Contribution by Jr. McPherson DOC# 100786

[Dear Reader: Bryan (elite|fitrea) solicits contributions from inmates and interested others to spread the word and continue the story. This is one.]

“Rules of Engagement”

By: Jr. McPherson

D.O.C. #100786

Saturday

7.16.2011

11:12 a.m.

Life is a conglomerate of choices. Some good, some bad, and always made during the waterfall of trials and stresses we all face each and every day. Choices on a circuitous path that ultimately lead us into the valley of wisdom. Each choice is yours to make and it only takes one to change your life forever. I’m living proof of this.

I chose to engage myself in a jewelry heist at only seventeen years of age. I now write this at 32 with these same walls of steel as a witness to a shattered life. Yet, through all the years, toils, darkness and fears there is always hope. Allow me to take your into the world of prison. Over the last decade it has become the new cattle industry – “human cattle industry”. Lock everyone up and never let them out. No money? Well, take it from the schools and education budget so we can maintain these “gated-communities” so we don’t have to let them out. Pun intended.

This spike in prison population is so bad that 2 out of every 5 people are related to or know someone who is locked up. No one really gets the benefit of parole, just years of 6 month to 5 year setbacks, or the parole you to your M.R.D. (mandatory release date). So on paper it looks like they’ve paroled people but in reality they haven’t. No one wants that liability if a guy gets out and commits another crime. The parole board “pencil-whips” up these statistics to appease anyone who starts asking questions.

One of our major advocates is the CCJRC (Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition) www.ccjrc.org who can verify the looking glass of lies the penal system is based on. I love Colorado, but the justice system is corrupt and they hand out time like it’s water. Colorado has over 25 prisons with a population of over 25,000 inmates. Let out 1,000 and that literally saves tens of millions of dollars every fiscal year. That’s just a few facts.

Let us take a ride to the beginning. I’m a born Colorado native, 1979 in Salida Colorado. I grew up in a middle class family with excellent values and way of life. Everything outdoors was our playground. This included fishing, hunting, camping, skiing, rafting, and so much more. I had a 4.0 GPA; I was an athlete, and had aspirations of going to the Air Force Academy. Know this, the way you were raised, whether good or bad, does not affect your choices unless you allow it to. We all make mistakes but you don’t ever have to let them define who you are. I had a good life and chose to steal. Surviving on impulse is a deadly snare.

A friend and I robbed a jewelry store during the night in 1997 that led to the slaying of the night watchman.... For the rest of the story go to: http://gov-out-of-control.blogspot.com/2011/08/rules-of-engagement-by-jr-mcpherson-doc.html

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Thursday, July 14th 2011

I have been sitting on some shorter entries for some time now. I'm not really sure why - June just passed by and I lazed the entire month away. I'm falling into a routine of exercise and reading - which is good. I think - but I'm also sleeping a lot, watching TV a lot; generally acting like I'm on vacation when in the back of my mind I feel I should be writing.

And, of course, I am -- just not so prolifically as before.

I've also been feeling somewhat guilty over the success of my blog: I've been getting a lot of positive feedback lately, and while flattering it is also somewhat dismaying. I still think about Lady X, and I imagine her reaction to my web presence would be less than receptive. I feel it would be better for my self-interest and preservation if I didn't care about her reactions, but I do - to my detriment probably. Perhaps now that I've mentioned it my guilt will abate somewhat.

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We've been locked down for almost a week now. These facility-wide lock-downs occur a few times per year. Usually they are initiated because of a large fight - these do occur occasionally - but sometimes they are random. Either way, they feel random because the staff seems prohibited from discussing reasons for lock-downs (or anything else) leaving the inmates to wildly speculate. Being more helpless, they are more amenable to demands.

I recognize this tactic from boot camp, from history books, even from movies. In District 9 for instance, the aliens are suppressed and kept in a state of complete helplessness - and then blamed for the shortcomings said helplessness fosters. Of course, District 9 was a metaphor for Apartheid and not a commentary on the US correctional system - but the psychological tactics used come from the same book. It's obvious. It seems to be becoming more pervasive in the US government, or parts of it at least. Is this a demonstration of some kind of systems-theory principle? Even the security chief here was in the marine corps. I find it highly ironic that experience managing soldiers translates so seamlessly to managing prisoners. And the irony compounds because I felt so much more imprisoned in the marines than I do now.

