Page 42
May 28 2012
Day 22
Subject: Window Pain
There are two windows in my cell. One is three feet long and five inches wide, and it is on the door, looking out at the rest of cell block R. The other is four feet tall and one and a half feet wide, is divided by two large metal bars, and it faces a red brick wall about ten feet away. If you get close to it and look straight up, you can see a few inches of sky and watch the clouds pass overhead. Look left, look right, nothing but brick wall. This is a depressing view for a window, and so when my first cards came in with pictures of flowers and dolphins and cats and butterflies and hummingbirds, I decided to decorate my view by displaying my lovely cards on the mantle of the windows so that I would see something cheery all around me. And it was cheery. Until twenty minutes ago.
Twenty minutes ago, jailer Trombi started walking into people’s cells, which is ninety square feet that two people share and call home, at least until the people who call themselves “the government” approve of releasing the individuals from their cages. As he walks through the rooms we inmates call home, he begins removing things: rags, empty paper towel rolls, etc. He gets to my door, points to me, and motions with his hand for me to “come here”. I bow to the ever present threat inherent in his badge, and obey his order for me to “come”. When I enter my room, he calmly explains the violations I have committed: a towel by the door (to cut down on the echoes from others slamming doors and making noise in the cell block) and my cards on the window sill. He claims that the cards, which stand eight inches high (max) are “blocking a window” and that the towel will experience “wear” by being in the doorway.
I explain to jailer Trombi that I do not step on the towel, it just lays there, reducing noise. And the cards, I said, they aren’t blocking anyone’s view ¨C I thought the rule about not blocking the windows was in regard to the windows which face into the cell ¨C the one a jailer looks through to see inside ¨C not my view of a brick wall which no one could possibly see into. He says that it’s about staying consistent because inmates may clutter their windows and block out the light. Who cares?, I wonder to myself. No one can see into any jail cell through the outside facing windows anyway.
“Oh Derrick, you contrarian,” you may say. “You just don’t have respect for the rules. You just want to follow your own rules and not the ones other people make for you. Don’t you know the rules are there because [fill in the blank with generic sycophantic authoritarian psychobabble]? If we didn’t have rules blah blah blah…”
Spare yourself the recitation of propaganda. I have a working brain and I can tell if something makes sense or not. There is no sensible reason I cannot decorate my window sill with pictures of flowers and dolphins. It’s not a security risk.
“But Trombi just wants to follow the rules. He believes you should follow every rule, no matter how dumb, and work to change it rather than do your own thing. Doing your own thing can be dangerous if the people who make the rules punish you, so just obey,” you may respond.
That’s dangerous thinking. Why even have a brain or free will when all of life is following a set path dictated by some faceless strangers? Fortunately I can zoom out from this situation and thank my lucky stars that I was born with a good, independent-thinking brain. I sympathize for those who were not, and I pity those that were, but lack the courage to act independently.
I pity you, jailer Trombi. None fo the jailers for the last twenty-five days have had an issue with my “forbidden” decoration, until you. You have decided to enforce a rule, backed by the threat of a smaller cage, rather than think independently about the situation. Poor, pitiful, pathetic pansy robbing me of the small joys in life.
