I couldn't live in a more beautiful place..I'm thinking. I sit here in the volunteer-staffed Visitors' Center in my little town and there it is. Perfection. Summer's warm glow sun still shining today. A blessing as good as attending church. New asphalt on the highway. Dogs at home asleep for a little while yet, the smelly one bathed.
Of course, I haven't had breakfast yet..but I've well-fed myself here and there. There's a basket of fruit along with me should I choose to sample it. There's coffee. But it's morning and the air is so clear and sweet that it itself is enough to sustain my appetite.
I should like to go to town on the bus. Visit the city and perhaps shop for a transmission...if Fred's Wrecking is near enough to where they let me off. I could travel around a bit.
Well, there does come some of the apprehension of waking up in the morning...the nahnah yadadadas..about which there are always consideration. You hear the chipmunk or the squirrel chatter in the forest, but you're at a terminal in a city library, or a laptop in the park where there aren't any squirrels..no squirrels...really? and so it goes...burrowing at your brain about the chattering of the considerations, like the transmission guy...so...outside again...look at the weather, how glorious is that? of course the dogs should be here playing chicken in the middle of the road..but they won't come just yet...I must build them a fence...it obviously distresses me that they aren't to be trusted in this building.
Well there was rats along this waterside all along, naturally. It was a movie theater, a dry goods..gas station..by parts..like the home up the street I used to own..there could be a squirrel in the woodwork on that account. But it's more than that of course..the emminent psychologist/behavioralist...the Chilean actor in the role..depends on rebounds from the community to unloosen a dreadful spawn (or so we thought) for what developed out of it was more to the romancing end. I know, I know, difficult to follow, what that particular house is, but it's my product, the ingress, the egress, the motorized garage doors, the dogless (now) door. Confuscious would say about that house: plum tree move fast with fruits that are green. Poor little apricot in the backyard, always struggling for a perch. The callas, bloom and grow. Someone else must have bundles of them, I could think. The glorious square in the pavement.
I almost bought into that negative viewpoint. With inference and some little goryness, I shied away, however. Over a nice bottle of Spanish wine, a Madeira of quality, I consumed the lectern and bid it off. It wasn't all that terribly expensive. The outcome remained to be seen always, though it is annoying to quantify the ignoble reality of it. I see ingress and egress in the camilia, the apple, the ever choking juniper, the wonderful noble pine, no longer mine.
There's a heartfelt wonderness at the idea of leveling and paving the place, redoing the upstairs inside and out..of course there is, but this one now is the lovely fishing cottage that I would not despair in. I do think there are memories in the Michelina Haus, of course I do...but I don't live there...just as I write this in a stream of conciousness, so I begin to remember that there must be consistency in thought and action...a motor drive on a country road with the music billowing from the radio in a great chorus of what I started this peace with, the idea of immediate joy...it's hard to arrive there, like a sonnet...what's the hell a sonnet? just a little trill of words, like the female canary, you will give me seed, song..so I did but not the water, I could have, it would have been other steps...don't go down the wasteful wanton road of regret..
so hard tha is as my head aches to turn it.. hard beasts of finances and circumstances roar at me while my belly looks at the table and sees the roast beef
In Hawaii I wonder about the 'Spam'
the computer grinds away and I wonder at the moment, if I shouldn't now write my daughter as the piece grows on and the idea of another coffee (third? fourth?) keeps me from hesitating about sweeping up the leaves outside...an appointed job, a task, like not being paid for typing any more, when I could write my thesis..jumping from one thought to another because one doesn't know so much about writing as one reads it...thereby striking a rather Canadian vote since it's just across the wide harbor (some say seventeen miles).
I could talk about the waterside, where I go and sense the damp salty sand without the sensation of murky kinetic justice that the river's mouth has detoured from its erosive course..previously our park benches and tables and playfort sites are all now squandered in the winter surf where we did not find so much as a table or two but were ripped from our midst like unwelcome visitors..like the latest Benjali pirates, we fluffed them out as a community when we let them go...I guess and behind it now, the PostMan's daughter comes home with her hair near torn out from illness, walking in a walking frame, eyes as alert as they ever were. My disease...erosion, of time, money, family, the seasons..
A van arrives, tourists with a mission, close hearted, they wanted the bathroom, a time to visit? not hardly..but there it is..he grabs a candy on his way...lean, hulky, father of teenage daughters..also on a mission, looking over at me with the eyes of mischievious youth...I wonder
then in the door comes a father, no..his little daughter, white-haired blonde child of four or five years of age..or maybe seven, she is curiously alert and in a few moments I see her for the abandoned child she is not..her parent comes behind her, the father, alert and chomping an apple, as I now chomp a pear..and he and his family are from Czechlosovokia, whatever, the spelling of it..he seems very German, not at all the overly sweaty fat type with pudgy skin and deserted reflexes I have come to know them as, but the German aesthete of athleticism, wife comes in moments later. She is, as well, the slim alert type with sensible hair, very young, model in her deportment. He converses with me, eating an apple, as I then finish a pear. For sustenance.