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Last night was sort of weird -- power went out in the whole valley for some reason, and all the lights, TVs, fans, and clocks suddenly died. Usually a power-outage prompts a lock-down. But of course, we were already locked down. The facility's generators kicked on, and a few emergency lights became available while the ventilation system reactivated.

For an instant, the prison was calm. Have you ever had the feeling, during a blackout, that the disappearance of all those electromagnetic fields we are surrounded by causes a sort of relief? Like a headache has suddenly gone away that you didn't even realize was there until it vanished?

I don't know how the water systems work here but when the power went out they stopped working as well. The pressure gradually subsided in our sinks and the toilets stopped working. I must admit it's pretty strange sitting in a cell with no power, no water, and no knowledge of when either will return. The staff was pretty helpless too.

"Do you know when we'll have water?" I asked one of the guards as he passed my door. "Well, you see," he said; Morgan is his name, "the whole valley is out of power. No one in Las Animas has electricity." This is a pretty typical response of a Las Animas guard. Never mind the fact that the backup generators had kicked on and I asked about water, not power; the staff is overworked, underpaid, and stretched thin. Half of them don't even know what they're doing, and the other half contradict the first. 9 out of 10 guards don't really understand the delicacy of their task anyway - entrusted to care for the lives of what are essentially children in adult bodies - and many openly complain about how we inmates have it too good; how we don't deserve exercise, television, books, or even three meals a day. And it's funny, because they don't even know what most of us inmates are in prison for, and seemingly forget that most of us will actually see daylight again - free daylight - that only very few in their charge are truly despicable souls. The guards forget that imprisonment is the punishment.

I don't know what I expected when I asked. I kept thinking about the rule of thumb concerning deprivation and death. 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water, 3 months without food, more or less. So I had some time.

Over the course of an hour or two, it became obvious as cell after cell discovered its water was off, the inhabitants would kick at the door, yelling at deaf ears about injustice (there were no guards in the pod to hear them - so did they really make a sound at all?), which prompted other inmates to join in the noise. It isn't uncommon to hear inmates imitating 200 animals - soon the pod was all chimpanzees, toucans, monkeys, asses, and other annoying sounds. I don't participate but I can't say I blame the others for making such a racket. We'd already been locked down for several days. Cabin fever affects some more than others.

Around 8 or so the sun was setting and our reading light was waning. I laid my head back and wondered about the days before electricity. I thought about the lake nearby. I wondered if CCA forgot to pay its power bill - which was unlikely if the entire valley was out, but that could have just as easily been an appeasing lie.

For a little while I thought I would enjoy the first truly dark night's sleep in almost 2 years. But the flood lights came on outside; apparently those were on the generator circuit. This prompted me to check the water again with no luck. Priorities. (Hmmm.)

Eventually the power came back on - and the water with it. We were trapped thus for 4 hours. I've since heard that it's illegal for a prison to do this. At least nothing serious happened.

But I am glad I can write about it in a public forum.

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This morning everyone in the pod was strip-searched, then taken to the large gym, where we waited for just under 4 hours while a black-uniformed set of guards held paintball-guns filled with pepper balls. Rumor had been spreading for days that a facility-wide shakedown would occur. These happen about once or twice a year as well, but this is the first time we've been taken out of our living area while it happened. Normally the security isn't like this either. It is an exercise in the utter ridiculous. They wore bullet-proof vests, like we can buy guns.

Hours passed and the 100 degree heat crept into the gym. We were allowed to stand up to walk to the water fountain or to pee, but that was it. Even so, it was all bearable. What was strange was when, upon returning, my cellmate and I noticed that all electronic appliances had been removed from our room. My cellmate's TV was gone, as was my typewriter, my lamp, and my headphones.

Danny Salazar, our unit manager, addressed our pod as follows, "I don't want to hear anything about property until Monday! We're going to lock you down now serve you lunch, then go on modified lock down! If any of you act up, we'll go on full lock down again!"

It's a bit stupid. My appliances have been confiscated because the guards think I stole them, despite the fact that I have the receipts for them in my cell. The typewriter cost me $139.12, the lamp cost me $13.36, oh an what do you know, I've misplaced the headphones receipt. Never mind that the facility insists on defacing our appliances by beveling our names and inmate numbers on them. New headphones will cost me 25 bucks, too. Good for canteen services I imagine. Even better for them next year when they take them away from me again. What a business model.

