Writing is an exercise

Why do I write

I don’t believe in being politically correct and I have a hard time accepting evolution but stand ready to commit to revolution of basic common sense and logic. I know that someday I will leave this world and I doubt very seriously I am coming back as a cat thus I don’t believe in reincarnation or biological evolution. No disrespect to Darwinism but I have my own thoughts on that matter.

However, I do believe in God our Creator and without a doubt, I pray on a regular basis for peace, kindness, and compassion. Not just for those who are poor or unfortunate in their own ways but for my friends, family and strangers.

I love my coffee in the morning and am even tempted to drink a hot cup or two at night. It is not unusual for me to dunk a donut or cinnamon roll when relaxing with a cup in my hand either in bed or at the kitchen table. I sometimes blurt out words, and sometimes fart in public when its impolite or people around but I don’t kiss or lick anyone ass for I believe that it’s not necessary to do so when you are already grown up and free to think or act the manner I wish.

I don’t believe in reincarnation. Once we leave this world, there’s no coming back. Oh that’s right, I already said that. I have never met a person who I liked right from the start or first impression. All my best friends are people who are called difficult people by others.

Thus, if you paid attention so far, I am less than perfect. I have been told by many that even the best aren’t perfect. I like t write, and blog feverishly to get my thoughts out there on the web. Yes, granted, I’d rather be an Edgar Allen Poe or a William Shakespeare or a T. S. Elliot or an almost forgotten Socrates in terms of artistic ability and professional recognition than shoving my poetry down someone’s throat for a few coins on Google Plus or posted flyers out on a street intersection.

I am aware that Rome wasn’t built in a day, El Chapo, the infamous drug lord, didn’t walk out of that Mexican maximum security prison on his good looks alone, and am fed up with the ‘lives that matter’ malady that has swept the country. Nobody needs to convince himself or herself who are important and who really matters – we are all connected and equally important. Anything else is a delusion of one’s self-importance and sheep like thinking.

Writing is an art and whether my art is kindergarten variety or novice or expert level is up to the reader’s own view and joy of what they read. I pretend to have talent and skill and hope someday it becomes worth the nickel I have spent trying to learn the art. In all reality, I started writing late in the years as I thought I had a natural ability to communicate effectively. It was certainly not something I was born with nor has it been perfected. In fact, it is far from perfect.

I know I need to spend lots and lots of time developing relentlessly over the rest of my lifetime to encourage other people to recognize my so-called talent so I can actually make a living applying it as a profession but I am not holding my breath in thinking I will meet the ‘once upon a time’ introduction line of a famous writer.

I write what I think. I write what I think is an important point to make or think about. I indulge in writing poems, prose, short stories and books or manuscripts just to pass the time and not make a living. In my own justification, I think what I have chosen to do is an extremely healthy indulgence to my allegiance to do what a lot of other people want to do but never pick up the time to do so.

I possess a supreme level of self-confidence that is most imaginable in size or content because I write mainly for myself and therefore, I please only myself in the process. If this leaks over to others, the blessings are only so much greater. I do it for free, but most of us know, nothing is free so where the sacrifice is made or how the cost is incurred, only time will tell. Everything worthwhile can only truly be gained through hard work.

So, now having revealed my obsession to write what I feel driven to write, yes I am crazy. Each time I write something, it brings me that much closer to my goals of becoming a self-respected author that others will one day (maybe–hopefully?) say, oh yeah…I knew that worthless bum when he wrote that nutty blog on Google+!

Some people go to the gym to exercise. For me, writing is like any other kind of exercise. I put sufficient time in to get the desired results and realize that no matter how hard I workout, it may never manifest to the levels of expectations. To me, it doesn’t matter if I am famous or not, my satisfaction is based on thinking really strenuous thoughts about how to write something impressive as they are.

Bottom line, I write because I love to write. I need to write. Writing is as much a part of me as my body or as the serious crush I had on my 11th grade English teacher (oh God was she amazing….). life is about passion and the release of my thoughts on pen or paper is my contribution to civilization whether it accepts it or not.

Where am I

Where Am I

 

Sitting on the mountain top, I watched the lightening flash in the east as I looked north towards Santa Fe. Like a Fourth of July fireworks show, the thunder rumbled a post-humorous threat of the living.

I looked for shelter as the thunder came closer and the lightening became frightening, the wind blew hard and the rain poured sideways drenching me quickly.

 

It was like Mother Nature was giving me a rumbling warning. As it growled from the distance far away, traveling at the speed of sound ending right there oh so far yet still so near, I found a rock house, solid granite and centuries old, it kept me dry from the higher order in the sky although the roof had large chasms of cracks.