Once I pondered that topic, sustenance, when I was yearning over the weakness in my heart for a certain gentleman, who shall now remain nameless but was along the lines of the actor Kevin Kline. I want to say 'character' actor Kevin Kline but there it is and cannot be disputed: that was the hour that I was madly in love with the gentleman...in that moment...I ponder back to it quickly and go back to recording the actual moment...wherein the German family departed in a cloud of inspiration of their own making, and I converse with the Canadian couple who follows on their heels. My coffee finishing in the microwave, I rise.
Outside the weather is for basking, the sun is full and warm on my cheeks. I drink the coffee and watch cars pass, the tree limbs heavy over my head where the blackberry vines meet them. There are dry leaves scattered everywhere as the season slowly changes to fall, which it is now. The Indian summer we have here among the most what? heavenly, divine, truly it does feel like going to Sunday mass to sit and enjoy it. I keep the door open, the fridge for the cold drinks making a noise, but it's not the heat, which is temperature-controlled. Certainly it is warm enough to circulate the healing air within the confines of the building.
So I think I have read enouh now to attempt this writing thing. I've read another missal of the Hemingway era, his finca in Cuba has come to light in a Vanity Fair article. It's about the Cuban government's conversion of the Hemingway finca into a museum about Ernest. He was last seen in Idaha but like me and my son in Maui, he had a winter place. Of course, I have a daughter in Phoenix, to whom I must write as I've written my sons. Phoenix tends to become cool in the winter months. Maui is continually a place of ocean breezes and fair suns. If anything, the air of Maui becomes like our air here today, balmy, basking warmth and sunlight. I do not remember my wet feet today.
That's all so confusing, what I write, I consider. But I don't really care, it's how I choose to say it, what I think. The last visitors, the Canadian couple, are from across the way and they are traveling to Neah Bay. They want to see 'what's on the other side'. They have been all over the Peninsula. The woman tells me they're from 'up Cowichan', or something of that nature. Her accent so heavily Canadian it passes in a blur after the 'eh'..she comes up with midsentence about the time of day. She signs the guest book for her and her husband, encouraging him to get a move on as she is ravenous. I've told them of the good food they will find in our restaurants. There are two, one in Sekiu, one at the midpoint in the road on the way there from here, Clallam Bay. That second one, the midpoint, is at a point we call the 'Coho' as it was site of a fishing resort by that name that has been subdivided into recreational lots with trailer hookup. Rumor has it these lots go for forty g's apiece. I'm thinking what I could do with forty g's. Like learning of the recently published new author whose book rights were sold by bid for sixhundred thou...just like that, and the author was able to pay off his college loan (after thirty years, ten of which he used to write the book)
apparently he's talented..how nice for him, I always say, though when I think of other people's good fortune, I find myself distanced by the adorable shoes in the window in Seattle, or the plane ticket to Maui...where I haven't been for several years now. I feel so silly when I go there, unprepared and wonderous, scrounging into the depths of the little community of Lahaina to make my way to Sunday mass in a church with no walls, only the ocean in the distance. I close myself off from the wishful thinking of my own good fortunes anticipated and look into the day as I see it today. Those are things I would like to do, certainly, but I am here and this work, this self-absorbing, writing work, contains me like nothing else can. I am locked into it and surely I did some of my best introspection in the confines of the Intensive Management Unit where I used to work.
There was a long industrial-sized hallway outside my office. Across this hall were three great windows, with courtyards outside them, opened by lock and key through a windowed door. This was where the inmates that were in the unit, the classified behavioral issue inmates, took their yard time They were in their cells the rest of the 24 hours in that day. It was an interesting place to study isolation although truly these individuals did not suffer isolation in any way but were truly confined within the walls of that institution. They went no where without lock and key. I came and went on a weekly, daily basis for years and years, teaching myself to program a computer. My first observations of the Windows '95 unit I was given was ''the random access memory isn't there!" which greatly amused my colleagues: that I instantly knew the technical terms of which I spoke and had observed. It was always great fun thereby, and though the employee demographic spoke mainly of the men assigned there, there was me, the female clerk, always with papers and forms to complete in a day...typing away, looking out the window of my office into the white rectangular courtyard where first one and then the other of these incarcerated men would have their recreation. This did not go on all day, every day, but was structured and regulated to promote a certain sense of containment.