But the dumbest part is that this blog entry will be online almost before I can even talk to anyone about getting my stuff back. Amazing. Simply, utterly, amazing.

-fin-

Thought

People like to say that men think about sex a lot. Sex is great and all, but I fantasize about other things more often; things that other people would probably consider incredibly boring, like sharing naps on the carpet in an window's sunlight, folding clothes that aren't mine, the silence of a shared chore; the sound of someone sleeping next to me. Moments such as these are much harder to come by than sex is. I have longed for them since childhood. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one; but with as many people as there are that's a laughable thought. Where are the others? My loneliness caused me unbearable pain. But society's message is clear as day: I deserve not love, but Prozac. At least Prozac comes in daily increments.

Thought

My first lunch at Bent County [Correctional Facility in Las Animas] I sat next to a guy serving 12 years for standing in someone's backyard. Trespassing, I think it's called. Short, wiry fellow. Fantastic artist. Waste of your tax dollars. But you don't care. His first words to me were, "I hear you set your old lady's house on fire."

I would have to get used to this, I thought. I had never heard the worst horror of my life more succinctly portrayed. No embellishments, no buts, no reasons; just the unmitigated horror. "Yeah," was about all I could say.

Then he said something sort of funny. He said, "I can respect that." The silence that followed made it even [more surreal].

Prisoners are some of the least judgmental people in the world. That's the appeal of the bad boy that I never used to understand. I get it now. It doesn't mean we can't be pricks sometimes, but I'll be less likely to judge a lady by her past going forward.

Two Creatives

Sometime last year I sat down for breakfast at an empty table. Although I usually sit with friends or with my cellmate. I tend to be impatient when it comes to meals. I often end up near the front of the chow-line, having sped ahead of everyone, and will sit at the first empty table I find. Usually my friends catch up to me. Sometimes they don't.

When they don't it's anyone's bet as to who will end up sitting next to me. There are over a dozen pods in my facility and each pod houses just over a hundred inmates (which is actually pretty small for a prison). I've sat next to and across from all kinds of people; murderers, thieves, druggies, the rich, the poor, and of course, the occasional sex offender. Many inmates become extremely anxious sitting next to people they don't know. I used to feel the same anxiety, but nervousness just seems to draw attention, and it's actually something of a waste of an emotional state. I haven't found a real benefit to it yet.

What the inmates worry about is being perceived as hanging with the wrong crowd, though said crowd's composition will vary depending on which inmate you ask. Personally, I stopped giving a shit. The only people I tend to avoid are the white-power types. I suppose I'm trying to live up to the personal expectation that I live in a post-racial society. I feel a bit at odds with myself because I'm trying to expand my compassion to include those who are easily vilified, including skinheads. I play most situations by ear. The result is that I have friends all over and zero problems.

On this particular morning an incredibly ugly man sat down at an empty seat across from me. I'm trying not to understate; he was really, truly, the ugliest, most hideous, most trollish creature I had ever laid eyes on. I had to consciously avert my eyes to keep from staring; he was that unfortunate. I had never seen him before. He elicited a strong aversion in me. I couldn't even bring myself to say hello at first.

And then he started eating. I had no idea teeth could grow so crookedly. Climbing at awkward angles, as if to escape his ragged, voracious maw, they revealed shades of black and brown seldom seen with the lights on. Truly despicable. I almost lost my appetite. Almost.

But I also became somewhat disgusted with myself. I knew in the instant it took to gather all of this information that the man before me had been thoroughly dehumanized all of his life. He was born for prison. No one talks to such a being unless forced to. This man had never known true friendship, love, kindness, favors, or sacrifice. They are just empty words to him. It never mattered what his crime was, he was doomed the instant his father's crooked sperm mingled with his mother's haggard ovum.

So I forced myself to say hello. I thought that if his mind might have somehow survived his life intact, I might have been able to redeem humanity somewhat by offering him a small kindness, even friendship. But his mind was gone. He was as ugly and useless on the inside as he was on the outside, which isn't to say he was completely useless, just mostly so. The rest of us have some pretense of a claim to humanity; this man's existence dispelled all such lies. His very presence taught a lesson that went miles over his own gnarled head and stunted spine.

What can be done for such cases? Society didn't even have the decency to chew before swallowing him.

