends (in denver)". The veracity of this statement was quite plainly illustrated last night, in a story that begins (and probably ends) with me being an ass (this post is turning into a regular Aesop's fable, eh?)

i can be a bit, er, absentminded (i think that is the term used to describe a charming lunacy in those claiming some measure of brilliance - "Absentminded Professor", eg).  Last night, while waiting for "Duplicity" to begin, bryce and i strolled round the mall, and wound up, by sheer gravitational pull, in Anthropologie.  While making fun of someone, using an Anthro accessory as a prop, i put down my bundle of things in order to really give this joke my all (that's right, still no purse, though i do carry a woman's wallet now, if you'd like something to give me credit for).  Hours later, after the mall had closed, we left the movie and discovered that i did not have my keys.  Strike that - bryce's keys.  double damn. Not only had i lost them because i am absentminded, i'd done it while imitating someone, a bit cattily. double jackass.  we have no cash (who does??) for a taxi and thus proceed to walk the 3.1 miles home, conveniently through a posh neighborhood on one of the warmest nights we've had in months.  needless to say, bryce is not pleased.  nor am i, for that matter, but when you are me, you just get used to this kind of stuff.  que sera, and all that. but the bookmark related bit occured when on the Long walk home, whilst being shadowed by the ghost of my accidents past, and guided by the wavering lantern light of the ghost of jackassy-ness to come, bryce noted that we really don't know anyone here.  It's true.  i have some school friends' numbers, but would rather eat my big toe and walk crooked for the rest of my life than ask them for a favor. plus, we don't Know them...not in the rescue us on a saturday night at 11 pm way. 

So i guess it might be time for us to look into making the kind of friends you can call for such things. But in the light of a perfect, 77 degree, sunny day, all i want to do is sit outside, and forge a stronger relationship with my new best friend, Sherlock Holmes, whom i could no doubt call upon for the very ablest assistance! that is, if he were real. 

Vernal Equinox Resolutions

Sunday morning I received an extraordinarily pleasant surprise.  It was Spring Forward day--Hooray!  I know, those who go to church love to bitch every year about losing an hour...hey, look at that-- another plus for the secular world.  (Also, those who don't go to church don't make their kids trick-or-treat at 4:30pm when Halloween is on a Sunday or Wednesday, but that's a sad saga for another time...)  Spring Forward is my second favorite holiday, after Easter.  They are grouped into the top tier for the following reasons:

1. end of winter!!!

2. longer days, sunnier evenings

3. beginning of warmth = self-esteem-achieved through tan = happiness

4. anticipation of summer holidays is now appropriate (yep, I'll be having them til I'm 29)

*These top two holidays would be tied for favorite, but Spring Forward just cannot compete with Peeps --i mean,  it's spun sugar, covered in sugar.  "Come On!" (see Gob, A.D. season 2)

 

This annual dawn of joy provides myriad pleasing consequences.   Every spring/summer my winter hibernation from all things/people is shed and i am once again capable of finding joy in new things, and maybe even new people (don't hold your breath, strangers-in-line-for-friendship).  

So, I've decided to use this joyful posture to my advantage by doing new things!  Winter is a time for re-reading classics and listening to the "slow" mix i made 7 years ago. Winter is a time to eat the same soup/bread/king size box of hot tamales for dinner every night. Winter -- bleach.

This spring I plan to do the following (and blog about it, of course):

1. Discover and read new fiction (and a little non-)

2. Get new music (actually new, not another Paul Simon song to add to my Simon-only playlist)

3. Start food blog, by which i will be both eating and writing about new things (p.s., if you can think of a good name for this, its the only things standing in my way...something to do with bread/butter might be best...)

4. go to new places in denver, i.e. restaurants which don't deliver, museums, bars, parks, etc

5. Learn new things -- most importantly typing, for my summer internship, and to keep myself from further ridicule, generally.  Also, spanish and french. should take a couple weeks. 

6. Learn more about gardening, house-repair and improvement, and implement that knowledge, so that next winter, when I hibernate, i'll be comfy as shit. 

Obviously, list writing is my forte, so in the coming weeks, its going to be a spring-list bonanza around here!!!  

P.S. In honor of spring, please re-watch "Evidence of things not seen"  (see season four)  CJ's faith in of the Vernal Equinox is so charming - it's magic!  

