The Year In ... STOOPIDITY

So here we are at the end of another year; while not exactly a banner year - a year for the ages - I can say, with all due pride and fanfare, that I did NOT set myself on fire, poke my own eyes out, or otherwise maim myself. For most of you that would be a given, but I seem to be a beast of a different color.

I began the year locked up in segregation, awaiting the disposition of yet another ticket for possession of porn, pills, and gambling; three of my favorite things in here. I could give you a five page dissertation as to WHY these things seem so dear to my shriveled heart, but it would seem to self serving and I'd only convince myself of their importance. So I won't do that.

What I will do is spend some time musing on why it seems easier to train a circus bear to ride one of those teeny tiny bikes than it is to get me to place something, ANYTHING, in front of my suicidal drive to blast off all the toes on my feet. What most people seem to learn at an early age is that actions that bring negative consequences should NOT be repeated ad nauseum. When I suffer punishment, I take it as a challenge: I will find the path to getting what I want without penalty. This type of determination is usually highly prized and well developed in highly successful people, and to be fair, I do apply this compulsion to succeed in many areas of my life. It just seems that I'm constitutionally unable to avoid the "banana in the tailpipe" situations.

For as long as I've known how I've always loved to gamble; mostly on cards and sporting events - since I've never rolled dice in a filthy alley I'm no degenerate gambler, right? My dad liked to play bingo and the slots at the reservation casino, and I'd be willing to wager that my grandfather, uncles, and aunts have all bet on one thing or another. Like alcoholism, gambling addiction seems to be endemic in the Indian population (I have nothing to support that assertion other than observation and my own experience, but I would be surprised if there wasn't a link between addictive behaviors and the populations of the survivors of genocide).

But I babble, the point here is that I dance perilously close to the edge of a precipice that I'm sad to say I have plunged over before. More than once, and deeply. At times I have not walked away from a losing hand at the table, when I know damn well I should have. I don't know if it's ego or willfulness, or the inveterate gamblers' belief that "I can make it up on the next hand, game, etc". The truth of it is that more times than not I end up losing more. To the well adjusted and sane the problems with my thought patterns are obvious, but I have a hard time walking away. Not all the time but some of the time.

So I recently lost a fair chunk of my bank account and I resentfully had to pay it off. The easy part is knowing what I did wrong, making a plan to avoid the same pitfall in the future. But as we all know life is rarely about "easy" and I seem to have a pathological dislike of easy. I can do the post-mortem, and the planning part, I just don't seem to be willing or able to put anything into action. Doing so requires a good deal of self discipline. Self discipline is a strange creature; it lurks in all of us seemingly ready to spring into action and snatch victory from the slavering jaws of defeat. But it is a fickle bitch of a beast since it is also just as readily willing to sit on its fat f-ing haunches and watch us immolate on the pyres of our pride.

I like to think of my self discipline as a beat cop patrolling my psyche looking for the opportunity to step in and lay down the law to my miscreant id. Unfortunately for me, family and friends, and my bank account, my beat cop seems more drunken, Irish look-the-other-way flatfoot than tireless crusader. More times than not I can simply roll right over my inner G-man and plunder the bank of Dumbassed Ideas, walking right past the sleeping fool with armloads of Bad Ideas. I need to fire that bastard.

As most of the followers of this blog know, I come from a slightly different background. While I refuse to let that be any type of excuse for anything I have ever done; it goes without saying that I am wired differently. At some point in everybody's development there comes a watershed moment where a youth transitions into a semblance of their future adult. A point where the foolish decisions are scrutinized with a wiser more jaundiced eye. That moment has yet to arrive for me. I know that it's close, I can feel some sort of pressure building against the dam of childish wants, and desires for the world to be the way I want it to be. But I resist; terrified of the terrible responsibilities of that adulthood. I fear being drowned, swept away by the demands of what I NEED to be doing rather than what I WANT to be doing.

I know, I know, blah, blah, blah, and boo-hoo-hoo. The point here is that I need to develop a sense of self discipline (wouldn't that take self discipline to do?). So why am I not doing that instead of typing away, expounding on my feelings like some weepy schoolgirl one might ask. Well mind yer own damn business I say; one thing at a time.

I strayed from the main idea... I would like to think that the past year was instructive in the sense that I can move forward. To where, or what I move on to is a mystery. Now on to other instructive episodes of foolishness.

I learned that I was willing to risk loss rather than lose a potential gain; to the point that I would act on something without doing my due diligence. In short I bought high and sold low. I'm sure that I'm not the only one to have made this error.

