His writing are peppered in Gray. Everything is either gray concrete or steel. The grayness is draining him faster than the endless routine and meaninglessness. Ironically, here in the North West we have also encountered the dullness of gray with only 3 days of sunshine in 30 something days. It is driving me crazy. I take more and more Vitamin D to ward off the inevitable depression that ensues from lack of sun. i think they call it S.A.D.S syndrome here.
Our conversations don't exist anymore. We have essentially drained the 300 minute bank. There are 5 minutes left until the 1st of July when the minutes are replenished. We have decided we will talk 2 minutes today. One minute each on Saturday and Sunday and use the final minute for Wednesday. The phone is his only lifeline to the outside world. His children do not have the means or transportation to visit him in NY. He will spend over 3 years there without a single visitor except maybe his court appointed attorney. It is suffering beyond comprehension to me to deny anyone the ability to see their family. He had thought that it was part of his plea bargain to be situated somewhere in the vicinity where he and his children lived. Cruel.
An excerpt from his Gray Planet Chronicles dated June 3rd, 2010:
They liken the place to a submarine...or more appropriately a gray space capsule on another planet. At this juncture, I am beginning to realize the pseudo-deity power of the creature at the bench who in capricious wrath was able to not to recommend my passage to Pensacola. I may be in Brooklyn for the duration.
Our conversation and link was so abruptly interrupted by the C.O (that’s correctional officer) because she was ready to accept the “self-surrenders” at that moment. She had been summoned an hour earlier by the front guard because the noon “self-surrender” was there...so she was ready and did not feel that she had to come back again at 2PM for me...The first indication of how things work on this planet - on the pecking order of things.
Since I am a self-surrender, I am called a “cadre” and I have some extra privileges which apparently count for a lot. I just don’t know yet, what they are. I am realizing that one of the major reasons I am here is self discipline or lack of it... In this environment, you literally have to force yourself to not sink into despair but to kick yourself out of stupor and move...get the blood circulating and mind thinking or else you could truly sink into the inferno...so discipline...strength and resolve - that when you are at your weakest...get up..move..Do not succumb to darkness