What kind of day it has been

Windy. Also known as GOD-AWFUL. Wind is my least favorite weather, and if nothing else, it makes intelligent design completely moot, b/c the inventor of wind is obviously an ass. An ass who hates me.
Wind literally makes me feel insane (as this post's sentence structure will reveal—form follows function, you know)—all normal human instincts escape me and I just want to hibernate. It infiltrates my typically you-think-i'm-stoned-but-i'm-just-apathetic/oblivious demeanor and creates sundry pathetic situations.
Here's what happened to me today, all of which should and shall be blamed on the wind.

First, following my first trek through the evil element, I almost started crying in front of a graduate assistant I hardly know—not that knowing her would make that any less embarrassing. I made my worst grade in her class last semester and I really, really want/have to do better. This task seems impossible. I've been trying to get more involved in class, and seeking guidance as often as possible, yet both the professor and the graduate assistant of this class speak in a style with which I am thoroughly unfamiliar. They speak in broad, enigmatic statements, in what can only be an effort to lead me to about a billion possible answers for the extraordinarily simple question I asked. I think they are doing it to torture me. Also, after 7 months, the teacher thinks my name is Ms. Chambers. awesome. awesomely good chance of improving this grade. So today, in the middle of my conference with said G.A., I literally had to croak, “Thanks…”, grab my stuff, and run out after she would not answer my question for the trillionth time and instead launched into some of the broadest advice I've ever heard, something about as helpful as "just try your best and you'll be fine" or "you're on the right track!" At this point, my eyes were stinging, and I knew I was about to lose it.
What the fuck? Why is this spontaneous flood of emotion happening to me? Can it be the wind? Most certainly, it can.

Next, on my way home for lunch, I was nearly blown over on my bike -- no mean feat! congrats wind, you bastard. At this point, I already wanted to allow myself to succumb—to tip to the right that infinitesimal amount that stands between balance and disaster, to collapse into the grass, 100 pound backpack and all, and lay there crying in a big beige heap until the wind died down.

Yet I persevered. And got home to discover that what was once an old-in-a-charming-way house has revealed itself for the shanty piece of shit that it is. The fence had blown down in the backyard, ensuring an afternoon of Bear escaping and me running after her, begging her to return in exchange for a shit load of treats (I know, “no bad dogs, just bad owners” pile on, why don’t ya?!). Additionally, two gutters had fallen down, which i tried to repair, creating an hilarious scene for the stoned kid next door. As I tried to eat/ drown my sorrows in my massive bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with Peaches, the wind was whistling through the house with such force that I was hardly able to hear myself crunch.

After pedaling back through the wind (i had to trick myself into thinking it had stopped in order to leave the house) I had to excuse myself during my class. Apparently, my two-month-old cough (i'm allergic to snow) had, as a result of exposure to wind, turned into an embarrassingly frequent and severe-sounding hacking/gagging noise. With tears (from the cough this time) streaming from my eyes, I traipsed past 100 students while simultaneously trying to hold in the cough and put my sweater on over my favorite shirt, which incidentally had holes the size of My fists in the armpits. (saddest thing yet: I think this shirt is exceptionally flattering) It took about 10 minutes to calm the cough and catch my breath, which also leads me to resolve to stop unnecessary (read: sober) smoking. Dammit. Now the wind has my pride and my recreational activities.

Wind's one redeeming quality is that it never fails to remind me of abbie. Wearing her puffy orange and brown jacket, thrusting one arm forward, she would push through the wind like a mime, fighting against all the invisible shit they push against, in order to fight our way from the Bean to our beds, and then back again - a well traveled path for us in those days. Also, the smell of skunks reminds me of abbie. Story for another time…

With this amusing image in my mind for sustenance, i shall go once more into the breach, force myself to travel the 4 blocks home, and maybe, just maybe, never leave again.

“Bernard’s Blogland”; or in the alternative, “Cherry Trees, etc.”

Preface:
Josh: "Posting raw exit poll data without any explanation or analysis--it's irresponsible and dangerous..."
Lou: "anybody who's checking out exit polling on a blog voted first thing this morning at 6:45 am...do you really think somebody's gonna look at Bernard's Blog-land and mistake what they read for network news? ... How big do you think the readership of Bernard's Blog-land is?"

