feb 29, 2004---
Dear Cait,
Well, Hon, you must know by now that I tried several times to get through to you on the phone, and for whatevvah reason just wasn't happening. I know you picked up, but I don't know if you were able to hear me or not. I'll try again Tuesday night, as I wrote in my last letter, but ain't hopeful-¬or overly so.

So. Please write and tell me everything. Omit nada, Darlin'. As I said in one of my calls, I refuse to imagine a world without you in it, Hon, so it just ain't gonna happen. I plan to live to be eighty-five and I do expect you to show up at my memorial service, so you got decades yet.

But there are some things we can do right now to help this natural process along. One of the things I struggle against--and usually successfully--is stress. And, truth to tell, I've been going through some lately. First, I am dealing with the stress of this woman I love going through the Valley of the Shadow of Who-Knows-What and then I am also dealing with my cellie, who is this old geek, geezer of a guy who has been down most of his adult life and is a stone-cold sociopath. Heh, heh. Takes one to know one, I reckon.

So what I am gonna do is simply offer you some suggestions. So remember that they are suggestions and what that means to me is that you can take 'em or leave 'em, but that they're put out here coming from a place of love and respect and we'll just call that "aloha." I'm coming from aloha-for you, Darling, always.

First, check out or buy that book by Norman Cousins ... (and here DiXXX heads into the other room of the library to do a title search ... back inna heartbeet!!) called... .Anatomy of an Illness As Perceived by the Patient. Yep. Norman Cousins. It's 176 pages long, published in 1991, and costs (according to my book which is out-of-date ....)$13.95.

What I remember of the deal is that he rented all these old Charlie Chaplin films and he enrolled himself in this program of laughter. Laughter as a healer. Can ya diggit? And there is something to be said for just exposing ourselves to those wonderful old brilliant movies. Ye gads, how funnnnnneeeee the guy is. Dig?

Herbert Benson_-if__ya want.
It's the best and simplest thing I've ever read on his to get into deep relaxation easily. It's meditation, actually, but there are no costly courses to sign up for, no complicated theories to learn or unlearn.. Just a really simple way to enter into a zone where some radically unreal and wonderful healing of the spirit and body can take place. Please do this?, And if ya don't, I'll be writing to ya about it anyway, since it's something I frequently do.

290204, Sunday. This is really my journal entry, but it's really a letter
to Msallthat, aka Cait Collins. She's my real-life joined-at-the-hip gunslinggah galpal and I love her to peeces. And she's going through a rough time just now and she needs all the aloha and caring and just plain showing up for the deal that she can get. So that's me. That's my job.

-as Paul Harvey used to say. Hey, do you believe that guy? I mean, Keee-rist, when I was back in college he was already an old geezer and had been around forever and that was a ton of years ago. Just how old is that guy, anyway? Huh? Maybe we should write and ask him for his secret, eh?

So ... anyway ... what we're looking at with those two books is positive thinking (which is a powerful force, despite what the cynics say) and deep relaxation. When we move into the zone of the deeeeeeep reeeelaxation, we leave so much of the toxins behind, all that crap which is always eating away at us. And I've know you for years now, Hon, and I know that you and I are both take¬no-prisoner types, high-strung, kick-em-in-the-nuts and ask questions later. So what we both need is a way to chill, to move into the Chill-at-Will (I callit) so we can back off from the world when it's baring its pearly whites and won't give us a timeout and we gotta take one ourselves.

I love you. I have been trying to hold off on saying that so much because I know you're probably the Queen of Independence end that's totally cool, but we're at the stage where I don't much give a fuck about anything other than the truth so I'm gonna say it. I love you. You have about you such a wonderful all-the-way-to-the-bone spirit of aloha that I sometimes just walk out in the Field and meditate on you. On what makes ya tick. On all this and on All that and especially on Msallthat.

Heh. Send me pictures of you, Hon. I know whatcha look like, yes, from the various pics you've sent, but I'm selfish. I want more pics. I want you bleary-eyed and sitting at the puter with a cuppa java in panties and bra looking like ya wanna axe the puter. I want you grinning. I want a pic of yer van at the post office. A pic of yer post office box. A picture of your bedroom, your front door, the view out the window. pics of the guys you're fucking, the women you love, your sister with the 18-wheeler, Everything.