But I have rambled on for way too long and left the subject a long time ago; not to mention the not so subtle pressure of her-whose-name-shall-not-be-spoken to actually get this printed mailed and posted. So until next time I'm out of here. I have a few books that I want to review on my next post but I guess that I should probably get to reading.

NEW FOR 2012!!!

Baring extinction, I have renewed my dedication to a strict regimen of posting to The Chronicles of Kieson as well as its sister blog, Banished Art. However, should the Mayans prove correct, then, you will get nothing. ;)

Guest Blog from Jackie - Where things are

I have gratitude today for the courage I know that it must have taken for people to speak very difficult and painful and personal truths. It is what it is.

I feel inspired by this example to attempt to speak of my own. Many people have wondered, I am sure, over the years that I have supported and loved Ani for who he is just why I continue to do this and how I manage to keep doing it. I often wonder myself.

I mentioned earlier that I have learned many things from getting to know Ani and attempting to understand his experience in life. I will speak of a few of them.

It still shocks me every day to grow in awareness of what it means to grow up without parents, without a family, without knowing either one in that intimate experiential way that most of us know who we are and where we came from. I recently watched the first Harry Potter movie again when it was shown on TV and made a startling connection between the part of the story where Harry is taken to Hogwarts for the first time and taken around to shops to buy his school supplies...and Ani's experience. As I put myself into Harry's shoes and imagined what it would be like for him to find a place where he belonged for the first time, and then to find that his parents had left him a room full of money so that he could pay for his own needs himself without having to beg, borrow, or feel obligated to others for everything, it flashed on me that this was Ani's experience. I imagined what Harry's life at this new school would have been like had he not had this money left for him by his parents, if he had been "poor" and everything he needed had to be "given" to him out of charity by someone else who perhaps felt burdened by Harry's need. I saw how much more assurance he would feel that he was deserving and had worth just by being able to walk into a store and have the standing to get what he needed like everyone else. This money, then, made a huge and concrete and very real difference in Harry's internal and external position in life. I saw and felt this all in a flash and I saw that I had been unaware of the meaning of money for Ani and unaware of all that the priviledge of knowing my parents and growing up in their family had endowed me with...not through any effort on my part at all.

It is astonishing what we take for granted and then how blind this makes us. So often when I am interacting with Ani, I forget how different his experience of life is as I make assumptions and create expectations of him. The facts of his experience do not change the realities of life and what it requires of him. But they do change significantly the very important factor of my understanding and thus how I relate to him, how I support him, how I show care for him and how I view the things he needs in order to be able to meet the requirements of life. I don't think he needs punishment. He has had plenty of that and it hasn't given him or society anything of value. Since he is in a place that assumes that punishment is what is needed, and that doesn't look much beyond that, it becomes difficult to make the translation. It has been my experience that most people look at me with blank faces when I speak of trying to do better than we are for his situation - not only to benefit him, but society as well.

It isn't a matter of being "soft on crime" or letting people get away with things. In my mind it is simply helping a person to develop the capability and to have the tools and the resources to become responsible for himself to the best of his ability. Ani missed out on quite a lot and he has a lot of questions about why this happened to him. Growing up as a child, the realities of his life were never addressed with him and the feelings he had about these realities were never listened to or supported. He never developed the ability to express his needs in appropriate ways. In 2000 I had no idea what he needed or what was missing and today I regret that deeply and feel that it is in some ways my own failure. I am not dwelling in that fact, but I am taking responsibility for it and doing what I need to do to take care of it. I am taking off my blinders. I am sharing responsibility with Ani for finding out what he needs to do, what he needs to be given, so that he can take care of the things he needs to take care of. I am engaging systems and asking them to share in this reponsibility as well, or to implement their responsibility to him in ways that are more appropriate and helpful than have been done in the past.

This is what people do.

Jackie

Where Things Stand

I began this blog knowing that I might disturb the past or that my little corner of the 'net might cause others pain or provoke an angry response. I don't live in a vacuum and having lived my life like Godzilla stomping Tokyo is going to have serious and far-ranging consequences; yet, I have to admit to not being prepared for the situation which I knew would eventually arise.

But I know how to respond to this reminder of my past. I tell the truth and if push comes to shove I can face whats real and I can speak with honesty and integrity about my life. With that in mind I can say I have never and will not make any excuses for my actions nor will I or have I ever asked anyone to make them for me. Don't confuse the words of a lawyer as an attempt to avoid culpability for anything I've done. Lawyers are paid to represent their client and I have no control over what my lawyers and experts choose to say in doing this. Moreover, I don't ask to be forgiven, or even seek redemption even though those concepts are never far from my mind.

