"The only real prison
is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear." - Aung San Suu Kyi
I have written before
about one of my most memorable high school teachers, a man who is now in prison
for the rest of his life.
My correspondence
with Mr Snow over the past few years has been a journey of wonder and pain and
confusion and shock and shame, mine and
his. What happens to a life? Who are we, really? What is the gap between who I
tell you I am, and who I really am?
In an odd way,
prisons have become a part of my life—first, I decided to write Mr Snow in
prison to learn the trajectory of his life, the awful horrible miserable
fateful path that took him there, from a pedestal to a small flat bed and
public showers and lock-downs and shackles.
And then people
started writing to say that every week they were printing my 37days essays
out and mailing them to friends and loved ones in prison.
Then those
prisoners started writing to say how much they looked forward to 37days,
and how the copy they received would make the rounds among the prisoners in
their cell block, coming back to them dog-eared. Then I started a mailing list
to accommodate all the requests I was getting to mail 37days directly to
prisoners. So each week, I print them out and mail them to prisons across the
country: You're welcomed to add to that list--if there is someone in prison who
might appreciate getting 37days each week, let me know and I'll add their name
to my prison mailing list, a list that contains some very high 
profile
prisoners we all know of, and others without names--much like life outside, the
celebrities and the nameless, many victims of a circumstance that is generational
in its turning and turning in a widening gyre, father meeting son in prison: we
are all living on an arc that started long, long before we did,
some bright shining and some not so.
Their letters from prison enlighten and sadden me, scare and rebuke me, show me a world I could not otherwise know, and that I still--really--cannot imagine. The politeness and respect and gentility and urge toward humanity of murderers reminds me that we are all part light and part shadow, aren't we?
I serve on the board of a
local nonprofit that recently uncovered a sophisticated embezzlement scheme by
one of its employees, over $160,000 in all. I sat for months across from her in
board meetings, not knowing. We all did. She presented one facade to the
world--prim, proper, organized to a fault, conscientious--while she created
elaborate computer programs to hide money, transfer it from 
department to
department so she could take it undetected.
After her arrest, a former employer
of hers came forward--she had stolen $250,000 from them, a theft undetected
because they chose not to prosecute for fear it would hurt their standing in
the community, a decision that made it possible for her to move here and take a
job as an accounting director, a spiral of not-saying, not-stopping,
not-holding accountable, just as the community did when Mr Snow started his
fall, young boys instead of cash his fragile, human, vulnerable collateral.
All of this connection to prison has led me to believe this: none of us is who
we say we are, not really, not fully. We put a good face on what it is to be
human—we wear moisturizer and create finer eyebrows with stiff brushes and
taupe Mac powder and use deodorant to deny the very thought that we are
sweating, grunting animals, and we navigate four-way stops with aplomb, that
social contract intact as the cars on the right move, then the next on the
right move, then the next on the right move in some elaborate wheeled dance of civility.
We swear off red meat, sneak white refined sugar, and pretend we don't fart.
We say "yes, sir" when we mean "are you insane?" and we say
sure to things we hate doing, but down below that genteel surface, arranged and
neatened like a house is staged for sale, sometimes we are really not that
neat, responsible, moral person, but someone else. And that scares us, I
believe. We are vulnerable to our animal selves, aren't we?
We know, deep down, that we
are someone who has the capacity for avarice and greed, someone who forgets to
send birthday cards and picks their nose when no one is looking, someone who
knows what it means to lust and hate and eavesdrop and worse, someone who has
felt such anger and hate that shaking or smiting is too near the surface,
someone who feels small and insignificant and lonely and sad and unloved sometimes.
We sit in management meetings feeling like imposters--if they only knew that I’m
making all this up, we think--not knowing that they are all thinking the same
thing, and that we are all making it
all up. We dust our living rooms every other year knowing that if anything ever
happened to us, our house would need to spontaneously combust so the survivors
wouldn't see the junk room upstairs or the toilets that need cleaning.
We are, it seems, imprisoned by our own denial of that part of us we don't want others to see, or know, or reveal.
And when someone sees those
things about us--when we sit for hours and tell, unable to hold it in any
longer—or when they find out or glimpse it in us--it is too much, we must
distance ourselves, and them. We must pay people to listen to such secrets, the
shame is so great. Such is the life of the prisoner in us all, all semblance of
privacy gone, shorn and shown to be who we really are. We can't stand that
bright light, and so we dim it.
Sometimes when I get a letter from prison, I wonder if we aren't all shadow
humans, these men and women just having gotten caught at things we are all
capable of in some way, down at the root of ourselves.
As I first wrote about Mr
Snow, playwright Eve Ensler first visited the Bedford Hills Correctional
Institute for Women in 1998, volunteering to teach writing there, working with
women inmates, most convicted of murder. In a 2004 speech, Ensler spoke about
the women being “murderers and abusers and thieves” when she started. As she
grew to know them through their writing - in which they confront the lives they
have ruined, explain the scars on their bodies, describe their crimes - they
became “women and sisters” to her.
