Today we were informed they had taken away another visiting day, which only leaves Saturday and Sunday now. It has gone from seven day a week visit in the 80`s down to two at this PLEASANT Valley state prison. Prison officials say in July some time they will reinstate Friday visits, but there will be no Friday visits at all in June. I don´t get many visits, but I know how important and rehabilitating visits are to maintain family and friendship ties. Visits really does have a positive effect on prison populations. Just like art programs now gone out of all of California State prison. The government of California increased the prison budget, but where is that money going? Certainly not towards the food or medical or any activeties having to do with prisoners. The money is being funneled into someone´s pockets. Although most prisoners don´t get family visits prison stores are funded by the prisoners and their families and do not come from a state budget. Even the guards, who work in the visits funds, are paid by the fund, where they tax the prisones and their families and their friends, called "inmate waltare fund". How ever when it was pointed out that enormous amounts of the fund was not used for prisoners welfare, they just changed the name to "general fund" so they can use the fund for their picnics, and pot luck parties or whatever extravagant activity they chose. So they have taken another visiting day, saying to save them from using overtime money.
So I am not getting many visits these days. Although Michel and me and Göran and others are working hard, the projects funding is not coming along as we hoped. I don´t think we have enough funds to send out videos ordered, but I am sure Michel and Jenny are working on that. And I have completed my book about my life, and Judith, Katie and me have a book of my poems almost completed. I have again also written a short play.
Still I look forward to getting more visits, especially from other writers, poets or actors to stay up on things. But for the moment all the backwards things are going on in California prisons. I am not even getting much mail these days.
IN A HEAVY WAY
I do not understand.
This drought in letters
it is like a stream
in Death Valley.
I have been writing
a lot of poetry
perhaps they are letters
to myself
for loneliness has touched
me in a heavy way.
Sometimes I hear footsteps
and I know
the mail is being passed out
I pretend not to notice
not to hear
but I hear
I notice:
And there´s no love
passed out today
for my stream
has run dry without warning.
Copyright©1997 by Spoon Jackson
I have not gotten much feedback from these news letters, so I don´t know of what topics people want to here about. But I´ll wait longer and hope to get something. The feedback I´ve gotten have come from family and friends I´ve known already. I do long for the feedback from different people around the world. No matter what I shall keep growing and keep writing and I hope fully realness prevail. I´ll keep putting it out there.
I was on my way to writing class and stopped off at the dominoe table to play dominoes with Big Joe out of San Diego and a few other fellows. I had an hour and a half before it was time for class. However I see the warders walking towards the fence and gate that lead across the piazza that separates "A" yard from "B" yard, and then I hear gunshots and on the speaker is "yard recall". So the prisoners on "A" yard is being locked up as the riot goes on on "B" yard. As I walk to the cell block the warders try to hurry and herd us into the cages. I see through the gate many guards grabbing guns and tear gas from the office between the two yards. I can see the outside gun rail that leads to the connected buildings of "B" yard fill up with warder with guns and I hear more shoting before I am in cell block. They lock us in and cell feed us. The birds will be mad again I won´t get to feed them today. But this yard should be off lockdown tonight or in the morning.
Today we got off lockdown on "A" yard. "B" yard, where the riot went down is still on lockdown. Each yard "A","B","C","D" and "E" are run separately as for the programs. So what happens on one yard shouldn´t effect the other. Still warders find some reason to close program down.
Anyway as soon as I got the chance today I went and fed the birds. They really missed the food, because none of the bird feeders had been out until today.
The weather here is hot, up to 32 C and for a while it was up to about 38 C or 39 C. For chow we had som kind of bird and they say it was chicken, but I have never known chicken to taste like it does here. The chicken was mixed with a green plant. I did eat some of it.
No writing class this week because of the lockdown, but with the two cool students I have in my group, I think we will make it up.
Wanted to workout today but the letting off lockdown came so late there was only time for shower and playing a couple of domino games. I had started up doing my medtiation, but I have stopped that for a while and have not been doing as much to my stomach and back work. I suppose I am seeking a little inspiration on working out from outside myself, from other people. But I will be back on the beam in the morning, running and working out.
No mail again today, I was hoping I get something from someone. It always freshens the heart and feeds the spirit when there is some mail. But it´s summer time and no one, unless they have to, are sitting inside the house writing letters. There is so much to be done out there in the free world and I can not fault anyone for not writing. I´ll get a letter tomorrow.
Warders kept us on lockdown until 2:30 again today. They are starting to make no programming a habit again. I am trying new things to let go of stress and I am drawing some, although I‚ve never been much of a drawer. It feels cool to be drawing the little nature scenes on envelope. The nature scenes I draw is better than my handwriting.
A new day and I will see what it brings of more inspiration. I am open to that and to ideas to speak on. So send them on by thought, vibe or by mail. I´ve ran out of tea weeks ago and now down to one or two shots of coffee. My brother Abe will be sending me a package soon. When I get more tea I´ll cut back or tar coffee all the way out of my day. I´ll drink it now and then.
Well same thing today, we are on lockdown for virtually something that happened in another prison and the warders know its wrong to confine us to the cells, but it knows the public doesn´t care allows the warders to do whatever they want. So again the birds will wonder what happen to their snacks. I also wanted to run today. I´ll take a break from excercising and find something to pon-der, read, write or draw on. Perhaps do a bit of all four things. If anyone can share some blank envelopes and stamps with me you can mail them directly to me. I appreciate and thank anyone who can send them in.
