MDC Before Count

A man sits down to read his paper. He sets the briefcase down next to the curved concrete bench. The tree, bench, and grass lay in serenity, a stark contrast to the large concrete wall behind the man, strewn with barbwire to protect him from the evils within it. The man pulls out a newspaper and starts to read. Above him are several trees swaying in the wind. Six stories above the man, I watch and observe.

Breaking the silence a tapping is heard; moments later the tapping occurs again. Louder and louder the tapping continues, until my bunkmate - his head buried in the massive book of Federal Sentencing Guidelines - groans and says, "When will these children realize they can't hear them six floors up?"

My bunkmate takes his fist and, leaning against the wall, hits it. A loud, deep echoing thud resonates through the walls and the rapping ceases. This has been by far the most exciting thing that happened all day.

A few moments later, I turn to lay on my back and stare at the ceiling above me only an arm length away. In the absence of activity, my mind lapses into boredom, and when the mind senses boredom it must occupy itself. The mind occupies itself by thinking. As we often do in our past, we train ourselves and our minds to think of negative thoughts in order to survive. We always listen to these thoughts no matter how much we resist. As my own thoughts stray, I become entrenched in deep thought. A friend once told me that being in your own mind was like being behind enemy lines unarmed. I was truly unarmed and in very dangerous territory.

So often, I noticed, do people here let themselves be enveloped by negative thought that they themselves become negative. Many people regard this pessimism as being institutionalized. I found it rare to find someone who was positive or that broke the shackles of negativity. An agreement is formed of negativity and the battle behind enemy lines goes on all around the 128 of us in 6-North. I found it very scary to be unarmed in a sea of negative thought.

A vicious cycle thus begins, the negative thought defrays the very fabric that ties the mind together, and one by one it snaps. The person snaps along with the mind and the people say, "Look, he is institutionalized". The institutionalized of 6-North become the downtrodden and wander the halls all day and repeat the very person they did not want to become.

Welcome to the federal prison. Welcome to life behind the wall.

Then, in a fleeting moment, unarmed and ducking from the mortar of desperation, I hear a tapping at the window. I zone in and focus back into reality. Focused and zoned into the bare cold walls and a now snoring bunkmate who has drifted off into a world free of concrete walls and barbwire, where he may be sitting on a curved bench reading a newspaper, free.

Lockdown certainly is the hardest part of the day.

-DD

Edited by: BurgandySkies