I don't think that because of what was done to me excuses what I've done to others or that the people that I've done horribly shitty things to deserve to have had those things done to them. I have no right, moral or otherwise, to treat any human being the way that I have treated them in the past. And people - human beings innocent by and large of doing me any harm - have suffered greatly because of the things that I've done to them. I have felt the very same fear, terror, helplessness, loss, anger and rage they feel, and knowing that I'm responsible for their pain makes me sick. I would give anything to not have done those things to them.

If you respect and accept what I've said above then you might choose to accept the following.

I cannot forget what is also true for me. What follows is less than pleasant but no less true and I have every right to say it. If this makes me seem insensitive or lessens my humanity then I'm sorry that you feel that way.

Everyone who knows me knows the pride I take in being Native American. There is a wealth of historical fact about how Indians have been treated, but I have first hand knowledge of how my family was destroyed by a bureaucratic machine committed to the destruction of the reservation system and by extension its culture and values. So while historians can say, truthfully, that Native Americans were victims of genocide and a systematic attempt was made to destroy N.A. culture by the government of the United States, I had a front row seat and saw the destruction up close.

I try not to link these two worlds - the things I've done and the things that happened to me. I have an axe to grind as a Native American, but I don't want to say that that is the reason that I've done anything to anyone. Native Americans might say that what I've done was wrong and contrary to Native American values and I would agree to a point. I never signed a treaty. I have a huge conflict with how my people have conducted themselves and that conflict extends to my life and actions. But whats been done to me doesn't explain what I've done to others.

I don't need to be the person that I was 10 years ago. I'm not the man I was 10 years ago. I may never be redeemed or rehabilitated and I have little control over others perceptions of those concepts as they apply to me. But I'm a better man now than then. Not perfect but thats not something I strive for. I want to treat people the way all people deserve to be treated - with respect and dignity. I know the love of others, both family and friends, and I give love unconditionally. I will continue to learn and grow. I thank all the people who have supported me with their love and friendship. I apologize unreservedly to those I have done wrong to. You did not deserve what I've done to you and I'm committed to doing whatever it is I need or am able to do to make you whole.

Ani

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I would like to thank both of my external brains for their kind assistance and thoughtful support of this post.

I'm back

So. The time has come to break the inertia of the helpless and get a post written. I hadn't realized so much time had snuck by since the last time I gave due to this beautiful disaster that I call a life, but as is the nature of time it creeps away quickest when not watched.

It's not like my life has been boring either; since the last post I've gotten kicked off the hill, been thrown into a new cage, gotten doubled up with another trouble-making Native, received a firm date for my upcoming evaluation, and on top of all this commotion I've managed to stay out of trouble. At least I haven't been caught.

That would be funny if it wasn't the truth. Prison seems to be the worst place for a man to try to rehabilitate themselves. While not being a gang member, I have a lot of obligations because I'm indian. Funny how that works out: trapped by ones own culture. It's not that I don't have a choice here, but frankly the alternatives are crap. I couldn't survive in here if I didn't have the weight of the First Nation on my side.

I guess prison changes EVERYTHING. Some people don't realize that ugly little truth of being trapped by the very thing that gives me identity. That's not to say that I don't get a lot of benefit from other indians because I've taken more than my share of goodies and had other brothers put in some "work" for me. Unfortunately, it's just how things get done in here. You want new sheets? Clothes that another man hasn't worn, farted, and done worse in? You want the queens and punks to stay on their squares and leave you alone? You want something for the head to knock the edge off and make the night go as nicely as possible? You want to BELONG and when it's time to stand up you want to be sure you ain't standing all alone?

If you want these things then you better claim up coming through the door because this asn't a joke in here. There are people in here that are going to die in a cell and some of them really don't give a shit if you're a nice guy, or innocent, or trying to be a better person. Yet, when it's all said and done, there are people in here doing the right thing. It's not a good life or easy time but there are people that have turned that corner. Predominantly these are people that have a door that they can eventually step through.

In 2000, the state decided that if you received 10 years in prison then you serve 10 years with zero time off for good behavior. Prisoners are the easiest target for politicians to make hay off. Nobody loves a criminal other than the friends and family of the criminal. Anyhow. In Wisconsin judges are political creatures, too; walleyed eyes on the interests of "justice" as well as their re-election. When they began the "truth in sentencing" garbage they also decided that the current sentencing guidelines needed beefing up as well so most crimes got hefty increases. These lengthier sentences resulted in people doing longer sentences without ANY incentive to change. And this is where I find myself: a 50 year bit with no door.

