Introduction to Life Sentence, Life Purpose: A Prison Memoir Mickey lives in Pleasant Valley State Prison; which is one of the best misnomers I’ve ever heard. It wasn’t kind of me, but I burst out laughing when I looked at the prison on Google Satellite. I thought of the guys who found a small continent covered in ice and called it “Greenland.” They must have chuckled all the way home. What I’d like to do is let the inmates of PVSP send submissions for what THEY think their home should be called. Much of it wouldn’t be printable, but I’m sure they (and I) would get a kick out of that. In defense of whoever named the place Pleasant Valley, it appears they got it half right. It does look like a valley and it has mountains on one side, but it’s no Shenandoah. Even a desert-lover like me wouldn’t find it pleasant. Mickey and I were brought together by what felt like design. I was collecting inspirational short stories from prison inmates, with the hope of making them into a book. A woman at a prison outreach organization in California said she didn’t have any stories, but she’d just read an inmate’s manuscript and thought he was a talented writer. She gave me his California address and I wrote him asking for uplifting short stories regarding his prison life. Instead of sending short stories, he sent an entire manuscript. A manuscript was not what I wanted to read. A manuscript was not going to help me get my collection of inspirational stories done. I moaned—I sighed --and then read it anyway. By page two, I learned that Mickey is from Oklahoma, which after moving 27 times, happens to be where I now live. I instantly bonded with Mickey’s story and knew that I was going to be a part of it. Before I was even halfway through reading it, I offered to help Mickey complete and publish it. While working with Mickey on this book, I have experienced an almost constant stream of serendipity --the kind that gives me goose bumps. About four months into our collaboration I discovered that Mickey had lived a mile away from me in Las Vegas during his short stint as a free man. I could take this as just another small world experience, but I think it’s more a demonstration of the way that souls travel in ever tighter circles as they get ready to cross paths. There’s been a strong sense of the familiar surrounding this whole collaboration process, as if I’ve done this before or all along. Mickey must feel it too, because he said, “You and I have known each other a very long time and it’s nice to finally meet.” In that seemingly nonsensical statement, he perfectly described what I have been feeling. He nailed it. But let me say that this process has not been all harmony and goose bumps. Working with Mickey has been an exercise in trust –trust in Mickey as well as in the Power that seems to be orchestrating this collaboration. My faith in both has been challenged at times and some of my bigger buttons have been pushed. There have been times when my gut has felt like churning tar, but this tar has paved the way for some personal healing. I know that Mickey has also done some healing through the telling of his story and the collaboration. Mickey entered his first home designed for “corrections” at the age of eleven and I’d guess that he’s lived in about eight more since then. He’s a “lifer” in every sense of the word. His current home is where the most violent and hardened criminals reside. Most live there for the remainder of their lives. It’s the kind of facility that has steel doors on the cells instead of bars, the kind of place so filled with human misery and rage that it’s often on security “lockdown,” meaning that the inmates aren’t allowed out of their cells at all, often for days on end. To get into this prison one must meet the “three strikes and you’re out” requirement, or more accurately, “three strikes and you’re in.” This means that a man must commit at least three felonies, two of them violent, to call this place home. Mickey has met the “three strikes” requirement. In fact, sandwiched between his several violent felonies is murder. Mickey has killed a man. By the time I discovered this fact, I had received several letters from Mickey. It was difficult to reconcile the person he was in his letters with the person who had committed murder. In his letters, Mickey comes across as someone always on the lookout for beauty or a bright side to the situation. He talks a lot about how he sees and feels Spirit moving in his life. He seems quiet and bookish – uses large words –and leans toward the philosophical. I don’t know whether Mickey is gifted with an exceptional memory or if he simply reads the same books year after year, but he can --and does-- quote everything from the Bible to Course in Miracles to Taoist wisdom. His memory is not nearly as keen when it comes to the emotional details of his life. But that’s understandable. If I had lived Mickey’s life, I too would’ve spent most of my 56 years working on forgetting. Mickey comes across as extremely sensitive and vulnerable –someone deeply affected by the lack of light, beauty, kindness and connection in his environment. He is prone to