The darkness hid the fear that the thunder and lightning brought to me as I stand up about a mile high up in the air. The rock house was a trustworthy dwelling made by men who cut the rock with a piece of steel and gave me a point of observation to see the valley down below oh so very clear.

Even in the pouring rain, the lights of the city shimmer through the clouds as thunder clapped and echoed loudly throughout the mountain side as lightening flashed again and the thunder rattled the ground below my feet.

The rumble crushed the silence, the thunder turned the pine needles on the trees abundant all around as the fog approaches as the rain has stopped as the saturated wetness settled on the ground.

A cleansing shower, a pouring rain, all of a sudden, the thunder and lightning went away as I had walked from the rock house to stand underneath a towering pine, pilings dropped on my head as the wind howled over my head, my feet standing in mud and water.

I found myself staring at the clearing sky as shadows crept near and the thunder rumbled out loud just for the very last time. The clearing clouds and the creeping fog created shadows on the trees around me as I could do nothing more than listen to the silence since the storm had passed and refreshed me once more.

As the stars came out, the moon was radiant, and the city lights began to glow brighter as I looked to the east where the lightning had begun and saw it rumbling towards Santa Fe way for its compass was never astray as it was guided by the ghostly light up in the sky soon to be covered with the black clouds from which the thunder had come.

We all make Mistakes - Honor them

Honor your Mistakes

Walking along the small dirt road surrounded by trees, I felt the hostilities around me, I could see the creatures around me. If it’s one thing nature has taught me well,

it is better to think than drink from the poisoned well. Leaving behind one final thought, it is better to love than to hate and go to hell.

Surrounded by fumes, fusses and dunes made of sand and glass. The sand piles up above my head, the air is thick and there is no green grass. As the sticky sap from the trees fall to the ground telling me to move along, I sense my spirit inside my soul, is calling out my name. For my heart has become stale and leaving me for almost dead and never ever feeling the same.

Nature has more than one color as everything is not green. Walking into the woods alone has given me a chance to dream. Around me the sounds of animals rising to take a peek, and without the wrath of nature’s creatures on my mind. I walk alone inside the forest doing my own time, and wisdom and patience I seek.

Filled with anger, agonies and pain of the days before, my gaudy mind has taken me astray, leaving me blank. Draining my heart more quickly than it can refill leaving me with less doubt I can ever make it any more. My body tumbles down to the forest floor where moss and fern softens the fall. While more and more the better I can see, the closer I get to the ground. I’m headed in the wrong direction for you and me, it seems my wisdom I may have just found.

So as I realize Mother Nature can no longer guide me here or there, I know I am on my own, as my soul learns to bare and share. That when some people leave you, because they just don’t care. You are grateful of the things you have, as no one should be alone, as you walk halfway through wood knowing that no one is truly alone.

No one is alone, no matter what you think or make up your mind and act on you know of what is true. Sometimes people leave you to give you this quality time

You have to decide what’s right or wrong, it’s the right thing to do, and find your way back to the things that makes it right thus making you strong. You decide what good or bad, recollecting all the positive things you had. As long as you realize the blessings you truly possess, were received by the goodness in your heart.

Racial segregation in the ADOC - a comment

Tucson Weekly

 

Racial segregation has always been a tool of housing wherever you go at the ten state prisons - I know because as a newly arrived deputy warden from New Mexico, I was taught by the ADOC policy to house by race-and housing officers tagged cells with color coded information and inmate photographs to ensure there was no racial mixing in their assignments. Any mix of race had to be approved by the COIV or higher and circumstances had to be explained.

Dormitories were integrated but not like you think - they had all the blacks in the back and the whites in the front of the dorm runs - Hispanics were randomly inserted to break the line - used as a buffer - they still bunked them by race and the chart or housing layout showed a balance of blacks, Hispanics and Whites according to their overall population and not necessarily the specific dormitory or run meaning that t any time, the run could have more of one race than the others (which is a control mechanism by DOC) but overall of the population, it balances itself out with the totality, not the individual dorms.

After 2009, this practice eased up and became a little bit more balanced realistically but still not in job assignments. It is still, today, even with the integrated housing plan in motion, a segregated world based on race, color and ethnic background.

Accordingly, gangs form for protection purposes and the problem becomes exponentially worse as this friction and conflict escalates at times due to unfair practices or motives. Today, inmates may voluntarily participate in the integrated housing program but stand to receive peer pressure from their own race if they accept mixed housing assignments discouraging such steps to be effective. Fear of retaliation or intimidation by race leaders is dominantly present to keep the races together as a unit and not mixed as the ADOC is proposing.

This fear was created by the ADOC administration not the correctional officers as their protective custody needs are being ignored when threatened and assaulted as a result of being denied protection or transfer to alternative housing a different yard. As always, there are exceptions to the rule and some places, like Douglas, Safford and smaller remote units, it works well usually at the lower custody levels where there is more work and programs to keep the tension down and the conflict at a minimum.

