~ Note from Gin ~ Spyder was instantly recommended to me for an interview by Prince before our interview day was over, and I instantly loved his writing. He has shared a lot with me that I am not including here, but he went through our questions as well. I am including the questions and some of his poetry. We ask that people submitting interviews respond to 3 to 5 questions. Spyder answered all of them. I was going to edit it down, but I could not decide what to cut, as I feel it is so important that the voiceless be given their voices whenever possible. So, this one is long. If you don’t have the time to spend, please scroll to the bottom and read his poems, especially the “Who am I?” poem at the very bottom. I bolded it so you can find it easily I hope.
What do you spend most of your time doing now?
I spend most of my time nowadays counseling guys with issues of one sort or another. Guys who are finding it difficult to make the transition from the culture of the prison yard to Reentry programming, and the return to life under the rule of law after release from prison.
When you have spent decades immersed in the culture of the yard, it can prove a difficult task to divest oneself of the habits, survival-mode mindset, and emotional volatility inherent in incarceration in a few short months of wrestling with programs that one is forced into and not familiar with.
When I’m not counseling, I serve as the lead painter and mobile worker for the Reentry Housing Unit at Greensville Correctional Center. When not counseling, painting, or cleaning, I am thinking about my own looming, potential release, and working to make sure that I am going to be leaving prison as a returning citizen rather than as a prisoner loose in law-abiding society.
On your perfect day, what would you do?
On my perfect day in here, I would have shared something from my life with someone that helps them have an “ah-ha” moment of understanding and clarity regarding their own efforts to heal and or transform themselves into the person they want to be, instead of remaining the person they have been conditioned into.
On my perfect day, out in the larger world, I will make some breakthrough at my job in prison reform which will lead to a more humane system for helping society’s fallen members rather than caging and treating them as vicious animals and expecting them to come out better for it.
If you could change one thing about the system, what would you do to help the most?
If I could change one thing about the system, I would engineer the means to make a shift from the retributive stance of making people pay for their bad actions to taking the view of understanding that very few people do bad things because they actually want to do bad things.
I would encourage the more humane approach to dealing with bad behavior from the holistic point of view of looking at the entire individual and addressing the brokenness; the illness; the imbalance in the individual.
I sincerely think that one way or another, it is ignorance, runaway passion, a sense of social insignificance, or the loss of personal power, worth or esteem which leads to self-destructive behaviors.
Healthy human beings do not harm other human beings. It is when we lose sight of our own or our neighbor’s humanity that we do harm to others, and thus to ourselves.
Tell us a little about the most important people in your life.This is a difficult question for me to respond to because nearly everyone that I hold in high regard are people I have met and been inspired or influenced by during my incarcerations; whether peer or staff member.
It is not at all difficult for me to acknowledge any of these extraordinary individuals. The difficulty comes in when I think of what the reader might expect to see listed here, like “Mom,” “Dad,” some significant historical figure like Stephen Hawking, or Einstein, or a sports figure of some sort, perhaps. But I have no family members that I look up to, and I do not go in for ancestor or hero-worship.
As a Satsangist Hindu Witch, a Pagan, and to a very large extent, a self-made individual, the absolute most important person in my life is myself.
This is because I took and rebuilt an individual who was declared broken at the age of eight; who was locked away in a mental facility for children and diagnosed irreversibly brain-damaged, borderline mentally retarded, dyslexic and emotionally disturbed.
I took an abused and battered soul who would spend the majority of his life locked away in one kind of cage or another ( jail, reform school or prison) and, against all the odds, rebuilt him into the person that I am today. A person who genuinely loves himself (and knows why). A person who is actively sought after by others for his ability to reach and positively influence cognitive, pro-social and personal change in others; an individual who inspires others to seek and realize their own inner light of humanity, all within an environment which is decidedly toxic to healthy human growth and development.
The people who I count important to me, and why, are:
Greyson, an individual in the maximum-security lockdown unit At Powhatan Correctional Center (M-Building) in 1976, who felt my pain, suffering and desolation when I was ready to slit my own throat and end it all; who, instead of aiding me in that undertaking, suggested that I learn to read and write, promising me that that one act would change the entire world, my entire life, and the way I felt about everything. He was right. And he helped me begin my journey of Self-re-cognition. He gave me my first Dictionary.