Still in a cell and the tower guard has turned the cooler off, and it´s over 32 degrees celsius. Right now I am writing my mentor Judith a letter as we put together the final touches on my poetry book. I think I want to add two more poems to the book; "How long" and "What our hearts de-serve". I´ll ask Judith to do that in my letter to her. Judith is a great mentor and human being, and believes in realness.
A new day in the same old no program till 2:30 pm. So I did go out and run and I needed to sweat and get some of the salt out of my body. When they opened program, the wardes said if you want to shower stay in your cell and put a towel on your door and they will pop the door for showers. Because there is no dayroom which means at 2:30 we could go outside or stay in the cell for con-troled showers. Which means most people won´t get showers, because there is not enough time for everyone to shower. So I went and ran and did a light work out. Of course I fed the birds. Then I came back to cage at yard recall and took a bird bath and I had to do that two days in a row. So I must get a shower today. I´ll wait until tonight because I´m sure everyone will be wanting to sho-wer this afternoon. When the shower line are long and backed up there are verbal conflicts that do turn physical from time to time. I´m working on my drawings and I may display them on this site or in my book. It depends on if anyone likes them and think they are worthy. My friend Göran who edits my news letters and translates my poems into Swedish sent me a picture of sea pics bird and I ended up drawing a picture inspired by that photo. It is my first real water scene, and I discove-red by chanse how to do it. I only have three colors of pens right now, red, black and blue and I can hardly wait until I get some more pens and in many colors. I hope to put some poems to pic-tures. I am shocking my self with what I´ve been drawing for a couple of months. I could hardly wait until I can get some green and brownish and yellow colored pens.
Short flow this time and hope to share drawings with you in the future. Have not received any feedback about news letters so I hope someone finds them cool.
WRITING CLASS
Despite the lockdown the writing class is going good. The two people in the group sent poems out and are self motivated. One cat came up to me yesterday and told me he is into writing hikus and was speaking about five, seven, five syllables and that it is simple to write hikus. It makes him think they are simple to write. Hiku is an art, a minimalist art that uses nature and simple words but in a masterful way. Some cats get stuck on the nature part and get blinded and do not see the depths of the poem, as if using nature in your figurative language to describe a political or sociolo-gical theme, but not as raw as using cuss words or something. Anyway, one guy even wrote a hiku about the poetry group and used our names in the hiku. Judith or someone sent me long ago some things on hikus and we will go through that material at next class.
Writing class is going well and we had a good discussion about world events, actually we chose one topic to talk about to inspire some writing.
BIRD STUFF
There is a little bush by the fish pond and a tiny flower garden where the mother and father black birds, sparrows and cowbirds bring their babies and leave them. The sparrows all pile up in the two by three foot wide and tall bush that has a lot of leaves branches, but I can still see the baby sparrows hanging in there. The baby black birds hang out behind the two small boulders at the top of the fish pond, where water comes from a house attached to the rocks and leads into this main pond, which is ten by twelve foot around and about six inches deep. This corner of the yard has flowers in it surrounding the little pond and there´s one bird bush and a rail road tied at the back-end of this nature. The whole thing is 20 by 20 foot wide, yet it is Yellowstone or Grand Canyon for me. I found out all the gold fish did not die, there are still a couple in the water. The bird bush usally from 1:00 pm to around 4:30 (when they close the yard for dinner) is packed with baby birds and for a while now I have started feeding them at 2:30, or between 2:30 and 4:30 when the yard is not as crowded. The young birds are getting rather accostomed to me. Still some old birds are around too.
A Mexican guy I know who has been in prison for twenty years or something created him a spot near the backstop for base ball near his bench to feed the birds and a golfer that barrows up from a different hole each day.
I used to feed a golfer at CMC prison, until this one prisoner who worked on the yard crew chopped the golfers head off with a shovel and blessings from a guard. He came bragging about hes deed to me and I told him to get away from me because I let him know there was nothing to be proud of killing that golfer. Well that same night the guy who chopped the golfers head fell and hit his head on a metal bunk and came out to the yard with a big knot on his head and a black eye.
"What happened" I asked
"I fell and hit my head"
"Perhaps it was the ghost of the golfer that tripped you"
The ravens have finally moved on now and from time to time I see them far off light pole where they had their nest for years before it was torn down. But I think the pair has built themselves a nest off prison grounds now.
The trees that I can see on the outside of this prison is so small and underwater and under appre-ciated, I don´t think nothing other than ants could nest in them or perhaps bees.
The ravens still come around sometimes but they no longer try to build their nest on any of the light poles. Some kind of night birds be out there on the poles. They were making some nose around in the air near the domino table.
The baby birds, now teenagers most of them, they still come to tiny baby bird bush where I feed them. Baby sparrows, cow birds and black birds. There are an abundance of baby spiders around so one must be careful to dust ones clothes off.
Two days ago I saw a seagull here for the first time, and I saw him again yesterday and I think it is an inmature bird that has lost its way. For I´ve seen no other seagulls here in the years I´ve been here.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Stay real and may the sun warm your soul and smile like it does the day. Keep the realness flowing and the joy blossom like an untouched forest in your hearts. Keep glowing and growing. Keep the love, peace and realness flowing!
Keep walking in your own shoes.
Spoon
