52:52

Thursday, 11/15/07

"In daylight? In sunsets? In midnights? In cups of coffee? In inches? In miles? In laughter? In strife? ...525,600 minutes..."

Rent-heads will recognize the above lyrics as wondering, "How do you measure a year?" Today I have served 52 weeks of my 54 month sentence; tomorrow will be one year.

I find it astonishing that I have been in prison for a year. On the outside, there are so many markers of the passage of time: places you've traveled, people you've seen, even small things like a movie you saw or something you bought. All of these things mark time in ways we don't normally realize. Only in a place where each day is a near as one can get to exactly the same as the day before can you really appreciate the variety of a seemingly uneventful life on the outside. Here, time seems to fold in upon itself. This is neither good nor bad; it is neither pleasant nor unpleasant -- it's just surreal. You'd have to experience it to understand.

But a year is a benchmark nonetheless, and today I am looking back. Most importantly, this year went by incredibly fast. You might expect that the sameness from one day to the next would cause time to drag. But for me it absolutely flew. I feel like I just got here.

Secondly, the panic never set in. The best way to describe my feelings walking through that door last year is "underwhelming." I recall that the officer processing me in asked if I'd ever been in prison before. "No," I told her. "You seem very calm," she said. And I was.

While on house arrest last year, Peter Young and I exchanged letters. Around late summer, as my date to surrender neared, I dared to confess to Peter that, in some ways, I was looking forward to prison. Some time to be away from the responsibilities of my life, not to have to be ambitious, not to have to accomplish anything. Ironically, I saw prison as time not to have to think about how what I do now will affect the future -- my future, the future of animal rights. I saw it as a break.

Certainly this would wear off as the date approached. My nerves would become unsettled. I would be anxious and scared. The moment the door shut behind me, the panic would set in. But I never was and it never did.

At the time I self-surrendered, this facility was overcrowded and I was put in the hole to await a bed on the compound. I was put in a 2-person cell with two people already in it. The only bed space was a mattress on the floor. I lay down and felt so good. "I don't have to do anything" was my first thought. The day before, I'd reached the end of my to-do list for essentially the first time in 10 years. As I lay on that mattress, I felt the unfamiliar, very pleasant sensation of not being restless, not feeling like I should be doing something other than nothing.

Much as I enjoyed the respite from my busy life, time in the hole did nothing to change my fundamental nature and, after two weeks, I was ready to be out of there and doing things. I remember waking up one morning and thinking, "Okay, I've had enough of this." A few hours later, I was released out into the compound.

As 52 months stretched out before me, I didn't see how I could ever be bored. There was so much I wanted to read, so many things I wanted to learn, so many muscles I wanted to exercise -- mental and physical. Again, though, I figured I must be crazy. Why was I viewing this as an opportunity? I even considered that I might really have a chemical imbalance: too much serotonin, an inability to feel bad in unpleasant situations. Otherwise, the novelty was bound to wear off. Probably, the higher I was, the harder I'd fall. But the fall, like the panic and the boredom, never came.

As I consider where I stand a year after coming here, my strongest feeling is one of equanimity. I am so grateful to be able to see the hue of the grass I'm standing on, to realize that, though there is the green of my family and friends and freedom on the other side, there is some green grass here too. I've read more in the past year than in many other years combined. The gym here is free. And I actually keep in better touch with many of my friends and family from here than I had at home.

Granted, I have been very fortunate. Both I and my family are healthy. The level of violence in women's prisons is low. This facility has a salad bar. A change in any one of these could easily turn the situation from one of inconvenience to downright misery. Anyone reading recent articles in the Earth First! Journal by various imprisoned animal and eco activists will gather that it is difficult to generalize about prison experiences.

But it hasn't been all fun and games for me either. I'm convinced I live with the 1400 most irritating people on Earth. I often can't fall asleep at night because I lie there fantasizing about vegan goodies. And I've definitely had more than one infuriating encounter with staff.

But it is precisely in these hardships that I find value in my ability to see the glass as half-full. It is easy to be happy when everything is pleasant. But it feels amazing to be able to be happy in spite of so much that is unpleasant.

Before living it myself, I thought the claim that they could never imprison our hearts and minds was empty rhetoric, a meaningless platitude, cliche, truly a bunch of hooey. If I were in prison, I thought, I'd never be able to feel beyond my immediate confinement. But I was so, so wrong. I can count my truly bad days here on one hand. In my situation, I still have the freedom to choose between rotting in prison and thriving. I insist on doing the latter.

My mom sent me a note recently that said, "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." I do love to dance.