Becoming literate is the single most empowering choice any individual can make for themselves because it is the key which can unlock the entire universe of Knowledge.
Wynfred Cornell Reynolds, who loved me when I did not know how to love myself, who said he saw in me ” a seminal Kahlil Gibran,” and then gave me my first copy of “The Prophet.”
Patricia Jarvis, who I met on escape from reform school, and who was the first person with whom I experienced sourer-communion: the complete meshing of body, mind, and spirit during sex; where the individualities and personalities give way to the spiritual awareness of a single, cosmic consciousness. I saw her all, and she saw mine. It was One and the same. It was terrifying, awesome; and it made me aware that we are life eternal, already.
John Raymond Latham, who has loved and hated with me across lifetimes. Who has entrusted me with the experience of his best and worst. Who held himself up as a mirror for me; and I for him. John Raymond Latham, the second person with whom I experienced souler-communion; and for whom I hold an abiding regard, always.
Sparrow, one of the most ancient souls I have been blessed to encounter. He gifted me my first copy of “The Urantia Book.” he sat in my room with me, on Bland Farm, pulling all-nighters; “philosophizing” with pork chop grease sliding from his double chins, as he shared Cosmically deep insights on human nature, the nature of Life, and why chocolate is a kind of ambrosia for man, but poison for a dog.
Doc Hil’bey, who argued with me when I insisted that there was nothing special about me. He inspired me to always look deeper at a thing, and then, look deeper still.
Case Counselor Easter, who pissed me off to the point that I had an epiphany, realized a need, and began programming in earnest.
Unit Manager D.D. Woodson, who carries himself with quiet dignity, professionalism, and makes department store clothes look good. He is the closest I have ever come to viewing anyone as a “father-figure.” He has served as a significant role model for the development of my self-restraint and emotional control. I am blessed to have met him. He is the one who saw my potential, who encouraged my involvement in the FastTrack Reentry Program of Housing Unit Nine, and then brought me over to serve the Reentry Program of Housing Unit One, here at Greensville Correctional Center, where I served with Lord Prince as 400-Pod Elder.
W. Bunn (Lord Prince), who embraced my friendship without reservation, encouraged and later endorsed my Eldership. And when I experienced a moment of self-doubt, gave me just what I needed to get me back in the game, and doing my job. And, having made parole, gotten to the business of building the rest of his life, he referred The Humanization Project to me for my possible involvement.
Treatment Officer L. Brown (now Sgt. Brown), who wears the whole of her humanity upon her sleeve, with all its frailty, strength and beauty. She never missed an opportunity to encourage me. She has never been afraid to let me see her just as she is (the good, the bad and the ugly) and I am inspired by and salute her shining nature.
Kurtis Lee Roberts, who nearly cost me my life. He taught me patience, and how to accept and appreciate others without having to change them.
Larry Scott, who came to me for help to keep himself from sabotaging everything he valued, and ended up making me family. I love him dearly.
Stephen Brooks-Gaines, who taught me a valuable lesson; who showed me a serious shortcoming in my character; who set me the task of reassessing a lot of what I thought I was sure of.
Justice “J-Rock ” Carter, a newly acquired friend who is trying to get his temper and emotions under control. He is important to me because he is a reflection of what I use to be like; I am now aware of how I appeared to others. He is important to me because he is trying to change the direction of his life. And, despite his difficulties with his temper and anger, he is still fundamentally a good person, and he is my friend at war with himself.
How are you different now than from when you first got locked up?
How am I different now from when I first came into prison? HaHaHa! 🙂 Let me count the ways.
I was 19 years old when I fell on this bit. I am now 65 years old.
I was illiterate when I fell in 1973. I now am educated through entry-level college. I am a 2nd degree Cleric of Wiccacraft. I am 3rd grade, 7th. degree Initiate of The Brotherhood Of Light.
At 19 my only talents were theft, violence, and runamuck. Now I am computer literate, capable of coding in JavaScript, C++, Visual Basic and C#. I am skilled in Brick Masonry, Cabinet Making and Woodworking, Residential Wiring and Industrial Motor Control, Drywall & Floor Covering, Painting, Custodial Maintenance, Heavy Equipment Operation, Genie Lift & forklift certified and Shoe Repair.