Question:
Is there a blogging code of ethics? I hope not, but just in case, I'll say up front that what I am about to speak of is as yet undocumented by any reliable source (a.k.a. hasn't been printed in the Optimist) so I shall trust you all to enjoy my usual cocktail: a fair amount of hyperbole shaken with a shot of speculation, and a damn-load of tequila...

In this, the season of Dr. King’s, Washington’s, Lincoln's, and Darwin's birthday--a virtual menagerie of truth-telling, sooth-saying old guys--I think we should reflect on the principle of truth. Honest Abe, cherry trees, and all that. So, I've written a letter to someone who has recently told the truth, and will now suffer the consequences. Because, ask those lauded men of history—it comes with a price. (Or ask me—I recently disclosed to Bryce how much my haircut cost…big fucking mistake. Don’t judge me! – I’m still using the same eyeliner I wore at my wedding, and employing a $3 concealer stick marketed to 13 years olds to cover my adult acne—I can be thrifty, gdammit. but i've had yellow hair too many times to skimp on hair)

Background: (feel free to skim, if you’ve been following the blog as you should)
A few months ago I published a post that was in essence the culmination of six years of an ACU education. Naturally, bitterness abounds. An open display of hate towards a student tore the thin veil that is "the charm of Abilene," which had formerly sustained me, right in two (see God, in, "The Bible") when a noose was placed in this kid's office.
ACU was then revealed to me in all its Voldemort-before-he-returned-to-his-body nakedness: a sick, evil creature infecting its already ignorant students with what will become a lifetime of lies and bullshit.
However--
My vexation is now nearing wrath (see The Flood, in the above). The alleged hate-crime victim has admitted that he planted the noose ON HIMSELF.

Ok, so not everyone I’ve spoken with is surprised…I was shocked – here’s why:

Dear *&%$@#%&((&!!!!!,

Don't you know???
Don't you know that this kind of behavior is the reason race relations will never be resolved in this country?
--That this nonsense will now provide fuel for fanatical ultra conservatives to continue to oppress and marginalize (and a little fuel goes along way with people who are genetically engineered for hunting and holing up in forts)?
-- that this behavior is what keeps rape victims from getting any semblance of justice,
-what keeps women who work AND need welfare from getting the fair shake they need, and instead allows a generation to perpetuate the myth that they are all abusing the system,
-what allows undocumented mothers who have babies here to be labeled conniving and their children demeaned with the term "anchor babies"?
-what perpetuates stereotypes about gays, about women, about all ethnicities (I shan't/can't enumerate their "colors" since I’m not that crazy preacher from the inauguration, though it would add nicely to the cadence I’m trying to build) and makes a solution that much further away.

All I’m saying is, on Lincoln's birthday, at a school that just started acknowledging Martin Luther King's existence this decade, I hope you know...

friend-o-phobia.

Toby: “Federated states of Micronesia”
Sam: “Toby says it’s a country”
Pres Bartlett: “It is a country, you know where?”
Toby: “I assume it’s a small island in the south pacific”
Pres Bartlett: “Its actually 607 small islands in the south pacific…interestingly, while its total land mass is only 270 sq miles, it occupies more than a million square miles of the pacific ocean, the population is 127, 000 and the us embassy is located in the state of ponapei, and not as many people believe, on the island of yap”
Toby: “Why would a person have that information at their disposal?”
President Bartlett: “Parties…”

Parties…(sigh)…we used to go to parties. In fact, I even used to Host parties. Or at least, I hosted gatherings designed to get my friends drunk enough to compliment my cooking…

The other day I came home from a dog-date with a classmate. He is also a Texan, and as I recounted in detail to Bryce all the brilliant things Bear did that day (jump, chomp, run, walk, chomp…) I also mentioned that I told said Texan that I was ready to go back, or at least, I planned to end up in Texas, and practice law there.
Bryce was shocked. I think he actually choked.
This change of heart hinges 99% on one thing. Friends. (the other one percent is a small portion of my heart that knows Texas needs a liberal lawyer a wee bit more than California, where I’d much prefer to set up “Katie-saves-the-day-for-Gay (and other marginalized groups) Inc.”
I cannot make new friends. More than that, I don’t want to. I like my old friends. I need to stick with the very small group of people I’ve honed after years and years of being turned off by, or more likely, turning off, potential friends. I need people who enjoy sarcasm and pie, are both funny and smart, and will love me despite the fact that every time I get even moderately drunk I end up dancing in a small group of people like an ungainly Tevya. (also, they can’t judge the bottle of fruity vodka I have to drink to get to that point)

