Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace by Anne Lamott Page A
Authors: Anne Lamott
Ads: Link
crime.
Jesus was soft on crime. He’d never have been elected anything.
In the courtyard, we were met by several staff people, and then by Wolf and two of his friends, all polite and clean-shaven, with Vietnam vets caps on. We stood within the circle of prison buildings, in the center of concrete cell blocks. The grounds are brightly landscaped by the inmates, but the buildings look like a child’s play structure that has been left outside for a hundred years—a plastic andcastley hodgepodge of stone and concrete, ornate, crumbly, deteriorated.
There’s razor wire everywhere, and a constant clanging and banging of gates and cells and doors. Guards carry arms and keys that could be from the Middle Ages. Prisoners walk all over the grounds, as slowly as monks, with nowhere much to go. Of course, we saw your better inmates, the really polite ones, not the hard cases, not the men on death row. Those we saw and spent time with seemed to be sliding by, relatively seamless and calm. They’re mostly older; you sense that their testosterone levels are down.
I like that in a prisoner.
Wolf and his friends showed us classrooms, the chapel, and the hobby shop, where inmates work making wooden cable-car jewelry boxes and stained-glass hummingbirds and crosses. “Should you guys be trusted with knives and saws and extremely sharp implements?” I asked nicely.
They laughed. “We earned the privilege by good behavior,” Wolf told me. He showed us the old dining hall with the long walls covered in murals done in black and brown shoe polish by inmates. The murals depicted California’s history and theirown—the Miwok on Mount Tamalpais, Sir Francis Drake on the beaches of West Marin, the Spanish missions, the Gold Rush, heroes of labor, farm-workers, artists, prisoners, saints—and hidden inside the pictures were secrets only the prisoners could see.
We walked to the main cell block. The prison is overcrowded. The prisoners are double-celled, double-bunked. The cells are grotesque, like a Croatian zoo. I understand how the families of victims might think the prisoners deserve this, but seeing them stuffed in these cages affected me the same way seeing photos of the displayed corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons did. You had to ask yourself: Who are we? And what next? Bloody heads on stakes outside the White House?
“What are you reading?” I asked a man in one cell.
He held out his book: true crime by Ann Rule.
Wolf led us to another dining hall, where sixty prisoners had gathered in bolted-down chairs near a stage to hear us speak. Behind them, kitchen staff and prisoners were preparing the next meal, with guards nearby.
What you might call the aesthetics left something to be desired—an echoey, cavernous space,like a hangar, metallic, with the racket of people preparing food. It smelled like cheap meat and old oil and white bread.
I went onstage, took a long, deep breath, and wondered, as usual, where to start. I told the prisoners the same things I tell people at writing conferences: Pay attention, take notes, give yourself short assignments, let yourself write shitty first drafts, ask people for help, and you own what happens to you. They listened dutifully.
Then I introduced Neshama, with a concern that the prisoners wouldn’t quite get her—this intense grandmother with a nice big butt and fuzzy gray hair, wearing a loud plaid flannel dress. I had invited her because I love her stories and knew it would be more fun for me, and because some people at San Quentin, like Neshama, hate to write but love to read and tell stories.
I had extremely low expectations: I hoped a few prisoners might form a guild, like the one to which Neshama belongs; I hoped they wouldn’t hurt her, or overcome her, or try to make her marry them. She walked to the mike and told her first story, her version of a folktale. It was about a man with no luck, who comes upon safety, wealth, and a beautiful woman, but is too busy looking for
Jesus was soft on crime. He’d never have been elected anything.
In the courtyard, we were met by several staff people, and then by Wolf and two of his friends, all polite and clean-shaven, with Vietnam vets caps on. We stood within the circle of prison buildings, in the center of concrete cell blocks. The grounds are brightly landscaped by the inmates, but the buildings look like a child’s play structure that has been left outside for a hundred years—a plastic andcastley hodgepodge of stone and concrete, ornate, crumbly, deteriorated.
There’s razor wire everywhere, and a constant clanging and banging of gates and cells and doors. Guards carry arms and keys that could be from the Middle Ages. Prisoners walk all over the grounds, as slowly as monks, with nowhere much to go. Of course, we saw your better inmates, the really polite ones, not the hard cases, not the men on death row. Those we saw and spent time with seemed to be sliding by, relatively seamless and calm. They’re mostly older; you sense that their testosterone levels are down.
I like that in a prisoner.
Wolf and his friends showed us classrooms, the chapel, and the hobby shop, where inmates work making wooden cable-car jewelry boxes and stained-glass hummingbirds and crosses. “Should you guys be trusted with knives and saws and extremely sharp implements?” I asked nicely.
They laughed. “We earned the privilege by good behavior,” Wolf told me. He showed us the old dining hall with the long walls covered in murals done in black and brown shoe polish by inmates. The murals depicted California’s history and theirown—the Miwok on Mount Tamalpais, Sir Francis Drake on the beaches of West Marin, the Spanish missions, the Gold Rush, heroes of labor, farm-workers, artists, prisoners, saints—and hidden inside the pictures were secrets only the prisoners could see.
We walked to the main cell block. The prison is overcrowded. The prisoners are double-celled, double-bunked. The cells are grotesque, like a Croatian zoo. I understand how the families of victims might think the prisoners deserve this, but seeing them stuffed in these cages affected me the same way seeing photos of the displayed corpses of Saddam Hussein’s sons did. You had to ask yourself: Who are we? And what next? Bloody heads on stakes outside the White House?
“What are you reading?” I asked a man in one cell.
He held out his book: true crime by Ann Rule.
Wolf led us to another dining hall, where sixty prisoners had gathered in bolted-down chairs near a stage to hear us speak. Behind them, kitchen staff and prisoners were preparing the next meal, with guards nearby.
What you might call the aesthetics left something to be desired—an echoey, cavernous space,like a hangar, metallic, with the racket of people preparing food. It smelled like cheap meat and old oil and white bread.
I went onstage, took a long, deep breath, and wondered, as usual, where to start. I told the prisoners the same things I tell people at writing conferences: Pay attention, take notes, give yourself short assignments, let yourself write shitty first drafts, ask people for help, and you own what happens to you. They listened dutifully.
Then I introduced Neshama, with a concern that the prisoners wouldn’t quite get her—this intense grandmother with a nice big butt and fuzzy gray hair, wearing a loud plaid flannel dress. I had invited her because I love her stories and knew it would be more fun for me, and because some people at San Quentin, like Neshama, hate to write but love to read and tell stories.
I had extremely low expectations: I hoped a few prisoners might form a guild, like the one to which Neshama belongs; I hoped they wouldn’t hurt her, or overcome her, or try to make her marry them. She walked to the mike and told her first story, her version of a folktale. It was about a man with no luck, who comes upon safety, wealth, and a beautiful woman, but is too busy looking for
Similar Books