Cause I love you and I want to be a part of your life in every way that I can be. Okay? Send me you.

And you know that I turn sixty this year, Hon. I'm not a spring chiggen anymore. And ...whew...glad I finally got that admission out of the way. I am feeling so fucking good, taking vitamins and downing that fiber-shit that makes ya shit, and all that. Walking an hour minimum a day. Doing 60 deep-knee bends, liting reasonable weight, doing reasonable pushups. The key is the reasonable part. So ... do you walk? You can't get all yer aerobics from fucking, Hon, even tho that's a great way especially for the guy. Heh.heh.----So. A good pair of walking shoes. and a one hour walk? What is soooo fuckin cool about the walk is that yer head takes you to some unreal and wunnerful places. Ya dig? And I find myself moving into this zone of gratitude. Like, the more I learn about things, the more it blows my mind that I have been given this incredible opportunity to live life to the fullest and that it's all miracle and that we are here, in part, at least, to dig on it, to realize it's all this gorgeous cosmic hoot, that nothing is ever lost, and that we have always been here and that we always will be, in one way or another, enjoying this marvelous creation, of which we are a vital part. I don't hold with those who wanna make us irrelevant to the process.

And you know what? I could keel over tomorrow. Or whenevvah. I don't think any of us that are on the Path goes a minute too soon or a second too late. And for me the key is being on the Path. And for me the Path is all about healing first of all ourselves. Then whoevvah we can reach out to. And finally those ya reach out to keep reaching out to others and in time the planet is embraced. And it all begins with you And me. Loving, that is to say, caring deeply about each other. Brother/sister. Divinely so.

So I keep thinking about age and about how much time I have left and about all the things I still want to do and a goodly number of them have you in the picture. I've written before that I'd like to hook up with ya a couple times a year (at least) just to compare notes and see if all the parts are still werking. Heh. Just to hang out together. So that's a part of it.

But there's more; of course. I wanna incorporate my church, get this little Sweetie up and running so that when I transition on outta here (and remember, ya gotta show up for the going-away--for-now party!) she can stand on her own two feet (in those five inch spike heels) and be an ongoing deal. Critical mass, as the scientific types like to say. Or, great boobs, to put it succinctly.

And I wanna see Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the Unholy Land. I wanna climb Mayan ruins. I want to climb Diamond Head again. I want to smoke some good killah weed once I'm off paper. I want to build a houseboat. I want to write one novel a year and have about twenty of tehm out there when I pass on to the other dimension. (Probably be right back, tho, as I'm a believer in the old Reincarnation bit. Born Again and Again and Again Kinda Guy.)

So. The thing is, we have so much to do, so much beauty to dig on, to appreciate. It's people like you and (hopefully) me that this whole deal was/is made for. The Universe gets to twirl and flash her gorgeous butt at us who really appreciate her for her beauty. Ya dig?

So many books to read. So many wimmenz to love. Heh, heh. I love life. And I love growing, becoming more of a spiritual person, being able to reach out more and more. There are some ya just can't reach, Hon. You know that as well as I do. Hell, I've tried to reach out to this one or that one in my life and they are so stuck on the Tarbaby of Judgment that they can't get loose from it. And that's such a sad place to be and I allus say ...bedder them thai me, right? Cause for all my faults, I am not set in concrete, not chisled in stone, but am an ongoing getter-bedder-day-by-day process. And I like the man I am becoming. And I also know that I survived over a thousand felonious beatings and where the fuck were all the fair--weather--types then? Hmmm? You and me, Babe. So ... YOU ARE GETTING WELL AND YOU ARE OVERCOMING BECAUSE YOU ARE THE DIVine MSALLTHAT and that'sall there is to it. A We are eternal beings, !caught up in an eternal drama where we go out into the darkness and work out way back to the light. And the entire thing is perfect. And here we fooking are. I believe because I am. I am- therefore I believe. And I am not a Christian or any of that stuff, but I am coming from the Judeo-Xian background. I use those scriptures as the skeletal basis of the Church. It's just that I have a different understanding, one that is not based on kicking a guy in the balls when he's down, but rather in reaching out to all those who are seeking the light. And you're this MAAAjor Light¬Person. You're all about light. And kicking up your heels. And this world cannot afford not to have ya innit, so stay, dammit.