As she listened further,
she came to know “that these women weren’t just the crimes they committed: they
were mothers, daughters, sisters, Jews, Christians, Muslims, high-school
dropouts, PhD candidates, barely 21, pushing 60, barely conscious of their
crimes, remorseful to the point of suicide.” She began to realize that, as she
said, “There is no ‘other.’ That is an illusion. They are me. I am accountable
for what they did.”
My decision to write Mr
Snow, now a three-year correspondence, came with my own understanding that the
truest test is not loving someone when they’re doing what is right and true and
kind, but when they are not, that love comes when our loving someone doesn’t
depend on their guilt or innocence, that love and compassion come with seeing
our own shadow self in them.
I wish his life had taken such a different
trajectory, but it didn’t. It went in this inexorable direction. And I’m not
sure what finding Mr. Snow will mean for either one of us over the coming
years, but I do know that in reaching out to him, I have found an important
part of myself.
I
believe we must explore and expand our capacity for love and forgiveness, of
ourselves as much as of others. I believe, as G.K. Chesterton said,
“love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all.”
We sometimes shun people
because they remind us too much of ourselves, of our own vulnerability, of our own
shadows. Prisoners fall into that category. My correspondence with Mr
Snow—only 10 years older than me—has put me into a small, claustrophobic place of
great learning. Not only about him, his denial, his fall, his ultimate
humanity, but about what it is to love unconditionally—really what that means.
The lessons go farther than prison—for example, I think a lot about this as
Emma grows more independent as a teenager--am I loving her unconditionally as
long as she meets my conditions, or am I able to love even the parts I don't
like or understand or that anger and scare me?
And, ultimately, my foray
into prison has taught me that I, too, am worthy of unconditional love, even my
shadow self, that one I don't show you or you or you. I wonder what would
happen if we all owned the fact that we are showing only a tiny bit of who we
really are, if shame could be divorced from the parts of us we live in the
dark, after the lights are out, when we are alone.
~*~ 37 Days: Do it Now
Challenge ~*~
We create our own prison cells, don’t we?
Small confinements in which we place ourselves, denying the larger part—the big
Us, the fuller, more human one, the one unrestrained by those governors that
restrict the speed on a moving truck or a golf cart, the one in which we might
not always shine, but whose grit and dirt and shadow self may cast the public
us in stark contrast, the one that—ultimately—makes us human, in relationship
with every other human, no matter how superior we feel to them.
Amazing writing again...I look forward to you and _The Sun_ every new issue. You both know heartspeak, that maddeningly ineffable way of touching spirit deep with just words. Thank you. I hope to learn to communicate as fully and deeply as I'm learning from you.
Posted by: K | 06 October 2007 at 00:56
Patti, I am so overwhelmed I don't know what to say. I just want you to know I was here. Listening.
Posted by: Lisa Gates | 06 October 2007 at 01:26
I think you are correct. No one knows the true 'us'. Not even ourselves. But I also think we don't know our real selves because we are at the same time complex but also simple creatures. I think our true selves change from moment to moment. Not just what people see of us, or what we think we are, but deep down. I think that central soul changes moment to moment as well.
That said, I can tell you that I think you are a much bigger person than I. As a former teacher, I cannot conceive how Mr. Snow could take such a trusted position and do something so unthinkable. I think that there are crimes that lend themselves to forgiveness more than others. This one, to me, does not.
Posted by: Becky | 06 October 2007 at 09:49
I think that's one of the most extraordinary things I've ever read on a blog. Thank you.
Posted by: Trish | 06 October 2007 at 09:58
K - I love _The Sun_ too...many thanks for your very kind words...
Lisa - thanks for sharing your presence - it is nice to know you were here, listening.
Becky - you've given me a lot to think about - we are not one self, no, but many, shifting ones. I agree - there are crimes that lend themselves to forgiveness more than others - to reach across that divide and challenge myself to move beyond what is easy to forgive...well, it is not easy. Perhaps that's where the work begins, I don't know. Many thanks for your comments...
Trish - extraordinary is a big, big word. I thank you for that.
Posted by: patti digh | 06 October 2007 at 11:06
Wow. So much to think about in this post and the earlier one about your teacher. But I know all too well how you feel about your oldest daughter as my daughter has just turned twenty. As much as I want her to be her own person, there is still that part of me that worries about her life choices - what will family and friends think of her and how will it reflect on my parenting skills? Will she be judged as my "success" or my "failure"? Should I even care what people think? Is what I most desire for her even what she needs? How can I let go completely and allow her to live the life I have no right to control?
I thought that being a parent would be less complicated when my child became an adult. But no. The dance steps get trickier - and sometimes the loving gets harder.
Posted by: Kim | 06 October 2007 at 17:03
Patti, Trish is absolutely right...this is an extraordinary essay, but more than that, it's an extraordinary expression of human frailty, human magnificence and human love and compassion.