slipping into darkness, paranoia and depression if he’s not constantly vigilant of his thoughts and outlook. There is very little light or beauty in a maximum security prison and there is also little beauty through the small windows – and when I describe them as “small,” I mean small. The windows are no more than three inches across. Mickey says a man couldn’t stick his arm through them. What beauty once lived outside the walls in Pleasant Valley was killed by herbicides, because prison officials don’t want to give escapees a place to hide. The closest the men come to “communing with nature” is two to four hours on specified days, in a prison yard with about a thousand other incarcerated men. Jobs are scarce and the men spend years on a waiting list to get janitorial and other grunt jobs. There’s very little to do and even fewer ways to make a contribution and feel of value. Mickey says that the idleness of the time spent there is what most makes it feel like “doing time.” When love shows up at all at Pleasant Valley, it’s in small doses. The prison is in a remote location and many of the inmates have family far way. Mickey hasn’t had a single visitor in eight years. To the unknowing observer, it would seem that God did not live where Mickey lives. In fact, it took Mickey years to realize that God can be found in a maximum security prison. He still loses sight of that sometimes. In the free world, people heal and become better people through beauty, nature, being useful, love, support and connection with Spirit. A maximum security prison offers little if any of these. But there is an advantage to being disadvantaged, a silver lining in having little to nothing outside ourselves worth living for. Mickey is not distracted by the external assistance of things like beauty and love. He has discovered that the only place left to go is within-- and that within is buried treasure. Mickey said it nicely in a letter: “Not much time is spent dwelling on the past or future. The past holds regrets and memories that our lives will never repeat. The future is just more of the same. Most of us here will die here and it’s not a thought anyone cares to entertain. But this letting go can help you. It is in the now that the Divine can bless us. In this way, we are much like trappist monks, exchanging external comforts for what is within. As the Bible says, ‘For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’” Mickey lives a very monk-like existence. Like the sub-groups of almost all major religions who sequester themselves from the world, Mickey spends much of his time in meditation and quiet contemplation. But his life has not always been this quiet. “Tumultuous” is too gentle a word to describe his youthful years. “Disastrous” is probably a better word. Mickey may have the worst timing of anyone I’ve ever met. He (a white Okie) entered an almost all-black correctional school right after Martin Luther King was assassinated. He entered prison for the first time just a couple days before one of the biggest and most famous prison riots in history. Most of his subsequent prisons have also decided to hold riots shortly after his arrival. Heck, he entered life when his teenage parents were succumbing to drug addiction and his father was being sent to prison. Mickey may be the person they had in mind when the phrase, “He fell through the cracks” was coined. But then, Mickey was born in 1955 and the cracks were large then. Over time, those cracks have been filled with such things as head start programs, youth and family counseling, specialized education, mentorship programs, kinder and more effective reward- consequence strategies, more effective addiction counseling, in-house prison outreach programs and re-entry programs upon release from prison. But Mickey came into life before all of that. He’s had to jump life’s hurdles without that extra assistance –and as you’ll learn from his story, he has not often been the most agile jumper. But he’s had his writing. The man can write. According to Mickey, writing has always been the one consistent bright spot for him. His poetry and lettes not only help him pass the time, but have been a safe outlet for him when no other outlets were available. His writing has been both his therapy and his play –and perhaps a large part of his purpose. I believe that Mickey was born to write. More specifically, I believe he was born to write this book. When I received a photo of Mickey –the one featured on the author’s page at the back of this book –I sobbed and continued to burst into tears on and off for the rest of the evening. In his photo, Mickey looks like the sensitive, kind, clear soul that is conveyed in his letters. His eyes are sad and gentle. It’s ironic, but the descriptor that most readily comes to mind when looking at the photo -- a man who has spent almost forty years in correctional institutions and committed several violent crimes, including murder-- is: Innocent. (If you would like to be notified when Life Sentence, Life Purpose is available for sale, please click here and simply type "yes") |
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