I love you. Oh shining one of Aloha!

Page Four. At 13˘ a copy that's ...um...62˘ to make copies, plus the 37˘, for the stamp, plus gotta have a copy for the journal. Good thing I went and bought a copy card with that $ ya sent. Ohhhh, babe, what can I say? Huh?

Right now I'm just trying to learn how to live with this old geezer who smokes waaaay too much and is actually committing suicide slowly. He's got seven or eight more years to do and probably won't make it out. Sigh. Such a waste. He's really quite bright and could have been a kick-ass defense attorney, but instead he got his paralegal thingie in prison back when they were still letting prisoners have Pell Grants and take all those college courses.

So I sit there in the darkness or lie there in the darkness and I hear that match scratch across the striker and he's sixty-nine but looks seventy-nine. And in twenty seconds the smoke has made it over to my side of the room and I fucking hate it, but that's just the way it is.

So I have made this deal with myself. See, a year ago I knew I could not stop smoking. I had tried and tried and you know how that goes. Just couldn't do it. Maybe a week or so. So, anyway, I was meditating, that same meditation technique you'll get from the Benson book, and I was going into Trance and it was kewl. And I was thinking, gee, I wish I'd tried to quit back on the 1st as a New Year's Dealie. But that was then. And then I read where the ancient Romans used to start their year in March. And this was like the last day of February or something. A year ago today. And I was thinking, hey! A second chance at New Years! So I thought, well, just see. You know that you can't quit. But you can relax by doing the meditation. And anyway. That was a year ago tomorrow and I've not had a tobacco product in me since. So what I tell myself when old man Bill is puffing and wheezing and coughing away over there, is that he's smoking my cigarettes for me. He's doing for me what I no longer have to do. Kinda like when I broke up with Virginia. Not long after that she was with this guy named Carl and I got to thinking that he was doing my fucking time for me. And that was sooooo kewl of Carl. I really had new respect for him and I knew that Virginia had a lot to offer a guy like him and that the two of them were just right for each other. So it worked out for the best for all of us. And old man Bill is puffing away at all those cigarettes I no longer have to do. Well, I have to do them a weeeee teeeeentsie bit. Second-hand smoke. And that's something I can live with. And, believe me, I'm not a fanatic about this thing. All I ask is reasonable consideration. I don't much like it when we're locked-down and I can't get out of the cell and it's blue with smoke. That seems a violation to me. But old man Bill has laid out his life and this is as good as it gets for him.
Let's do better. Let's be really good to ourselves. Let's find all the aloha we can and then let's give it away. Ya know that I'm going back to AA, right? I will have five years clean and sober this November 7th. See, I am not what I was. I, too, am this person moving toward the Light. And I love you so much, Hon. You are always in my heart. Now, then, there here, always. Remember that. i hug. Lotsa lotsa lotsa.
DiXXX

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14 March 2004, Sunday---
Dear Cait,
I'm enclosing this clipping from the Wall Street Urinal (oops--Journal) which of course made me think of my favorite editor planet-wise not to mention inter¬fucking-galactic, so.... thinking of ya.

Spring. Spring hopes eternal? Something like that. It's here, more or less. Robins are showing up in squadrons now, platoons, gangs, staking out their turf hopping along, heads cocked, listening for the burrowing worm or whatevvah. I love it. Thousands of teentsie blue flowers as small as the head of a wooden match there underfoot, quietly flaunting their beauty, if such a thing can be done. Quiet flaunting, that is.

Well. Rather than go through this long drawn-out explanation of what's up with me, I'll enclose a copy of a letter I sent to my mother. I'm at risk for stroke. Had a mini-strike (TIA--transient ischemic attack) the other day which means some plaque broke off from an artery wall and temporary blocked the blood flow to the brain and then went on through so no damage was done. And now that I've gotten this far, I've about made it through so I think I'll save the 13˘ and just go ahead and letcha know what's up/down wit me.

So. Ain't that sumthin!!!! Or did I already write you? Hmmm. Lemme check the journal. Well, unless I'm missing something, I don't see where I brought it up. But the reality is that I am up against something that could snuff me out any freaking minute, too. So here I be.