We all struggle with thoughts that are judgemental and less than loving. I like to think that it's like learning to walk...we stumble, fall, pick ourselves up and stumble yet again. When we become aware of these thoughts and begin making an effort to redirect them into more compassionate thoughts, it's difficult to maintain this and not 'stumble' again...often right away!
Our 'intension' to be a more compassionate person (especially with ourselves) will eventually lead us to more compassionate thoughts and actions, and a more compassionate world.
I'm so glad there are people like you that are able to write of the human experience in such a heartfelt way. You touch many, many hearts in this world through your elequent words.
Posted by: Kate I | 06 October 2007 at 17:45
Wow, Patti. You've blessed us with another incredible piece of writing. Thanks for another thought-provoking piece.
Posted by: Joy | 06 October 2007 at 22:09
I think this goes here:
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/opedsubmit.html
Do it.
Lela
Posted by: Lela | 07 October 2007 at 00:05
hi patti.
this comes at the perfect time for me.
i just moved to glasgow from nepal and its been a big change: sometimes liberating, sometimes heart breaking.
ihave been looking up local prisons here for soem journalism work and i wrote to someone just last night. and sent him a peice of my art.
today i will hear back from him and tomorrow i will send him something else.
he is serving life sentence for murder.
this has helped my understanding of him and me. thank you.
Posted by: mahima | 07 October 2007 at 08:24
I have come back to read this again, after just reading the transcript of an interview with Sister Helen Prejean, the nun played by Susan Sarandon in the film 'Dead Man Walking'. And then there was another interview with a woman who had struck up a conversation with another passenger on a train, a woman who seemed to be 'just a homeless person'. If you ask the right question of someone, at the right time, you can find out things about them that you would never have known. How much is happening just below the surface in all of us, just waiting for someone to ask the right question?
This is why I used the word "extraordinary" to describe this post. Because most blog posts don't linger in my memory for very long after I've logged off. I'm going to bookmark this page and come back again and again, as I grapple with my own 'incarceration'.
Again, thank you.
PS I've linked to the interviews from my blog if you're interested. My name (below) is the permalink.
Posted by: Trish | 08 October 2007 at 02:34
This was particularly poignant at this moment, as I am in the middle of reading Elie Wiesel's Night, imagining the prison he endured in 1945. Shared humanity encompasses the good and the bad, doesn't it? And the greys in between.
Posted by: Sally | 08 October 2007 at 08:53
I am blessed (yep, blessed) to be a recovering addict - I am witness to all sides and aspects of humanity in these rooms. I couldn't relate at first to "shadow selves" - then I realized I no longer have one; my addiction caused me to turn myself inside-out, laying everything bare. I forget most people haven't experienced that.
In revealing and accepting my own humanity, I can see and accept others' - even when they don't purposely reveal it. I am myself wherever I go, and I can imagine no greater gift in this life. For myself, sure, and also because being fully myself creates safety and space for those who come in contact with me to be fully themselves.
Who knew when I first said the word "addict" - defeated, ashamed, nearly given up - it would lead to this place of light?
Posted by: Caren | 08 October 2007 at 18:52
Patti, I've read many of your essays over the years and I think this is one of your best. As thought-provoking as they always are, this one dares to delve into that darkest part of ourselves. Something I realized after I'd been sober for awhile was that if I could learn to embrace my dark side, I wouldn't have to live from it. I applaud you for taking us behind the shadow door.
Posted by: Marilyn | 08 October 2007 at 21:25
Kim - your experience of your daughter as a young adult, and the questions you ask, are so core...many thanks for your insights...
Kate I - your note has made me quiet. many, many thanks.
Joy - as always, your words are so welcomed and appreciated...
Lela - really?
Mahima - that's quite a move you've made... and your art will be an important piece of color in his life. I remember how heartbroken I was once when Mr Snow told me he had saved a bright post-it note I had put on one of my letters so he could brighten up his cell with its 2x4-inch bit of color...
Trish - thanks so much - I look forward to reading those interviews...
Sally - thank you for a big question...
Caren and Marilyn - you both represent in such a big way how much I learn from people who come here to visit. The darkness is where light comes from isn't it? would we know light without dark? what a wonderful, hard, and important journey you both have taken. thank you for sharing the lessons from that trip. with love.
Posted by: patti digh | 08 October 2007 at 21:47
Like Lisa I don't have an immediate grasp of what I can possibly write here to describe how deeply moving this post is. Just know that it has left a deep imprint on my thinking and soul...and perhaps in the coming days I'll be able to reflect further and come to grips with what this really means in my life. Your writing is a gift to which I offer my thanks.
Posted by: Chris Bailey | 11 October 2007 at 22:34
Chris - oh, my, what a note. many thanks for sharing its impact on you. The essay's meaning and imprint ultimately comes from you, really, not from me. Thank you for reflecting and making it your own exploration.
Posted by: patti digh | 12 October 2007 at 12:30