It was too much for me. I would have had to spend years bringing that man to some semblance of dignity. But supposed he already felt dignified. What then? Would I have been the creature then?

We did trade small talk at least. He was a very depressed, bitter man, and he hid his sadness behind a thick veil of anger. I never saw him again. That's not very plausible in an environment like mine. Could this have been one of those situations where the protagonist was actually sitting at the table by himself all along?

Probably not. But I don't care much about objectivity anymore. I sort of tried.

Demons

The various lores and myths surrounding demons were a crude forerunner to the spiritual amalgamation I perceived in 2008. Demon lore, unfortunately, is rather synonymous with Christianity, and since I was raised a Christian, I was quite naturally receptive to its ideas as a young child and adolescent. It is a source of extreme shame and embarrassment for me -- or at least, it was at one point. It feels much less so now. It was when I started writing this entry back in November. I haven't looked at it for a few months now. I'm not sure I was ready to share this then. I am now.

I have already spent some time rambling to the reader about demons, angels, and gods. Some religions use these terms interchangeably; others, to convey extremely specific ideas. I use them figuratively and interchangeably. They may correspond to something real or they may not. I'll say this; while I don't believe in sin or that there was ever a fall of man, I do believe that there are benevolent and malevolent people and ideas in the universe. To wrestle one's demons seems to me as the same process whether said demons are perceived as agents of Satan or aspects of one's consciousness, and while most point to a distinction between matters of evidence-based fact and those of faith, there seems to be some wiggle room left for interpretation, speculation, and intuition. Despite my best efforts, childhood ideas have often resurfaced in new and surprising ways. I think it would be nice if people dispelled with the notion of childhood innocence and just taught their offspring the truth to the best of their knowledge, no matter how complicated.

When I was a Christian, I tended to use hell's "traditional" demons to represent my spiritual ideas. I knew that it was strange. I realize now that I felt some sympathy for demons, due, in part, to my self-identification as a wraith or a monster, and to my depression. Hell, as a state of mind, was something I experienced for long stretches at at time. Interpersonal gaps kept me from forming friendships with my peers, and I perceived that I was being ostracized for some reason. I perceived myself as ugly, both externally and internally, and became drawn to ugly things. I identified very strongly with outcasts.

Another reason I tended to think of demons when pondering spiritual matters is that I used to "feel" demonic presences from time to time. I chalk it up to superstition now, but I'm sure many people can relate to the experience. Somehow I perceived an evil, malevolent spirit focusing its attention on me. It used to make me feel terribly afraid. It was that "haunted house" feeling. I still grimace and curse through scary movies because they remind me of it. I wish I could say that I rationalized these feelings away, but I merely learned to endure them as an adult. They transformed somewhat in 2005, but I'll get to that.

Finally, and this really is one of the more embarrassing aspects of my past, I was drawn to demons for one other reason. Very few people know that while I was in middle school, bullies often followed me home while throwing rocks and yelling insults. I hated walking to and from school. I began taking longer and more elaborate routes just to avoid those assholes, but if they spotted me it didn't matter what route I took. Three at a time, they'd follow, staying safely at a throwing distance. If I slowed down, they slowed down; it I walked faster, they walked faster; hurling pebbles and cans and whatever else might be laying around. I wished for no small amount of violence to visit upon those children. Perhaps this admission will prove to be my catharsis: I sincerely wished that I could have had a demonic companion all my own for the purpose of wreaking havoc on the lives of my tormentors. I really hated them. I was a wrathful little thing. So I had a secret desire for a "pet demon" as a youth. Hence my fascination with them, even if I didn't always believe in them. It's worth noting that my haunted house feelings occured well before this wish, so they may have emboldened it somewhat; despite my fear, I was never physically harmed, so I began to doubt the validity of the claim that devils were inherently harmful, though they were scary.

I don't remember the first time I heard about demons, but I learned about the devil at an early age. I do remember wanting to draw him at one point; he was purported to be the most beautiful angel, and the duplicitous nature of such a subject appealed to me. Besides, God can't be drawn. Try it.