So what do ya do? They took blood the other day after the breakfast fast and they'll be checking my cholesterol levels which, when I asked the other day, were "somewhat elevated." So ... why didn't they effing tell me that before so I could have been taking some preventative steps? Hmmmmmm? I'll tell ya why. Becuase this is a federal prison and we're piece of shit and if we die so effing what. Because any doctor worth his/her salt would probably be out in the private sector pulling in beaucoup more bucks than they can make here. So. Stop yer whining, Dickens. This is just the way it is.

So what I have to do is figure out how I can modify my diet in here, given that they sell almost nothing healthy in the effing commissary. It's all about sugar and monosodium glutinate and what have ya. Well. Bananas are 20˘ each when they have them, and they usually have them 3 weeks out of the month. Oatmeal can be purchased. There's powedered milk. I'm not completely out of options.

Am walking a steady hour minimum now, doing the "stairmasters" in the Unit. That is, there are 16 steps at the one end, 16 at the other (plus a couple sets of stairs in the middle, but I don't do them). So it's up and down, back and forth. Just enough to get my pulse elevated enough to be where it's giving me an aerobic workout.

Whaaaaaaaahhhhaaaaaaa. Fucking whiner here, eh? Loveya. So solly. Thing is, these strokes can leave ya impaired, half-paralysed. Whatta way to spend yer autumn years, eh? Sheesh.

140304 (cont). Page two. So the plan from here on out is to watch the food intake very, very carefully. Of course I'm reading everything I can find on the stroke phenomenon (and wasn't it a [cough] coincidence that Newsweek had a cover story on strokes just when I had my little mini-one and it was there to tell me what to do,that it was real and so forth) and what I'm mainly learning is there are some really good cholesterol-lowering drugs which I won't get as they're "too expensive" for inmates, so if I can hold on for another three years, I can go on them when I get out. And if the cholesterol gets high enough in here, they'll put me on a generic cholesterol-lowering not-as-good drug which they can point to in case I keel over and there's any question of a lawsuit which wouldn't happen with my family.

So. I shrug. It's a wake-up call, Hon, for both of us. You are going through your thing and then--BLAM--I'm right there witcha doing mine. Let's both do the best we can to maximize our chances and go out there and kick em in the balls and take no shit from nobody and definitely take no prisoners. Grin. In other words, just be real. Heh, heh.

So. I am thinking that I need to get going on things NOW while I have the health. Over a year now without any

At that point the lights and juice went out, which is Ms. Wilson's way of telling us to shut things down. Back, now, from an unexciting lunch. Ate a bunch of farina-¬which I usually avoid--and a bit of an apple. Hit at the door, lost my bread. Same cop, so perhaps he's picked up an attitude. Sigh. I like to take a couple of slices of my bread (common fare bread, different from the bland white the main line gets) back and make a sandwich. When he's on the door, I'll have to make an adjustment. Sigh. That's just the way it goes. He looks like he had one helluva an unhappy childhood, just to guess from the grim expression he wears. Ahwell.

So life goes on here within the federal system. These are several generations removed from those who wiped out the native americans, but the mindset is not all that different. And what I know is that the programming, genetic and otherwise, is what determines so much of our behavior. The behavior emerges from a perception/ interpretation matrix which in turn emerges/is formed by childhood inputs from parents, peer groups, the culture, genetics. It's all this mechanistic model which traps almost everyone. This is what I'm seeking to escape from. This is what the Church is all about. And now that I know I'm at risk, there is this urgency which I have a feeling you can begin to relate to. There is so little time, dammit. But I have to have faith that there's just enough to make it through.

The day has turned lovely on us out there. We'll finish up here by three, then back to the Unit for a 4 o'clock StandingCount. That will make three for this day. Fog early this morning, so they gave an unscheduled count. Sometimes the hassle of living within the federal mindset gets a bit much. But it's just the way things are done within the system.

I want to write to Martha Stewart, but there's no hurry. She'll be doing her appeal thingie. Hell, I may be out before she does any time. And she'll do it in a camp, of course. Still, she's have a federal number. She is, right now, a convicted felon, just like the rest of us. She will never be allowed full rights again, excepting a presidential pardon. I think she got a raw deal, but that's life. Sometimes we get hit at the door even. when it's a nonsense trip, ya dig?