I came into prison with a severe inferiority complex, scared of everyone and everything, weighing 113 pounds with substance abuse proclivities and without any problem-solving skills other than violence or flight. Now I have been under a vow of non-violence since 1994, have been drug-free since the mid-nineties, and I am a skilled mediator and counselor for the seriously troubled.
I have gone from a hatred of the world and a desire to blow up police stations, to loving the world and a desire to work for Prison Reform and The Virginia Reentry Initiative.
I came into prison an abject loser, I am on my way to getting out an absolute winner. But I do not credit the prison experience with my transformation. Prison does not rehabilitate anyone. I came into prison with 10 years to serve. I ran my sentence up several times until I was serving 86 years plus.
No, prison didn’t fix me or make me a better person. I did that in spite of the prison experience. Prison became my concrete cocoon for personal transformation, but only after I reached the end of my ability to endure myself as I was any longer.
What do you see as your purpose now, and why?
The short answer, rebuilding myself into the best human being I can be. Why? This response is not so short. By the time I am released from prison, I will have served nearly half a century of incarceration, on this bit. I have done a lot of bad things in this lifetime. I have harmed a lot of people. As a runamuck, I brought harm to the entire world.
As a Witch and an enlightened human being, I believe in Karma, and my ledger is seriously unbalanced. I have lifetimes worth of crap to make right, to heal. To pay for.
My mission and purpose now is to do what I can to restore Karmic Balance to my Ledger.
I cannot undo anything I have done. I cannot go back and get a “do-over.” All the remorse and regret in the world won’t change a thing that’s gone before.
All I can do is change from the person was, evolve the person I am, which I have and am doing.
Where I was a taker of things, now I give the best that I have to offer. And I am constantly working to improve the quality and value of that offering.
Where I was an agent of chaos, I am now an agent of Balance and Order.
Where I had been a destroyer, I am now a force for creation, for building.
Where I had been a hater of myself, the world, and everyone in it, I now love expansively.
I now begin each day thankful for the opportunity to make a constructive difference in my life, and in the world around me.
I now work at becoming the best human being that I can be because that is the only means any of us have to Balance our Ledgers;
That is the only means I have to pay for all the bad things I have done in my ignorance, in my brokenness, in my illness:
I remove the ignorance through the acquisition and wise application of knowledge;
I fix the brokenness by addressing the irrationalities and illogic in my mind, and living creatively and lovingly;
I heal the dis-ease by reconstructing my mental and emotional health, and through ever-expanding my awareness that all lives are One Life, and that to harm one life is to harm all Life. To harm anyone or anything is to necessarily harm myself.
What do you look forward to the most in the future?
What I look forward to most in the future is getting employed by the Governor’s Office to come back into prison and show these people how to make the system work for everyone concerned: the prisoners, the staff, and the general public.
Why can’t we inspire voluntary change in the fallen rather than trying to force it on them?
It has got to cost far less to educate those trying to learn a better way, than it does to enforce the rules and regulations in facilities filled with people decidedly adversarially disposed to the treatment they receive in the name of discipline and oversight.
The current system is based upon the premise of an eye for an eye; just rewards for wrongdoing; punishment for the evildoer.
It has been this way since the beginnings of civilization. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. People change. Forms of government change, everything changes. Why can’t the way we deal with people who lose their humanity? What purpose does it serve to break the broken further?
Our society prefers to call its cages “Correctional Facilities.” But it only pays lip service to the premise of actually correcting anything. It spends millions, billions on programs whose administrators are hardly qualified to administer, in settings hardly conducive to learning.
And who wants to learn anything being forced upon them by those who have made it clear that they regard you as both broken and subhuman, anyway? This is a counterproductive approach to corrections.
What hungry person would not jump at the chance to learn how to produce their own sustenance? What person who has nothing, when offered a dignified hand up, would spitefully refuse the helping hand?
I’m not talking crazy here. I’m suggesting that we can accomplish far more by dealing with people as valued members of the human race than by marginalizing them into feeling powerless, socially and personally insignificant.