Everyso often there would be a session of enforcement where a particular inmate would be extracted from his cell, sprayed with oleoresin capsiicum and reclothed in new underwear, a jumpsuit, thongs. He would be disassociated from his previous habit of existence within the unit for a few days, meant to be introspective and aware that his behavior had necessitated a certain set of tactics by which to contain his actions as they were overtly destructive to all concerned. Especially to himself, as one would say...'did you see the like of that?' as when I first delivered a set of hearings paperwork about one such occasion and wherein the 'dangerous convicted felon' as one of my supervisors liked to refer to his charges and responsibility for them, was shouting across the table at one very livid vituperatively hostile man about to burst a major vessel in his neck with outrage and verbal aggression towards the unit supervisor. I walked into the middle of this exchange innocently and was forever thereafter advised that this was the place of rages and what was done about them. One had only to gaze out the window at the forests beyond, the place was set in the middle of it, trees everywhere and deer in season. Then you'd know where sense and sensability came from. You had only to look out upon it. Only if the inmate were yelling about not seeing that, could I forgive him his outrageous violence toward our fearless leader. He reminded me of Chiasson, the Tinglit from up coast, more a myth than a reality, a character for a story being built about fishing the waters here. He was amused by it all..the violence of the destructed soul...the incarcerated man that sat before him that day. He found it silly that there would be such vehemence in another human being, and what for? He wasn't there for outcomes but for management of projected delivery of sentence serving. He had no use for any other argument other than the man 'doing his time', which in every case, was certainly done.
There was a lot of that hostility on and off but things ran as smoothly as glass, as clockwork and the days rolled into one another in such a blur that I soon found ten years had passed and there I still was. Still sitting in front of a monitor learning the stories of the men who passed in front of me up and down the hall. They came in white jumpsuits, orange jumpsuits, chains, escorted by uniformed officers both male and female. Who plodded along the cement floors with a dedication to duty that was all about the paycheck, not the psychology of their actions. They were directed, these officers. We never have called them 'guards' although certainly that was part of their assigned duties. They were, in fact, more than that, and every one of them learned to program computers, to attend training for on the job incidents that could and did occur. They took classes in what is called 'defensive tactics'. They learned to thrust and to roll and to grab hair and to put down with a knee or an elbow. Sometimes they were bruised up. Sometimes they werent' careful enough. There were always stories of derring do, and the inmate population was looked upon as the 'measly bunch'...who were helpless behind the gates of their cells, each an individual prison of containment. This more than anything affected the worker population of that place. They went away confident in the afternoons, to their homes, their big trucks, their own private plans for fishing and hunting. Often in the beginning there was talk of skin diving. Then it was quads. I learned of a lake not far from the institution, a place I never knew existed. I'd lived there since I was a child and this was a lake I didn't know. I've thought to walk there ever since but never felt quite courageous enough to attempt it without some form of protection, perhaps a large dog since I think that the grounds where lies the lake is perhaps one that is forbidden from carrying a weapon through, since it borders the prison. I haven't been to the lake, but it's like the inmates who haven't been into the forest. My time to do this lake walk is not yet upon me. It could perhaps been done by horseback but I don't think I have the skill of that enough to attempt it as yet. I have begun to ride again, it's a pleasure never to have visited me until recently. I befriended a fellow fire department volunteer and she has horses.
I've been outside to sweep off the front of the building where the sidewalk and the parking lot are synonymous, divided only by a set of parking barriers, low stone logs to deter vehicular traffic. It is warm out there and I remove my jacket. I sweep away all the dry leaves from the bordering alders. These trees make a heavy debris of leaf crumbles once they dry thoroughly. They make a good garden mulch as they break down.
So I've liked talking about working with inmates but I haven't said exactly what it is I did there with them. I never had direct contact with any of them other than the janitors, who were all incarcerated men. It wasn't like Nazii Germany, which relied on slave Jewish labor in the camps, although I did equate the presence of this institution in our community to something like a Nazii labor camp for it seemed to have the same purpose: to deprive human beings of their freedom of access. It was much differently structured however. There was essentially, at the heart of the function of the corrections center, to deprive a dangerous, convicted felon of the opportunity to further perpetrate the blight of his behavior on the rest of us. I found that a very good thing. I found working in the 'hole' as it was known, to be at the core of this deprivation and while I was employed by the State of Washington, made it one of the purposes of my employment to understand all I could how this deprivation could successfully incarcerate and eliminate the destructive behavior that had brought the individual into the system. What I saw taking place in the Intensive Management Unit was a directed, consistent if not therapeutic management of certain peoples found to be antisocial to the point of needing to be institutionalized. That is, to be housed so as they are not in contact directly with the rest of us. To that point, I never had direct contact with an inmate. One of the few times I did I developed a severe case of hives that brought me to the emergency room at the community hospital. All I'd done was take a photograph from the person, to place it in his file.