140304, Sun. (cont). Page three. This youngish (37 yrs old, not so young, I guess) black man asked me to sponsor him last week. This was a bit of a surprise. AA. I'm supposed to be filled with wisdom and sagacious bits of advice, I suppose. So last night we met up for the first of what will probably be weekly walks out there on the track. Niceish young man. Intellectual. And we intellectuals usually fuck everything up. Is it a coincidence that intellectual and ineffectual are such closee rhymes? Grin.

The compound moves now in shades of khaki. The trees still resemble venous systems. The grass greens out in the Field (el campo). Friday I heard the first mechanical sounds of spring: weedeaters whining away, blower machines slung over the shoulder blatting out moans of whatevvah. I hate the bloody things myself. Shrug.

Plumes of smoke emerge from the low-slung sheds of Unicor--the prison SlaveLabor system. Rarely from the west, which is good as there's a cattle feedlot immediately to the west of us. On those rare days when the wind is coming from that direction, the place smells like a sewer. Reminders of my childhood on the farm.

I will try to write up as much family history as I can in the next Journal for my kids. Just in case I don't make it out of this deal. You have my mother's address--right? Just in case?

--------------------
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I'm sorry about this, kid. I'm still gonna be there for you as you walk through your own valley of the shadow. And I still believe that you and I will someday lie in the sun on some gawd-awful-wunnerful beach somewhere south of where either of us is now, drinking something cold and delicious.

I haven't checked, but I have enough (I think) for two full calls to you, Hon. So let me know when a good time is for you. Or how we can hook up phone-wise, if that's something you'd like to do. Two days ago, two morning ago, yesterday morning I guess it was, I awakened from the most extraordinary dream. It was as if I could see what life was really all about when lived to the fullest, when guided by the highest of integrity. It was just lovely, Hon. I awoke glowing.

I think of you often. Joined at the hip, eh? That means we both gotta make it through our deals. And we will, Hon, we will.

One of the guys had an interview of me in yr e-zine. Kinda made me a bit whatevvah. You've deleted all personal stuff, right? Good t'hear. Don't know what he was doing, snooping into my affairs anyway.
Gotta run. Unless I add another page. Yeah, I should add another page just to make sure that I don't zoom on out of here on anything approaching a negative note.

My copy credit card is down to something like 9 left, so that's a bit of a bummer. I'm trying to keep copies of everything I send out. This may well be the extent of my writing while here in prison. Don't know.

Inmates trickle into the law office, asking about this or that. One asks for news on this bill in the House of Reps which will effectively triple the good time from 54 days a year to 180. It's in the House, I hear, but has very little chance of making it through the process wihout a ton of restrictions being written into it. Another comes in with hopes on another case, this one just decided by the Supreme Court, which may bring grounds for relief.

So hope is this weary emaciated thing, looking more like a beat up crack whore than anything remotely respectable. We move on with such things as we have, a smoke of a hope, a snatch of dream, a peck of possibilities which never seem to pan out, but, whatthehell, that's how it goes.

I am something like 34 months from the door right now. Short, in a sense. There are guys in here who would literally (cut 'er off, Doc) give their right arm to have as little time left as I have. I try to keep that in mind.

I suppose that's one reason you don't hear people talking all that much about how much time they have. My puny little three years is nothing compared to the hulking beast of a thirty. Keep things in perspective.

But of course I'm not a young man anymore. There's a loveliness in that in the sense that I've survived this long. But ... three years can be a long time, if the health is at risk.

Gawd. See how I'm obsessing on this? I am doing everything I can from this end to maximize my chances, and now it's just up to the Universe. It's either supported or it isn't. I just don't want to drop off the edge of the world and leave you high and dry, wondering what happened. Hence, my mother's address. Assuming she lives another three years. Gawd.

We have nearly finished the three month Spanish study. We've learned a lot and I want to continue down the path. But we're planning to add daily meditation to the deal. Picture us, out in the yard, sitting a few paces apart, tailor's position, eyes covered, meditating. Sitting still for half an hour. Or twenty minutes--or whatever it is we decide on. I want to see how I feel about things after having done 90 of that. That will take us into summer and possibly the transfer.