All Hail the Conquering Hero

It was bound to happen. By the sheer number of complaints I've filed against this prison chances were I was going to win one. And I did. I quote: "2 cookies return to inmate property per I.C.I. 1-13-11." I am aware of the irony of a fat guy grieving tasty pastries, but you can't rain on my parade. Not today. For today is my day, the Evil Empire has been routed. Tonight I sleep the sleep of the just.

So why is this so monumental of an event you might ask? Because over the course of 20+ years of incarceration in one gulag or another I had managed to win one solitary complaint lodged against the Wisconsin D.O.C. Today that ignominious total is two.

Let me tell ya how this game is played in the land of cheese and beer. In Wisconsin lock-ups inmates are allowed to complain about the "frustrations and irritations of institutional life." (Wisconsin Department of Corrections Chapter DOC 310.10 appendix.) The system is called the Inmate Complaint Review System or ICRS for short. This may seem like a good thing to the uninitiated. But those familiar with this little circus of the Bizarre will tell you that like any game of chance in in any circus worth its name, this game is rigged. The complaint examiners or I.C.E.'s are employees of the Department of Corrections, many are married to administrators, supervisors, and line officers. How do you think domestic life is going to be if you're finding in favor of the inmates? Plus, like any good bureaucracy this DOC is rife with regulations, rules, procedures, and policies. All written down, numbered and listed until you want to puke with it all. Nevermind that these regulations, rules, procedures, and policies are always in flux, with this one superceding that one and not to mention this rule contradicting that policy. The I.C.E.'s are good; they know the byzantine arcana of DOC policy because they do nothing else but handle and dispose of complaints from inmates.

Despite they're good points, they can be stunningly mindless. A few years ago I had a watch with a leather band. The band had a single row of stitching holding two thicknesses of leather together. This is called "double stitched" and its not allowed in the joint. Somehow the band avoided detection when I initially received it. I had the watch for years and despite several property inventories it presented no problem. Yet as things go in here all it took was one bored, diligent, or bitter officer and my watch was contrabanded and subject to disposal. The issue was the band: it was double stitched and there was no getting around that. Luckily I had found a store that had clear watch bands as the new regulations that had gone into effect after I had received my watch now stipulated. So I told the property room that they could contraband the watch band and I'd order a new band for the watch. I was stunned when the property room determined that the watch and the watchband were "all watch" according to them and if the band went the watch went with it. So I complained, filed my paperwork in a timely fashion and waited for the decision. I thought I was on firm ground with a good argument.

The examiner at that time, was the warden's wife and her determination was that not only was the band double stitched but the band must have been illicitly smuggled in because that's the only way it could have possibly gotten into the institution. Complaint dismissed and it was rubber stamped by the warden. Big surprise there. It was only after I appealed to the office of the secretary of the department of corrections did some semblance of sanity return.

The only sure-fire way to beat them is to be as well versed in policy and procedure as the examiners are. An inmate has to keep up with all the policy revisions and be certain to keep himself within the limits of all relevant rules. Or you can exploit loopholes. However to their credit a system has been installed that looks good on paper but is flawed in execution.

It was this array of bureaucratic power and indifference that I found myself in a contest of wills over...cookies. Christmas cookies to be exact. Tasty little treats sold but once a year for a limited time. Knowledgeable convicts look forward to this time of year not so much for the cookies but for the containers. These cookies come in a big resealable plastic tub, perfect for cooking in, eating out of, or storing your odds and ends in. And I had three tubs of cookies and plans for the tubs. But my faulty decision-making process had a hiccup and I found myself, once again, on the Hill getting Focused.

When you go to segregation the Philistines get to fondle your property. Of course, they're going to find something to contraband. But that day they picked the wrong convict and contrabanded the wrong piece of property. The property room told me I was over the allowable limit on the volume of property I was allowed to have. The department of corrections mandates that all of an inmate's property must fit into a 32" x 16" x 16" box, excluding electronics, legal work and one oversized hobby item. On its face that rule makes sense, but once again the devil is in the details. The property room invariably counts towards this limit state-issued clothing, particularly a bulky oversized winter coat and clod-hopper boots both of which are space hogs. So of course I was over the limit and when that happens the first items on the chopping block is an inmates' consumables, and my cookies were at risk. So I complained, went through the farce of trying to "resolve" the issue, and finally brought up the point that by policy state issued clothing should not count toward an inmates volume limit.