So there I was on about the beautiful morning and I go to talking about working in the hole at the local prison. I never wore a uniform, I never trained for the SWAT team which included volunteers from all margins of the employee pool. I asked to join it since I'd been Safety committee secretary for ten years and after all, worked in the hole, but I was never accepted to active duty there and never did become a uniformed officer, although I did apply for it when I returned from my stint at Monroe. At Monroe the most secure facility ever designed for a 'dangerous convicted felon' was created to house notorious convicted felons like Gary Ridgway, who didn't really merit being locked up and forgotten about and was ultimately allowed free range of the facility although it was pretty certain he wasn't going to walk out the front door of that place any time soon, or even in his lifetime. The aspect of working in the subterranean unit of the Special Offender Center at Monroe tantalized me for a time but I saw it as the nightmare of Deer Park, Wyoming and the trailing disembowled intestine of the government gut, as a misturn in the direction of supervised containment where the housed felons were given free reign to assasinate one another in front of the surveillance cameras in the lockdown unit. It went on for a month and the sprinkler system ran three inches of red water for a while and they were not fed so much as allowed to consume one another. It is a particular conscious nightmare of mine that this could happen at Monroe's Special Offender Unit, although I'm not aware it ever has. That was a great rambling place, with additions upon additions, ancient, venerable Superintendent's offices, libraries, Personnel quarters, visiting rooms, individual cells bordering on dungeon-like in their cramped, inefficient layout. You wouldn't want to be introspective in such a place, you'd remember the trip from Taiwan you paid thirty hundred bucks for in order to get a better job in America, and there you were on the slow boat to Kowloon, howling as your cellmate takes off with your extra Top Ramen and doesn't give you a smoke or some gum as payment for services rendered. I always got into the segregation end of things working for DOC. Always had to help put it to the guy who beat his head into his cell door for whatever reason. Usually we found it had something to do with the guy's childhood and that was the best of the work, transcribing the physicians' notes and observations, learning that point B had been gotten to by totally transversing Point A to the nth degree without ever getting there in a straight line or having a peanut butter sandwich along the way. One particular physician was almost a saint to me in his deportment, how he handled his caseload, what wisdom he imparted to his patients. He was a tranquil man and had absolutely no investment in outside chatter but was purely scientific in his delivery and approach to his practice. It was wonderful to see the healing work he did with those battered minds. We couldn't ask for better. I did love working for him particularly although the senior physician was quite the old hand at politicking to get his unit covered financially and otherwise. He had me work occasionally for him but preferred the slightly flustered senior secretary he was comfortable with and used me to rack up the numbers when the time was ripe to encourage the elected officials he needed to cultivate to get his agenda accomplished. He did well with the subterranean wing of the grounds he oversaw. I can say that much for him. The break room was always warm and wonderful with toast and jelly and freshly brewed coffees, scattered with the daily paper, the group terminal, the windows and the view of the town of Monroe, straight off to the river, which couldn't be seen from there, though a great slough of it was directly across the road. Monroe was farmland, broad and flat and reputedly Kurt Russell lived up the hill from time to time with his wife, Goldy Hawn. Why he'd ever want a house across the low valley from that place, the Reformatory, as the older of the buildings was known, I wouldn't know. Seems as though Hollywood had better places to escape from than there.
There was a great railroad that ran the breadth of Monroe, a thing that could be relied upon to keep you held up in traffic so that you'd wonder about the sorts of cows you'd seen somewhere in a field, waiting for the flags to go up, for traffic to pass. If you weren't directly on time for work, running a tad late, you'd sit even longer as the train seemed to know you were derelict in your duty to get there on time, that you'd taken the risk of flying down the road on State route 2 where the hot air balloons were always floating way up in the sky in summer. A windbreak had been cultivated along 2. Once as I was heading home, I saw a spotted owl in the fields of cottonwood planted to keep the strong winds down. Often I made good time on 2 only to be stuck on 9 on the way to Sisco Heights, up near Arlington, where I had home.
It's closing in on noon, lunchtime, as I nibble another peach while I sit here. A fellow Lions' member has been in. Grouchy from too long on the road, he got in at 1 am last night, he tells me where he's been lately, Iowa. Roads are fine interstate, he says. Going again, I ask? Don't know, they have to accept my bid he says. The day is like that, accepting my bid to be a part of it, as I languidly sit here watching it unfold, determining plan for the remainder of it, when I relinquish my place here to Brian, who sometimes comes on a Saturday to fill in for his wife, whose regular day it is. Not for sure that Brian will be here but he may, or I may go home and get my animals, they've been indoors since I've been here, bring back a pie if my blackberry picking friend shows up for a piece, continue to survey the contents of my immediate consciousness for observations that I have accumulated, allowing the wonderful climate of my home to sustain and inspire me. I could cook. There are squashes and peppers and mushrooms all bursting with health and vitality, translateable into omelettes casseroles side dishes...I need to uncover a turkey in the deep freeze, resort it to make room for all the blackberries we've been picking. There's a pile of those in the kitchen sink at this very moment, and blackberry pie enthroned in the glass cake stand like a revered icon of abundance. Do hope Brian or his wife show up...the morning is becoming the afternoon. There's more to be done than sit here at the keyboard writing about it...one would think
Of course, I haven't had breakfast yet..but I've well-fed myself here and there. There's a basket of fruit along with me should I choose to sample it. There's coffee. But it's morning and the air is so clear and sweet that it itself is enough to sustain my appetite.