Let me hear from you. Send a card. Something to let me know how you're doing. I let rose know you were ill without going into details, so I'm hoping she's in your corner, too. She does not write me. And there's nothing I can do about that. Breaks my heart, but what the hell.

Who said everybody had to love me? You more than make up for it.

I am mostly positive. This thing is here and I'm incredibly lucky to have noticed the double-vision thing and was lucky the first time it happen that Sierra was online and told me back in 2000 I might be having a stroke. I shined it on then, but was ready this time. So here I am. Doing my best. Still on the line. You know I was born in Wichita, Kansas? Does that make me the Wichita Lineman? Hmmmmm? At any rate, I'm still on the line. Still still always yours.
DiXXX

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march 25, 2004---
Dear Cait,
Hey, Little Darlin', I've tried numerous times to get through to ya to no avail, so I am concerned and hoping that all is going as well as can be expected, given what you're going through. My prayers, thoughts, wishes are with you always, Hon. Chin up, girl. I've been reading that there's a 97% survival rate with all this modern treatment stuff.

Well, of course, I had my own little scare a few weeks ago. They have me on "aspirin therapy" and took some blood a week or so ago to check on my cholesterol levels--which were a bit high, so they tell me. Gawd, I must be getting old, talking about my various problems, eh? Smile. Well, I'm walking an hour a day, treating the stairs in the Unit as a StairMaster. It's a good little exercise. When the weather is nice I go out to the Field and trudge around. Plus I've been adding half an hour or so of meditation each day.

Diet is so important. Take away cancer and all the other major killers are diet-related. That's unreal. And at long last I am trying to eat right. As right as I can given the limited options here in prison.

I hear that I'll be transferring probably sometime after next January, so we'll see how that goes. Looks like I'll spend another winter here and then see what happens.

I would have written earlier this week but I have been butt-deep in typing legal work that just had to go out on deadline, so I've literally not had the time to do anything for myself for several days now. But I've been thinking of you.

Well. I moved, finally. I'm now living with this big Jewish kid named Martin Stelinberg, age 31 (or so), who listens to radio night and day. It's like never off. Except that he broke it the day before I moved in (lovely, lovely) and so we've had a few days of peace. Soon enough he'll get another, but at least he likes the same music I love. The classic rock stations.

Down to two years and ten months now. Working on two and nine. The old convicts say that you shouldn't count the days or watch the calendar or anything like that. But I keep myself so busy that time continues to fly by. Eric and I just finished our 90 day Spanish Intensive and are in our 2nd one now. I just have to stick with this thing. I can read quite a bit now even though, of course, there are thousands of words I don't know. Simple literature I can read well enough. So I just keep trudging along.

I wish I could have quit smoking decades ago, but I simply wasn't able to. It's pretty amazing that I've been able to do so here in prison, which is a stressful place, of course. But I've been given whatever it is I needed, and for that I'm grateful. And now I am doing everything I can to maximize my chances. Hope you're doing the same, Hon.

It's nearly time for the Move and I want to get this in the mail so you'll maybe get it Saturday or Monday at the latest. I love you, Cait. You're really special to me and I know we're both gonna make it through. I will be thinking of you. Write, dammit! Hugs and all the aloha in the world....
DiXXX

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28 Mar 04, Sun--- Darlin' Cait...
Ummmm, well, your letter came back Friday marked, "Undeliverable As Addressed" and "Return To Sender" and all that. I was puzzled, of course, until Martin suggested I may have addressed it wrong and I looked and ...D-U-H....

Sorry, Hon. I suppose I was a bit distracted with the stuff that was/is going on with me. But now there's been some passage of time and I find it impossible to keep up that high state of OMG, I'm M-o-r-t-a-l and all that. So life bit by bit slips back into the yeah-right-ho-hum stage (which I hate). Yet, I'm following diet very well.

The prison got hit by an $80,000 reduction per quarter in the food budget, from $360,000 to $280,000. So we're seeing all these austerity measures even as the inmates continue stealing them blind from the warehouse. The inmates have been stealing my good bread, my sardines, and selling them to others. When I say my I'm talking about the Common Fare supplies. It's one of those Grrrrrr deals we can't do much about.