However, even if I thought there was someone else out there for me, I’ll never know, because I’ve devolved into a hopeless sweaty agoraphobe. Here are some illustrations of my hopelessness. At least I can laugh about them with my new confidant, the ol blog…


Before Christmas, as I was studying for finals, two people knocked on our door. Apparently this very kind looking couple just moved in to the street behind us and were canvassing the neighborhood, meeting people, which entailed a pleasing conversation and a concerted effort to learn our names, and passing out homemade candy.
Here are my immediate thoughts:
‘DANGER!!!!! Obviously, they were canvassing the neighborhood, targeting tiny homes like ours with Saturns out front, in order to case the joint for the inevitable treasures within. ‘ ‘Also, this candy is totally poisoned. Even though it looks damn delicious, I’m throwing it away. They plainly want to kill us AND take our stuff.’
A month later, they invited us to a basketball game. I was on the verge of saying “no, no-no, NO”, when bryce came in, met them, and immediately accepted.
Turns out, they are damned nice. So nice, in fact, that I wish I had eaten that candy.

One of our teachers has a very bizarre pattern of speech/inflection. She says each word separately, allowing them to hang in the air, and slowly build into a sentence. It’s a real mental challenge to piece them together, but I would hope I typically would not laugh at other people’s speech impediments.
Well, yesterday, in about the middle of a sentence, as I was trying to visualize each word and hold them up as a banner in my brain, she got to the word “BALLS” and it just hung (har) in the air for a few minutes. I lost it. I am a child.

A girl I like at school was wearing a belt with turtles on it…(in a cute way, not in a weird-o, hello kitty way) On the tip of my tongue was the following: “Hey, turtles are my third favorite animal!” I was forced by a diversion in her attention to reflect, and hopefully have retained a shred of dignity by keeping that little gem to myself.
In case you were wondering, #1 bears, #2 owls.
More to come…

Joy cometh in the Blogging

My blood feels like its boiling. In fact, in the past few years, and particularly while in law school, this seething discomfort occurs fairly often, it's increasing, i believe, and it is driving me fucking crazy. Statements regarding (wrong) positions on guns, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-woman, or any minute allusion to the aforementioned get me so riled, I quite literally lose control.
If I consider raising my hand in class to assert an alternate view, my heart beats so fast I feel raising my hand may be the last thing I do, and since I’d much rather have that be eating cake or meeting Martin Sheen, I quickly lower the offending limb. The physical manifestations spread, making my face turn red, my hands and voice shake, and my cutting remarks come more quickly, yet unfortunately much less creatively, than they ought.
For example→
Today I wrote “Justice Scalia is a prat” in the margin of my con law text book. Typically I would not support graffiting one's disparagement of the Supreme Court, who I revere. In fact, much as I stumble, I'd like to refer to members of high office by their title (which i did here, by habit i suppose) and with the respect that such an office deserves, no matter who they are, or if they are destroying the meaning of freedom (yeah, didn't manage the respect so much).
I couldn’t help it. (you believe me right?) This is a medical condition! I just had to release some of the effervescent indignation building from reading a Texas case which provided some sort of hick-decoder ring for the 2nd amendment and discovered the inalienable right to shoot people (the right to shoot animals and 3/5 of people is a given). This, combined with the forboding awareness that the Supreme Court has recently affirmed this view, and passed out guns at a recent meeting of the 5 families in D.C.--ugh, I couldn't even finish the chapter.
So I resorted to more cheerful endeavors. However, this despoiling of a $170 text, in addition to the smoking of one cigarette, reading of 3 chapters of Persuasion, and eating an entire bag of ranch flavored mini rice cakes, (rendering them less healthy, perhaps?), did not distract my mind or buoy my spirits. Therefore, I return, fair reader, overcoming my blogger’s block once and for all, to divert myself from this god awful feeling. It seems my only recourse is to amuse myself by returning to vox populi and investing a considerable amount of time pondering the workings of the best faux white house there ever was. I had resolved to be a better student this year, but i think its plain that's already gone to shit, sooo...
Let the writing begin!

Nobody say gun, or I won’t be able to type.