I should like to go to town on the bus. Visit the city and perhaps shop for a transmission...if Fred's Wrecking is near enough to where they let me off. I could travel around a bit.
Well, there does come some of the apprehension of waking up in the morning...the nahnah yadadadas..about which there are always consideration. You hear the chipmunk or the squirrel chatter in the forest, but you're at a terminal in a city library, or a laptop in the park where there aren't any squirrels..no squirrels...really? and so it goes...burrowing at your brain about the chattering of the considerations, like the transmission guy...so...outside again...look at the weather, how glorious is that? of course the dogs should be here playing chicken in the middle of the road..but they won't come just yet...I must build them a fence...it obviously distresses me that they aren't to be trusted in this building.
Well there was rats along this waterside all along, naturally. It was a movie theater, a dry goods..gas station..by parts..like the home up the street I used to own..there could be a squirrel in the woodwork on that account. But it's more than that of course..the emminent psychologist/behavioralist...the Chilean actor in the role..depends on rebounds from the community to unloosen a dreadful spawn (or so we thought) for what developed out of it was more to the romancing end. I know, I know, difficult to follow, what that particular house is, but it's my product, the ingress, the egress, the motorized garage doors, the dogless (now) door. Confuscious would say about that house: plum tree move fast with fruits that are green. Poor little apricot in the backyard, always struggling for a perch. The callas, bloom and grow. Someone else must have bundles of them, I could think. The glorious square in the pavement.
I almost bought into that negative viewpoint. With inference and some little goryness, I shied away, however. Over a nice bottle of Spanish wine, a Madeira of quality, I consumed the lectern and bid it off. It wasn't all that terribly expensive. The outcome remained to be seen always, though it is annoying to quantify the ignoble reality of it. I see ingress and egress in the camilia, the apple, the ever choking juniper, the wonderful noble pine, no longer mine.
There's a heartfelt wonderness at the idea of leveling and paving the place, redoing the upstairs inside and out..of course there is, but this one now is the lovely fishing cottage that I would not despair in. I do think there are memories in the Michelina Haus, of course I do...but I don't live there...just as I write this in a stream of conciousness, so I begin to remember that there must be consistency in thought and action...a motor drive on a country road with the music billowing from the radio in a great chorus of what I started this peace with, the idea of immediate joy...it's hard to arrive there, like a sonnet...what's the hell a sonnet? just a little trill of words, like the female canary, you will give me seed, song..so I did but not the water, I could have, it would have been other steps...don't go down the wasteful wanton road of regret..
so hard tha is as my head aches to turn it.. hard beasts of finances and circumstances roar at me while my belly looks at the table and sees the roast beef
In Hawaii I wonder about the 'Spam'
the computer grinds away and I wonder at the moment, if I shouldn't now write my daughter as the piece grows on and the idea of another coffee (third? fourth?) keeps me from hesitating about sweeping up the leaves outside...an appointed job, a task, like not being paid for typing any more, when I could write my thesis..jumping from one thought to another because one doesn't know so much about writing as one reads it...thereby striking a rather Canadian vote since it's just across the wide harbor (some say seventeen miles).
I could talk about the waterside, where I go and sense the damp salty sand without the sensation of murky kinetic justice that the river's mouth has detoured from its erosive course..previously our park benches and tables and playfort sites are all now squandered in the winter surf where we did not find so much as a table or two but were ripped from our midst like unwelcome visitors..like the latest Benjali pirates, we fluffed them out as a community when we let them go...I guess and behind it now, the PostMan's daughter comes home with her hair near torn out from illness, walking in a walking frame, eyes as alert as they ever were. My disease...erosion, of time, money, family, the seasons..
A van arrives, tourists with a mission, close hearted, they wanted the bathroom, a time to visit? not hardly..but there it is..he grabs a candy on his way...lean, hulky, father of teenage daughters..also on a mission, looking over at me with the eyes of mischievious youth...I wonder
then in the door comes a father, no..his little daughter, white-haired blonde child of four or five years of age..or maybe seven, she is curiously alert and in a few moments I see her for the abandoned child she is not..her parent comes behind her, the father, alert and chomping an apple, as I now chomp a pear..and he and his family are from Czechlosovokia, whatever, the spelling of it..he seems very German, not at all the overly sweaty fat type with pudgy skin and deserted reflexes I have come to know them as, but the German aesthete of athleticism, wife comes in moments later. She is, as well, the slim alert type with sensible hair, very young, model in her deportment. He converses with me, eating an apple, as I then finish a pear. For sustenance.
