Observations

Writing takes goddamn forever without a computer. If inmates had access to computers, laptops, or even just word processors of their own, the world would be flooded with inmate literature. It might not be worth reading in most instances, but I think the inmates would be better off for the experience.

My self imposed quota of "one-large-blog-entry-per-month" takes so much damn work! How did the greats of old do it? By the time I've written three words my thoughts have raced to the end of the paragraph and I forget what I was trying to say. I then must retrace my previous sentences and attempt to weave the tapestry anew.

I am far less subtle with a pencil than I am with a word processor and it drives me somewhat nuts. What takes half an hour to type and fly-edit takes a week to do by hand. These few paragraphs are a perfect example. Would you believe it has taken me an hour to write this? An hour! And to think that business and government used to be conducted this way.

Who am I kidding, much of business and government is still run at this snail's pathetic, whimpering pace of a crawl.

I digress. I'm experiencing a bit of writer's block and I was hoping that this small rant would help to dispel it.

How have you all been?

1. I am working on my prison album.
2. I am happier than I've been in a long time and that sort of weirds me out; it makes me wonder about the line between healthy contentedness and institutionalization -- which isn't to say I think I've become institutionalized, but I suspect I could be given enough time.
3. My cellmate is super depressed because his family has completely abandoned him -- so he spends half the day sleeping and the other half watching television. I'd complain, but as that's the biggest problem in my life I've actually got it pretty good.
4. The situation in Japan is very sad. I've always had an inexplicable fondness for the Japanese. I wonder if, had I been allowed to learn Japanese after high school, would I be dead today? Have I already lived that life? Did I want to try something more difficult this time around?
5. It seems to me that Libya differs from Iraq in more than a few ways. But I don't know. I only have CNN and Jon Stewart for news sources. I wonder how I would feel if I were in the marines today rather than in 2003. I can't wrap my head around all the nuances. I'm a Pacifist because you can't know it all, and if you did you probably wouldn't feel much like fighting anyway.
6. There was one more thing but I forgot it already.

That was two hours by pencil. if this were a larger entry I would have typed it with my typewriter for a second draft (hey look, that's exactly what I did), then re-written and expanded for a third. I'd repeat that process once more, expanding and reading for flow. Usually I'll find the paragraph order unbearable and I'll try assigning different number orders until it sounds right. Then I have to re-write it again.

But it might be the Prozac that's making it harder too. I'm not ready to go back to pre-Prozac existence. Even just the memory of how I used to feel is too heavy to think about for very long. I'm still unsure as to whether it fixes a problem or just a natural reaction to a cultural disease.

-B

P.S. The writer's block is fixed.