Read more (37 lines)Show less

 

Racial segregation has always been a tool of housing wherever you go at the ten state prisons - I know because as a newly arrived deputy warden from New Mexico, I was taught by the ADOC policy to house by race-and housing officers tagged cells with color coded information and inmate photographs to ensure there was no racial mixing in their assignments. Any mix of race had to be approved by the COIV or higher and circumstances had to be explained.

Dormitories were integrated but not like you think - they had all the blacks in the back and the whites in the front of the dorm runs - Hspanics were randomly inserted to break the line - used as a buffer - they still bunked them by race and the chart or housing layout showed a balance of blacks, Hispanics and Whites according to their overall population and not necessarily the speciific dormitory or run meaning that t any time, the run could have more of one race than the others (which is a control mechanism by DOC) but overall of the population, it balances itself out with the totality, not the individual dorms.

After 2009, this practice eased up and became a little bit more balanced realistically but still not in job assignments. It is still, today, even with the integrated housing plan in motion, a segregated world based on race, color and ethnic background.

Accordingly, gangs form for protection purposes and the problem becomes exponentially worse as this friction and conflict escalates at times due to unfair practices or motives. Today, inmates may voluntarily participate in the integrated housing program but stand to receive peer pressure from their own race if they accept mixed housing assignments discouraging such steps to be effective. Fear of retaliation or intimidation by race leaders is dominantly present to keep the races together as a unit and not mixed as the ADOC is proposing.

This fear was created by the ADOC administration not the correctional officers as their protective custody needs are being ignored when threatened and assaulted as a result of being denied protection or transfer to alternative housing a different yard. As always, there are exceptions to the rule and some places, like Douglas, Safford and smaller remote units, it works well usually at the lower custody levels where there is more work and programs to keep the tension down and the conflict at a minimum.

Read more (37 lines)

Passing through a New Mexico Ghost Town

Passing Through a New Mexico Ghost Town –

 

The blazing hot sun peeked over the mountains, as the turquoise sky turned gold from the rising desert heat. My silver rimmed Oakley, shading my eyes from the bright New Mexico sky, I felt my grip on the steering wheel tightening as I approached the desolate town with no name to give it any fame and where once in history, a load of silver came.

 

Exhausted from driving all night long, looking for a place to eat and sleep, my delirious mind kicked in hallucinations that insomnia brings along with the feeling of being dead. Everything spins as my mind searches for some sanity in this crazy desert town without a name and where I so suddenly found a reason to stop to keep from going insane.

 

The white sand shimmers with the heat casting a shadow on the mirage of a pool of water in the middle of the road. Screeching brakes on my black colored Mustang coupe, my tires smoked as I came to a sudden stop, as this woman dressed in black came out of nowhere.

 

My God, I said to myself, I must be asleep, for as the woman stepped closer, I realize she was nothing but an illusion of what I longed to have with me on this long and isolated journey.

Could this be a dream, and if it is, I shouldn’t stop. I tell you now, that woman dressed in black is really a cop. Now her face comes into view, as her badge shines brightly in my mirror. Her hand on her gun, her face grim, serious and not looking like she is having much fun.

 

Now her face shifts into different faces. A chameleon she was, as she gets closer to my car, she doesn’t look at all the same as she did afar. I looked up into the empty space of my rear view mirror as the lights flash brightly from afar; the red white and blue flashes brings me back to the days of driving one of these cars.

 

But in this strange place, miles from nowhere that has a name, there is gap between what I was seeing and what I was thinking. I tried to tell myself, that should have been me, driving that car behind me and as I thought about the cop now standing next to my ride, I could feel the heat from her stare as if she was wanting me to invite her inside.

 

She hands me a piece of paper; she tells me to sign my name so she can let me go. I say in a very low voice; how can you be real when I can’t see your face and who you really are. She takes off her mirrored glasses, her blue eyes rushed my mind like rain, and all of a sudden, I am no longer exhausted and feeling no pain.

 

I asked her where a man can find a place to eat and sleep with a voice sort of hollow but toned to be pleasant and civilized. I try to tell her I have driven all night and exhausted and not looking for a fight. She laughs, the way a sensuous woman would and standing there in the middle of the road, she invited me for breakfast and even offered to cook.

 

My head falls backwards, my eyes are heavy and shut slowly as my mind fell asleep there alongside of the road. When I woke up some hours later, the only thing I saw a long eared jackrabbit being chased by a scrawny coyote and not a sign of people, or movement on the road. For a moment, I thought about the woman, the cop and the flashing lights and suddenly I realized none of this was real.