Once I pondered that topic, sustenance, when I was yearning over the weakness in my heart for a certain gentleman, who shall now remain nameless but was along the lines of the actor Kevin Kline. I want to say 'character' actor Kevin Kline but there it is and cannot be disputed: that was the hour that I was madly in love with the gentleman...in that moment...I ponder back to it quickly and go back to recording the actual moment...wherein the German family departed in a cloud of inspiration of their own making, and I converse with the Canadian couple who follows on their heels. My coffee finishing in the microwave, I rise.
Outside the weather is for basking, the sun is full and warm on my cheeks. I drink the coffee and watch cars pass, the tree limbs heavy over my head where the blackberry vines meet them. There are dry leaves scattered everywhere as the season slowly changes to fall, which it is now. The Indian summer we have here among the most what? heavenly, divine, truly it does feel like going to Sunday mass to sit and enjoy it. I keep the door open, the fridge for the cold drinks making a noise, but it's not the heat, which is temperature-controlled. Certainly it is warm enough to circulate the healing air within the confines of the building.
So I think I have read enouh now to attempt this writing thing. I've read another missal of the Hemingway era, his finca in Cuba has come to light in a Vanity Fair article. It's about the Cuban government's conversion of the Hemingway finca into a museum about Ernest. He was last seen in Idaha but like me and my son in Maui, he had a winter place. Of course, I have a daughter in Phoenix, to whom I must write as I've written my sons. Phoenix tends to become cool in the winter months. Maui is continually a place of ocean breezes and fair suns. If anything, the air of Maui becomes like our air here today, balmy, basking warmth and sunlight. I do not remember my wet feet today.
That's all so confusing, what I write, I consider. But I don't really care, it's how I choose to say it, what I think. The last visitors, the Canadian couple, are from across the way and they are traveling to Neah Bay. They want to see 'what's on the other side'. They have been all over the Peninsula. The woman tells me they're from 'up Cowichan', or something of that nature. Her accent so heavily Canadian it passes in a blur after the 'eh'..she comes up with midsentence about the time of day. She signs the guest book for her and her husband, encouraging him to get a move on as she is ravenous. I've told them of the good food they will find in our restaurants. There are two, one in Sekiu, one at the midpoint in the road on the way there from here, Clallam Bay. That second one, the midpoint, is at a point we call the 'Coho' as it was site of a fishing resort by that name that has been subdivided into recreational lots with trailer hookup. Rumor has it these lots go for forty g's apiece. I'm thinking what I could do with forty g's. Like learning of the recently published new author whose book rights were sold by bid for sixhundred thou...just like that, and the author was able to pay off his college loan (after thirty years, ten of which he used to write the book)
apparently he's talented..how nice for him, I always say, though when I think of other people's good fortune, I find myself distanced by the adorable shoes in the window in Seattle, or the plane ticket to Maui...where I haven't been for several years now. I feel so silly when I go there, unprepared and wonderous, scrounging into the depths of the little community of Lahaina to make my way to Sunday mass in a church with no walls, only the ocean in the distance. I close myself off from the wishful thinking of my own good fortunes anticipated and look into the day as I see it today. Those are things I would like to do, certainly, but I am here and this work, this self-absorbing, writing work, contains me like nothing else can. I am locked into it and surely I did some of my best introspection in the confines of the Intensive Management Unit where I used to work.
There was a long industrial-sized hallway outside my office. Across this hall were three great windows, with courtyards outside them, opened by lock and key through a windowed door. This was where the inmates that were in the unit, the classified behavioral issue inmates, took their yard time They were in their cells the rest of the 24 hours in that day. It was an interesting place to study isolation although truly these individuals did not suffer isolation in any way but were truly confined within the walls of that institution. They went no where without lock and key. I came and went on a weekly, daily basis for years and years, teaching myself to program a computer. My first observations of the Windows '95 unit I was given was ''the random access memory isn't there!" which greatly amused my colleagues: that I instantly knew the technical terms of which I spoke and had observed. It was always great fun thereby, and though the employee demographic spoke mainly of the men assigned there, there was me, the female clerk, always with papers and forms to complete in a day...typing away, looking out the window of my office into the white rectangular courtyard where first one and then the other of these incarcerated men would have their recreation. This did not go on all day, every day, but was structured and regulated to promote a certain sense of containment.