I’m sorry, I stray somewhat, from the question. I look forward to involving myself in Prison Reform and The Virginia Reentry Initiative; hopefully in the not so distant future.
What is your favorite thing about yourself?
My favorite thing about myself is my ability to adapt, to change, to evolve and transform in a deliberate and considered way. I did not always have this ability.
If you could help the average person out there understand one thing about prison and the criminal justice system, what would it be?
Prison does not fix the broken.
The Criminal Justice System does not uplift the fallen of society.
They do not even provide the means by which the broken can fix themselves, nor the fallen pick themselves back up; because The Criminal Justice System and Prisons are too busy trying to force the fix.
It is only through the will to heal, fix and walk upright that we regain our humanity and live as human beings. And it is only we the fallen who can recognize this and desire to change. It is the less broken of us, men and women in prison, who first fix themselves, and then provides aid to others in seeing and fixing themselves. We who are declared trash and discarded, it is we who bring about the transformation of one another. We do this, through the simple medium of genuinely caring about the condition of ourselves and our fellows. That creates the engine of change for the better. The Criminal Justice System of America is flawed. It looks at the individual’s behavior to assay the value of the human being. Prisons are in the condition that they are because they are conceived of, built, and administered by those deemed righteous and unbroken. By those who see us as subhuman, who see us as valueless. When this is your perspective, how can you possibly hope to help heal or fix anyone? when this is your perspective, your true motivation and focus are on the protection of yourself and those like you from those like us, the fallen and the broken.
When you lose sight of our humanity You lose the ability to truly help us help ourselves. You fail us. You fail society. And thus, you fail yourself.
Who has had the most positive influence in your life, and what did they teach you or help you with?
Greyson, a fellow prisoner in Powhatan Correctional Center’s Maximum Security Lockdown Unit (M-Building) in 1976 who helped me learn to read and write and got me on my journey of self-re-cognition. He helped me claim for myself the key to the universe of knowledge.
What is your favorite memory, and why?
I used to work in a Cabinet Shop for a while when I was a kid. I liked the smell of raw wood. I loved watching something of beauty take shape beneath my hands. I loved the way the wood grain came to life when I rubbed it with oil or varnish. I loved it because I could lose myself for hours on end creating something that others would perceive as beautiful and useful, and worth all they would pay for it and more.
” In Memory of a Shower Suicide “
The jungle
Where Darwin’s Law
Is carved
In blood-spattered brick
Acid-pitted faces
Missing eyes
Scarred limbs
Rusting bars
And layer upon layer
Of peeling paint
These things
Held honorable
Respected
In this place
Where the clang and rattle
Of the iron-pile
Is mixed with curses
Straining bodies
Pumped and bulging
Muscles
Gritting teeth
Bent minds
With devouring thoughts
Building might and nerve
And the will to dominate
To destroy
Or simply to survive
Where Death holds court
With a razored scepter
And children
Grow old too quickly
Or never grow old at all
Having lost their heart
Through slits
At their wrists
Children who die
Oblivious of their
Unfulfilled potential
Seeping away through cracks
In broken brown-clay tiles
Which suckle down their blood
Their shattered dreams
Souls lost
Tiles smiling
Jagged edged smiles
Awaiting the next
Abandoned life
In the jungle
Where Darwin’s Law
Is carved in the faces
In the bodies
In the corpses of the damned.
( The subject of this poem was raped; went to the showers, opened both wrists; and stood there weeping under the spray, until he bled out and expired. He was 18 years old.)
+ + + + +
” The Sun Is Coming Up “
“41 years New Law,” you said
“Too much to bear,” you said
But, dude,
The sun is coming up.
“The walls are closing in.”
“You hate yourself,
And everyone around you.”
You said your life was over.
But the sun is coming up.
“Nothing left to live for.”
“Nothing matters anymore.”
“Just want to die,” you said.
But Babe,
The sun is coming up.
“There is no hope left.”
“No dreams left to dream.”
“Nothing but darkness,” you said.
But love, the sun is coming up.
Lover,
As long as you breathe,
There is hope;
As long as there is hope,
There are dreams;
Because the sun is coming up.
So long as you
Keep your dreams alive,
The future
Is yours for the writing;
Because the sun is coming up.