So, Hon, I'm really sorry I was such a bonehead and you must have wondered what was up with me when there was that big block of time. I've been trying to get through on the phone, although sporadically, as I've sort of given up hope of getting through. I will keep trying. I may have been hanging up too soon or something, so will try something different.

Bit of a chest cold. I sleep in sweats and sometimes awaken sweating. Other times it's like the inside of a fridge. So it's the wild temp swings that get ya. I hear half Unit A is down with something and people are complaining but life goes on, natch.

We are just now feeling the effects of 9/11 and the Iraq War and all those massive deficit spending things Geo Bush rammed through. A couple of years ago there were 11 new prisons (federal) in varying stages of completion, but I've not heard of any new ones opening up lately. And I would sign on to go as I am sick and tired of this place and a change of scene might do me good.

So ... we expect further budget cuts as time goes on, so the only thing to do is just to do our best.

To get back to the austerity measures ... usually we have half an hour or so to get over to the Chow Hall before they lock the doors. But I hear that yesterday Lt. Bobbit (young, black, thin, semi-literate, token, affirmative action run-amuck) locked the doors after a couple minutes and told the long line outside, hey, y'all be walkin' too slow. You get two minutes to git here and then the doors close.

So naturally someone complained, got yanked out of line, his ass thrown in the Hole.

Today they dropped the two-minute rule but had everybody having everything rationed out to them. Cereal, milk, sugar, etc. Used to be we could take as much cereal as we wanted. So of course guys were stealing it and taking it back to the units for sale. Now, you get a certain amount.

my new cellie, Martin, is Mr. Pop-u-larity. Abbot, who looks like a gay ... bird (some kind of weird-ass flamingo) comes in, sets hisself daintily down on the end of Martin's bed, rolls his eyes, and rolls a cigarette, all very feminine as he talks about his wife and what she said then and what he'd like to do to her now. Sounds like a real virile he-man if ya can ignore the limp wrist, the eyebrow action, and the rolling eyes.

He says his sister used to date Gary Gilmore, the guy who was executed out in Utah in the seventies--or whenever it was. Norman Mailer wrote a book called The Exectutioner's Song which was quite well done, I thought. And, by the way, I saw a pic of Mailer not all that long ago, big old massive body standing upright supported by a cane in each hand. And I think back to the 60s when I was a freshman in college and Jim Fischer and I read everything by Mailer we could get our hands on and there was a time when we thought he might go all the way and then of course something happened to all of us and Jim went on to teach English Lit in a small town community college and I went on to do my thing here and there and Mailer wrote a number of things but never quite lived up to the hype and billing of his younger years.

Have you read The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe? Reason I ask is that it has some fascinating portrait work of the beats, Neal Cassady in particular, and I remember that you more than once mentioned Neal's son (or at least one of them). Baby, when I get out and mobile, I want to go to a lot of those things. I really want to live a life of genuine aręte (Greek for "excellence.").

Martin weighs 350 lbs. 200 more than I. He snorts derisively at any mention of cholesterol or diet. "I caaaaaan't live that way," he moans. "Fuck it. I'd rather diiiiieeeee." He's in his early 30s and has a major food addiction. In the world, he could stick his tongue down the throat of little Miss Methamphet¬Addiction and keep things more or less in line. But in here there's simply no way. Barring a sudden infusion of discipline, I look for him to break the 400 lb barrier within a couple of years. And he has a bunch of time (do-able) ahead.

It's 8:19 A.M. and as soon as I finish this page I'll go in and see if there are any old copies of USA Today. Ones I've not read. I try to keep up on what's happening out there, Hon. And I am looking forward to being competitive again, getting my t-shirt business going once more (used to make $100+ an hour-¬NET!) and kick some major asssssss. Full of pith and vinegar.

And the thing is, I'm still a young fuck upstairs mentally. Which gives me all kinds of advantages. I was radical then, I'm even more so now. Except that now I am more interested in what can be done versus the before of what should be done. More of a pragmatist.

Write. I run my mouth from this end for any of a number of reasons. You are never far from my thoughts, heart, mind. Sing in the sunshine and all that.

Let me hear from ya. Chin up. Do it, Love. Mucho aloha
DiXXX