Everyso often there would be a session of enforcement where a particular inmate would be extracted from his cell, sprayed with oleoresin capsiicum and reclothed in new underwear, a jumpsuit, thongs. He would be disassociated from his previous habit of existence within the unit for a few days, meant to be introspective and aware that his behavior had necessitated a certain set of tactics by which to contain his actions as they were overtly destructive to all concerned. Especially to himself, as one would say...'did you see the like of that?' as when I first delivered a set of hearings paperwork about one such occasion and wherein the 'dangerous convicted felon' as one of my supervisors liked to refer to his charges and responsibility for them, was shouting across the table at one very livid vituperatively hostile man about to burst a major vessel in his neck with outrage and verbal aggression towards the unit supervisor. I walked into the middle of this exchange innocently and was forever thereafter advised that this was the place of rages and what was done about them. One had only to gaze out the window at the forests beyond, the place was set in the middle of it, trees everywhere and deer in season. Then you'd know where sense and sensability came from. You had only to look out upon it. Only if the inmate were yelling about not seeing that, could I forgive him his outrageous violence toward our fearless leader. He reminded me of Chiasson, the Tinglit from up coast, more a myth than a reality, a character for a story being built about fishing the waters here. He was amused by it all..the violence of the destructed soul...the incarcerated man that sat before him that day. He found it silly that there would be such vehemence in another human being, and what for? He wasn't there for outcomes but for management of projected delivery of sentence serving. He had no use for any other argument other than the man 'doing his time', which in every case, was certainly done.
There was a lot of that hostility on and off but things ran as smoothly as glass, as clockwork and the days rolled into one another in such a blur that I soon found ten years had passed and there I still was. Still sitting in front of a monitor learning the stories of the men who passed in front of me up and down the hall. They came in white jumpsuits, orange jumpsuits, chains, escorted by uniformed officers both male and female. Who plodded along the cement floors with a dedication to duty that was all about the paycheck, not the psychology of their actions. They were directed, these officers. We never have called them 'guards' although certainly that was part of their assigned duties. They were, in fact, more than that, and every one of them learned to program computers, to attend training for on the job incidents that could and did occur. They took classes in what is called 'defensive tactics'. They learned to thrust and to roll and to grab hair and to put down with a knee or an elbow. Sometimes they were bruised up. Sometimes they werent' careful enough. There were always stories of derring do, and the inmate population was looked upon as the 'measly bunch'...who were helpless behind the gates of their cells, each an individual prison of containment. This more than anything affected the worker population of that place. They went away confident in the afternoons, to their homes, their big trucks, their own private plans for fishing and hunting. Often in the beginning there was talk of skin diving. Then it was quads. I learned of a lake not far from the institution, a place I never knew existed. I'd lived there since I was a child and this was a lake I didn't know. I've thought to walk there ever since but never felt quite courageous enough to attempt it without some form of protection, perhaps a large dog since I think that the grounds where lies the lake is perhaps one that is forbidden from carrying a weapon through, since it borders the prison. I haven't been to the lake, but it's like the inmates who haven't been into the forest. My time to do this lake walk is not yet upon me. It could perhaps been done by horseback but I don't think I have the skill of that enough to attempt it as yet. I have begun to ride again, it's a pleasure never to have visited me until recently. I befriended a fellow fire department volunteer and she has horses.
I've been outside to sweep off the front of the building where the sidewalk and the parking lot are synonymous, divided only by a set of parking barriers, low stone logs to deter vehicular traffic. It is warm out there and I remove my jacket. I sweep away all the dry leaves from the bordering alders. These trees make a heavy debris of leaf crumbles once they dry thoroughly. They make a good garden mulch as they break down.
So I've liked talking about working with inmates but I haven't said exactly what it is I did there with them. I never had direct contact with any of them other than the janitors, who were all incarcerated men. It wasn't like Nazii Germany, which relied on slave Jewish labor in the camps, although I did equate the presence of this institution in our community to something like a Nazii labor camp for it seemed to have the same purpose: to deprive human beings of their freedom of access. It was much differently structured however. There was essentially, at the heart of the function of the corrections center, to deprive a dangerous, convicted felon of the opportunity to further perpetrate the blight of his behavior on the rest of us. I found that a very good thing. I found working in the 'hole' as it was known, to be at the core of this deprivation and while I was employed by the State of Washington, made it one of the purposes of my employment to understand all I could how this deprivation could successfully incarcerate and eliminate the destructive behavior that had brought the individual into the system. What I saw taking place in the Intensive Management Unit was a directed, consistent if not therapeutic management of certain peoples found to be antisocial to the point of needing to be institutionalized. That is, to be housed so as they are not in contact directly with the rest of us. To that point, I never had direct contact with an inmate. One of the few times I did I developed a severe case of hives that brought me to the emergency room at the community hospital. All I'd done was take a photograph from the person, to place it in his file.