As long as you
Do not give up on yourself,
Everything
Remains possible;
Because the sun is coming up.
Nothing is over,
Until you quit trying.
Your life is not over,
Until you quit living;
Because the sun is coming up.
Freedom is a state of being.
Freedom has nothing to do with
Where your body is, but rather,
Where your mind is;
Because the sun is coming up.
Beloved,
Life is where and what you live.
Live from the inside out.
Your happiness has to come from within;
Because the sun is coming up.
The walls are those you built.
The hatred is self-generated.
Focus on your light,
And the walls and hate will vanish;
Because the sun is coming up.
Upturn your beautiful face.
Feel the warmth.
Fill yourself with light.
Open to Life, Love and Laughter;
Because, my Beloved, your inner sun
Is eternally coming up.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
When I was helping out in the Fast Track Reentry Program over in 9-Building’s 100 Pod, Doc Hillbey contracted a mural for the Programs Room depicting transformation, using a caterpillar, cocoon, butterfly and man. He asked me if I could come up with a poem for the theme. What I came up with was :
“MOTH OR MONARCH?”
Prison is like a concrete cocoon
We come in judged social worms
If we adopt the culture of the prison yard
We become like a moth
Circling the flames of self-destruction
If however
We adopt the culture of self-transformation
We can leave prison
As Monarchs
Masters of our own destiny.
++++++++++++++++++
Lord Prince cranked up a Cognitive Journaling Group while he was here as Pod Elder. I participated in it. The first assignment was to respond to the question “Who am I (and why do I need to forgive myself?)”. I wrote the following:
WHO AM I ( and why do I need to forgive myself?)
Who am I?
I am one
Fallen
From the navel of the world
Conceived without intent
I was a mistake
Unloved and unwanted
Named after another
Who was not my sire
By a mother who
Could never be a Mom
Because of thralldom to images
Within her social mirror
Who am I?
One fallen
From the navel of the world
But I loved Life
I abhorred violence
And I played with friends
That grownups could not see
So I was beaten
Abused
Battered into spirit blindness
Fallen
Astral cord torn asunder
My innocence died
When adults murdered my puppy
When a drunk and stinky “Doctor”
Hacked away my 7-year-old foreskin
And declared:
“This promotes good hygiene!”
Fallen
My mind wrecked
By the convoluted rationalities
Of psychiatrists who diagnosed me
Irreversibly brain damaged
Borderline mentally retarded
Dyslexic and
Emotionally disturbed
I was institutionalized
Exiled from my childhood
Betrayed and abandoned
To the fog locked chemical wasteland
Of Thorazine
Fallen
My liberty was wrested from me
Inside padded cells
Screaming hallways and Dorms
And the drugged diets of
The Virginian Treatment Center For Children
Fallen
My freedom ebbed away from me
On wings of whispered whimpers
The handiwork of those white coats
With their bonafides and licenses to
Take me and remake me
After their own image
I am one fallen from the naval of the world
I am one who lost everything I was
To a freak who borrowed
My dirty little sneakers
To a junky who shot white death
Into my 12-year-old veins
And then gave me a gun
That spat death and power and lies
I lost myself to prostitutes
To hippies and psychedelics
I lost myself to the darkness within
Fallen
My very sense of self-lost
Amid a maze of voices
And faces
Which hid from me my own
I was remade and reshaped
Over and over and over again
I became a social pariah
I was rabid violent run amuck
Captured and prosecuted
I was judged irredeemable
My freedom
Surrendered before the bench
I was carted away to the cages
To the razor-wired fences
To the gun towers and other heathens
Just like me
I was carted away
To the nightmares inside
I was reduced to a number
Within a digital sea of numbers
Of others just like me
The flawed and the faulty
The failed experiments of
The Reformers
Who am I?
I am one who descended
From the navel of the world
And I plunged into its depths
So that I could learn to swim
I crawled like a worm
So I could learn to stand upright
And more learn to take flight
Why do I need to forgive myself?
Because I was so easily duped
Because I believed their labels for me
Because I drank their Kool-aid
Because I never once believed in me
Until I stopped believing everyone else.
++++++++++++++++++++++