And what do you know: I won. While I wonder what kind of Hell I've wandered into where Grown Men argue over cookies, right now I'm dreaming of that day in March or April where I get to open that tub of stale Christmas cookies and taste sweet victory.

All hail the conquering hero.

Addendum - 1/14/11 - It's come to my attention that I didn't so much win my complaint as much as these buzzards just gave up. They quit! They tapped out, gave up and threw in the towel. Waupun is the France of Correctional Institutions! In Star Wars did the Emperor weenie out or did he go down swinging? When Rocky Balboa climbed through the ropes did that big goofy Russian just throw up his hands and say, "Nyet, not today, I'm feeling bloated." No! Perhaps the property room was demoralized by the crushing impact of my impeccable logic. Nah, probably just got tired of me bitchin' about some cookies. Either way: I still win! Woo-hoo!

"Too Late!!" - Guest Blog from Jackie

Since Ani is in segregation, and I haven't heard from him for awhile, I decided to use his blog for a bit of a rant.

I remember when the judge sentenced him in 2002 that she gave a very brief nod to the concept that if he were younger she might consider suggestions for evaluation and treatment. This sense that something is "too late" and therefore the only thing we can do is to lock him up for basically the rest of his life, riles me. How can something be "too late" when you were never offered it in the first place? What is "too late"? Has the train left the station? Has the doctor gone home for the day? Is there not another day, another train?

There seems to me to be something monumentally cruel in telling someone it is too late to allow them to learn, to grow, to find out what they can do to make things better. Ani is a slow learner and a late developer in some areas. He is grappling with how to make decisions by thinking through options and consequences rather than acting without thought. I don't know how much he can develop this ability, but I would never discourage his desire by telling him "it is too late" or "that ship has sailed" or "that's water over the dam." Do we send people to prison to "think about what they've done" or do we do so to lock them up forever so we don't have to think about them? How many people actually give any thought to what happens to people when our judges, on our behalf, give out sentences that give up on a person?

The bitter part of it being "too late" for Ani is that we are just for the first time learning what may have been the cause for many of his difficulties and we are attempting to get this evaluated. For a variety of reasons, this was never done before. If there is something going on that caused him to have difficulty in several areas, it offers hope to find that out and see what can be offered to him to deal with this. This seems to be all about hope and possibility, learning and growth...and yet the judge acted on her belief that it was all "too late" for Ani.

It has been a fragile thing to offer hope to Ani. For as long as he can remember, he has been offered shame and punishment whenever he failed to live up to the expectations of others. He was told over and over that he was lazy or he didn't care or he wasn't trying hard enough - that the thing being expected of him was within his power to do. And then, over and over he was heaped with scorn and rejection, blame and punishment when things didn't work out the way others had expected. He came to have a deathly fear of all expectations. Our recent sojourn into the land of neuroscience has been frought with anxiety for the possiblity of hope, the possiblity that things might not always have been his fault, and the possiblity that upon learning where he is having difficulty there might be something that could make things work better. Dang those expectations!

So, in spite of the judge's pronouncement that life was pretty much over for Ani, and no one would be making any more expectations of him, I have labored to help him find answers. In my mind, prison is - or should be - about learning to take responsibility, learning to act in a way that changes things and makes them better. However, I have found very very little of that going on in prison and I wonder if it explains why there is such a high recidivism rate. It is really a dangerous thing, in my mind, to lock people up without giving them the tools to make changes, as it is bound to actually make them worse.

Taking responsibility, I believe, starts with knowing what you are capable of, what is within your power to do. If we take responsibility for something we have no power over, it kind of messes up our sense of responsibility. Likewise, if we believe we are powerless when there actually is something we can do, we have warped our sense of responsibility. I hope I am not being naive in my belief that an evaluation will help Ani to learn more about what he is capable of doing, and what he is not capable of at this time. And, that this will form the basis for a truer sense of responsibility.

Ani's last letter also addressed his current state of understanding on this issue, making the following request of me:

"On my next worksheet series I would like to work on my decision making abilities. I should point out this is a biggie. Even though I know what I'm supposed to do I more often than not will do what I want to do. Its a terrible habit for me to break. Nothing works. Not logic, reason, beatings, or Prison; I'm incorrigible. I would like to be corrigible."

I agree that there is something very impaired in his decision making abilities. I am encouraged by his growing awareness of this fact. I am hopeful that with the help of some professionals that we are hoping to be able to bring into the prison to evaluate him, we will know more about what isn't working. And then comes the possibility of growth and change. Much better to be here than to be left at the station watching the train of life departing with just about everyone else on it.

Happy New Year!
Jackie