So there I was on about the beautiful morning and I go to talking about working in the hole at the local prison. I never wore a uniform, I never trained for the SWAT team which included volunteers from all margins of the employee pool. I asked to join it since I'd been Safety committee secretary for ten years and after all, worked in the hole, but I was never accepted to active duty there and never did become a uniformed officer, although I did apply for it when I returned from my stint at Monroe. At Monroe the most secure facility ever designed for a 'dangerous convicted felon' was created to house notorious convicted felons like Gary Ridgway, who didn't really merit being locked up and forgotten about and was ultimately allowed free range of the facility although it was pretty certain he wasn't going to walk out the front door of that place any time soon, or even in his lifetime. The aspect of working in the subterranean unit of the Special Offender Center at Monroe tantalized me for a time but I saw it as the nightmare of Deer Park, Wyoming and the trailing disembowled intestine of the government gut, as a misturn in the direction of supervised containment where the housed felons were given free reign to assasinate one another in front of the surveillance cameras in the lockdown unit. It went on for a month and the sprinkler system ran three inches of red water for a while and they were not fed so much as allowed to consume one another. It is a particular conscious nightmare of mine that this could happen at Monroe's Special Offender Unit, although I'm not aware it ever has. That was a great rambling place, with additions upon additions, ancient, venerable Superintendent's offices, libraries, Personnel quarters, visiting rooms, individual cells bordering on dungeon-like in their cramped, inefficient layout. You wouldn't want to be introspective in such a place, you'd remember the trip from Taiwan you paid thirty hundred bucks for in order to get a better job in America, and there you were on the slow boat to Kowloon, howling as your cellmate takes off with your extra Top Ramen and doesn't give you a smoke or some gum as payment for services rendered. I always got into the segregation end of things working for DOC. Always had to help put it to the guy who beat his head into his cell door for whatever reason. Usually we found it had something to do with the guy's childhood and that was the best of the work, transcribing the physicians' notes and observations, learning that point B had been gotten to by totally transversing Point A to the nth degree without ever getting there in a straight line or having a peanut butter sandwich along the way. One particular physician was almost a saint to me in his deportment, how he handled his caseload, what wisdom he imparted to his patients. He was a tranquil man and had absolutely no investment in outside chatter but was purely scientific in his delivery and approach to his practice. It was wonderful to see the healing work he did with those battered minds. We couldn't ask for better. I did love working for him particularly although the senior physician was quite the old hand at politicking to get his unit covered financially and otherwise. He had me work occasionally for him but preferred the slightly flustered senior secretary he was comfortable with and used me to rack up the numbers when the time was ripe to encourage the elected officials he needed to cultivate to get his agenda accomplished. He did well with the subterranean wing of the grounds he oversaw. I can say that much for him. The break room was always warm and wonderful with toast and jelly and freshly brewed coffees, scattered with the daily paper, the group terminal, the windows and the view of the town of Monroe, straight off to the river, which couldn't be seen from there, though a great slough of it was directly across the road. Monroe was farmland, broad and flat and reputedly Kurt Russell lived up the hill from time to time with his wife, Goldy Hawn. Why he'd ever want a house across the low valley from that place, the Reformatory, as the older of the buildings was known, I wouldn't know. Seems as though Hollywood had better places to escape from than there.
There was a great railroad that ran the breadth of Monroe, a thing that could be relied upon to keep you held up in traffic so that you'd wonder about the sorts of cows you'd seen somewhere in a field, waiting for the flags to go up, for traffic to pass. If you weren't directly on time for work, running a tad late, you'd sit even longer as the train seemed to know you were derelict in your duty to get there on time, that you'd taken the risk of flying down the road on State route 2 where the hot air balloons were always floating way up in the sky in summer. A windbreak had been cultivated along 2. Once as I was heading home, I saw a spotted owl in the fields of cottonwood planted to keep the strong winds down. Often I made good time on 2 only to be stuck on 9 on the way to Sisco Heights, up near Arlington, where I had home.
It's closing in on noon, lunchtime, as I nibble another peach while I sit here. A fellow Lions' member has been in. Grouchy from too long on the road, he got in at 1 am last night, he tells me where he's been lately, Iowa. Roads are fine interstate, he says. Going again, I ask? Don't know, they have to accept my bid he says. The day is like that, accepting my bid to be a part of it, as I languidly sit here watching it unfold, determining plan for the remainder of it, when I relinquish my place here to Brian, who sometimes comes on a Saturday to fill in for his wife, whose regular day it is. Not for sure that Brian will be here but he may, or I may go home and get my animals, they've been indoors since I've been here, bring back a pie if my blackberry picking friend shows up for a piece, continue to survey the contents of my immediate consciousness for observations that I have accumulated, allowing the wonderful climate of my home to sustain and inspire me. I could cook. There are squashes and peppers and mushrooms all bursting with health and vitality, translateable into omelettes casseroles side dishes...I need to uncover a turkey in the deep freeze, resort it to make room for all the blackberries we've been picking. There's a pile of those in the kitchen sink at this very moment, and blackberry pie enthroned in the glass cake stand like a revered icon of abundance. Do hope Brian or his wife show up...the morning is becoming the afternoon. There's more to be done than sit here at the keyboard writing about it...one would think
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