Not any real freezing type weather this winter and spring has already begun. Time for new beginnings, new adventures, and to step out of those old buckled shoes into some sandals. Doing one new thing each day, week, month or year. There is always something to be learned and something new to do. What are the 100 or 1000 things you want to do in life?
I would like to go sailing, go to the zoo and to a nature preserve in Africa. I would like to go to a play. I would like to go to a concert, to professional football, baseball and basketball games. I would like to go to some famous restaurants around the world and sit outside watching people. I would like to go to poetry and book readings.
I long to lye in a bed of flowers and tall grasses and sit under the tallest tree in the world. I long to go to beaches in France and soccer games in Sweden - eat Danish in Copenhagen and dance all night in Amsterdam. I long to sit by the Nile River, to play drums in South Africa. I long to feed the children of Angola.
I would like to sit all day by a slow moving stream. I would like to see some of my hundreds of nephews and nieces - I would like to here silence again. I would like to see sunsets and moonsets and geese filling the skies. I would like to gaze into a fire at midnight.
It is great all the rallies that took place around the world and we must keep speaking up against the war. Realness people must keep doing so, because the war machine is still building up. Human and universal rights are being violated. The war should be against hunger, poverty, hate and diseases. Here is a web site of a realness person: Victoria Sammartino, a friend who foundated an organization in New York called voices unbroken which nurtures creative expression by people who otherwise don't have a voice. Her group runs workshops in treatment centres, group homes, jails, prisons and juvenile detention centres to tell their stories and dreams which can open up new areas in the people’s life. Victoria gives the youngsters and some older cats something different, different road to travel than a prison or a death road. I am sure you will find some good writing and some realness ideas from this website and the address is:
www.voicesunbroken.org
Check it out!
I am sure you will get rare insights and another slice of life from this website. I am letting you know about this site, because realness people must connect across borders, across country or prison walls, any kind of prison walls, mental, physical or political. We must be realness people without borders, poets, writers, teachers, painters and singers - artists without borders like those brave realness doctors without borders. With all this war stuff we will need more doctors and people without borders. It won't be politicians who save the world from all this bullshit going on. It must be regular people. Again, send those politicians that cause the war to war and there would not be any war. Put them on the front lines instead of bunkers, planes or some other shelter. Find out what politicians are made of when they are facing the bullets.
Anyway keep sending the loving peace filled thoughts and vibes out. We must never give up hope or give in to war mongers wherever they are. Thoughts create things, you know, war, peace and forgiving. So let us use our thoughts for creative growth and realness and loving things. Even if at first we must walk alone in front of all the haters of peace, love and realness.
BOOK NEWS
My book is rolling along, I have been working on it everyday only to pause to write letters or to work on this monthly letter or a poem. I am enjoying this monthly letters very much and hope others are to. I have only four chapters and three or four Crooks street left to put into my book. Then I hope to get an editor for my book. It is time for this book to finally fly.
I want to give Michel more of my work to work with. He is constantly working hard on all of our projects. So keep your eyes and ears open for more things from us - the gang. I have not been reading since I started revising my book. Sometimes it goes in flows, sometimes I read a lot, sometimes I just write and do no reading at all. Once I start a writing project I finish it.
WRITING CLASS
The writing class has folded. It didn't work out. At first I had three students that became two and then one. There was no real place to hold the class. Sometimes one student didn't want to put the work into move and use his skills. I brought out lesson plans and a foundation to build on each week, but there was no fire in him to learn that there is a long but steady road to writing. You cannot write a bestseller if you don't put pen to paper.
When people ask me about writing and say they are working on something although their pen has not touched the paper. Or that they wrote just a little down and want that perfected before they move on. I always advise them to write it all out and let it go of any structure - if structure stops them from continuing. Just put pen to paper, I say. Some of the cats are looking to become an instant great writer, like you make instant soup or rice.
Judith, remember her? My former guide in writing sent me some lesson plans and I had some old lessons from when Diana Henning taught me about annotations. I went over some figurative language you can use in writing poems or prose - just some term or definition of some tools at a writers disposal. Besides there were other things going on and hard for the guys visiting the class. We had to meet in the noisy dayroom, tables all around and people playing cards, dominoes and chess and also the TV blasting and a bunch of people talking over there. Guys coming over to the table interrupting class. At the same time this is still prison and you must watch your back in the dayroom or the yard. It would have been nice to use one of the many empty classrooms available especially at night.
I have not given up on the writing class but right now it is not the time. I hope to gear up and start one again. Hopefully where there is more quiet. There are no more art programs in California prison now. No writing drama, music or reading classes. I enjoyed the reading of poems or prose we did in the beginning of each class. Perhaps I'll find someone to come and recite poems on visits. Art can wither without fellowship. I'll start another group somewhere, some day.
BIRD STUFF
I saw a crow building its nest on the tall thick metal concrete based light pole by the basketball court. Drop long branches and roots to the ground during the early stages of nest building. It must be his or her first nest, because there was no crow's nest inside this prison housing yard, where there can be a constant flow of people walking or hanging out under that
light pole. Crows usually don't build a nest that close to man, I don't think. Outside the housing yard, in the main kitchen lot, there has been a crow’s nest for years, on a light pole. I can see the crows from a distance going to and from. Soon they will have baby crows in the nest. Perhaps there is a new crow family building the nest on the pole near the basketball court.
The sparrows and blackbirds are eating more natural food now and leaving the bread crumbs little by little each day until by late spring they will be barely nibbling at the bread offerings. I wonder how much air space each crow family demands. I back all birds are paired up, keeping distance between themselves and other pairs. The male boldly protecting its mate even from human intruders.
I feed the sparrows and blackbirds still at the same spot. Because the little fellows have made their territories. Another bird feeder drops bags of bread crumbs on the other side of the yard, at the far fence near the basketball court, in between building 4 and 5 cellblocks. Sometimes he drops so much bread, that some is still there the next day. He has access to all the trash bends and gets the bread out of there. Again the birds are not so much interested in cooked foods right now and are eating natural food more to build strong egg shells.
I have not seen that crow come back and work on that nest he or she started. Perhaps he figured to much human traffic after all or was it just an immature crow practicing a little for next year or so. I am looking forward to when the little baby birds come out or to hear them chirping.
DAILY EVENT
Today I'm trying to figure out what to write about. My friend Ingunn told me to write about what I do during the day, among other things. Today with no power in the cell to listen to the radio or watch TV, I spend my time writing on my book "One foot in darkness / One foot in light". I have been writing steady on my book for days now, and have over 200 pages done and not much more to go. I went out to do some pull ups, sit ups, back arms and curls off the bars and some push ups. I ran a few laps yesterday - I try to run 3 times a week. I get up in the mornings at 5.30 AM, wash up some and do my meditation and a little stretching. Sometimes I do my sit ups then too. The form of meditation I do is a combination of transcendental meditation I learned at San Quentin and Zen I studied from other books. After breakfast I come back and write or read or do sit ups. More writing these days though.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Always open to thoughts and ideas from people. May the light of a billion butterflies float in your heart. May joy blossom like an untouched forest in your soul. Keep glowing and growing! Keep the realness, love and peace flowing! Keep walking in your own shoes!
Much love
Stay Real
Spoon Jackson
POEM
I see the jackrabbit gracefully
attempting to flee
from the slender greyhound dog
who is right on its tail.
He catches one rabbit
packs it back.
Suddenly there's
another rabbit.
There are rabbits
everywhere.
He catches five or six.
But never catches its breath.
So it has gotten caught along
with the rabbits
and ceases to exist