I didn't take the devil very seriously as a child. One day in Sunday School -- yes, I was one of those -- I made the mistake of making fun of him. I thought everyone would join in and we'd all laugh and make fun of the devil together, or something like that. What a grand old time we all would have had, secure in our relationship with God, able to mock the devil at our whim and fancy. Haha, what a cad, that devilish old nelly! I really don't remember what I said, but I have a long history of saying exactly the wrong thing in a crowd. My opinion was sharply rebuked by everyone in the room. And then the teacher told me something that made me feel afraid! That the devil was smart and powerful (this part I already knew), but also that he was easy to provoke and enrage. He was dangerous. To mock him was to willingly invite hardship into one's life. My head reeled with potential ramifications. Could I personally piss off the devil? Was that possible? I hadn't previously considered such an idea plausible.

In my mind it's a bit unfair to make a child understand such ideas mere moments after singing, "If the devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack," but what confused me more was the unanimous consensus of the Sunday School students. Had I missed some key information? As these were some of my only interactions with other English-speakers, I valued their input pretty heavily. In return, I was blessed with all the subtle arts of neurosis. The idea that Satan's wrath could be invoked, whether by accident, by taunting, or by harmless fun, made him seem much more real to me. It tapped into that superstitious realm of my mind and set up a nice foundation for the other demon mythologies that followed over the years.

In time I was introduced to the concept of spiritual warfare as it is understood by many Western Christians. I may as well attempt to acquaint the unfamiliar reader: the belief is that a human mind is like a battlefield; a literal one, on which hosts of angels and demons battle for supremacy unseen. The details are all speculative, with no shortage of spiritual authorities. I suppose, in my own way, I am included in this punditry; but my intent here is merely to explain some of the framework that helped me lose my mind.

There are no causes or effects that a sufficiently paranoid mind cannot attribute to demonic activity. demons can't be seen, heard, felt, smelled or tasted objectively and directly. Rather, they exist on a "spiritual plane," residing behind-the-scenes the same way God does. They are occupied with misery and torment. I've read that their actual survival depends on negative emotions; that such things as rage, sadness, or tension are like sustenance to them. I've also read that demons eat human souls (and one another); that hell is something like an eternal digestion process. Demons are also said to relish in human excesses, exhibiting greed, envy, lust, and so on. Some ideas, particularly older ones, envision demons as personifications of the vices themselves.

I was twelve or thirteen when first introduced to the idea that demons could plant thoughts into a person's mind. That resonated with me. I though about it ad nauseam. Were thoughts beaming across the universe? Could my mind be read by any being who happened to take interest in me? Did I have an intimate, one-sided relationship with demons whether I wanted one or not? What could I hide from beings who didn't sleep and wanted to feed on my existence? Could they see me? Did they watch me eat? Sleep? Masturbate? Did they prompt any of my behaviors? Which of my thoughts were really mine? How many of life's disappointments were due to demonic subversion? Were there things beneath a demon's time or dignity? What were the limits? How tiny a happiness was worthy of sabotage?

I tried not to think about it. I knew thoughts like that were a little out there. But depression and isolation reinforced them. It really felt like an external force was weighing me down. It was easy to feel as if demons were ruining my life. I was lonely and sad. I did my best to hide it. My heart ached with adrenaline when I thought about interacting with people -- I don't know why. It was strange to grow up with.

Other people became quite mysterious to me, as they so clearly lacked the problems I didn't. They had happiness; they had friendship; they had relationships, community, interdependency. They had a human quality that confounded and eluded me -- hence my self-identification as something only nigh-human. I felt like the grinch. It was as if God existed for others but not for me. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had always felt that way. It was hell as I had often heard it described by Christians -- as a total separation from God.

But how could someone be alive and in hell at the same time? And how had I stumbled into it? What had I done? Had I died and forgotten? It didn't make sense to me.

I began to develop what I suppose other people would consider odd social habits, because I grew seriously afraid that other people could perceive my inhumanity. This probably started a kind of self-fulfilling chain reaction -- I acted more and more suspiciously while people treated me with increasing suspicion. My personality came to revolve around concealment and hiding and people eventually stopped taking notice of me, or at least stopped interacting with me. I grew to be tall, silent, dark, stiff, brooding, sinewy, standoffish, intimidating; creepy even. It's a mold I've been trying to break since becoming an atheist. I've actually been having some pretty tremendous success lately.

Long story short, demons are a crazy person's wet dream. If they exist, I think the lore surrounding them poses a greater threat to humanity than they ever could themselves. And if they exist, maybe that's the point. Isn't fear strange?