The Story Behind This Blog

Got My Mojo Back

I’m more free than I was prior to my arrest. 
I’ve long since come to terms with my wrongs, 
asked forgiveness from God, forgiven myself, 
therefore forgiving everyone else.

July 21, 2005 I got arrested. What happened after only comes in bits and pieces, but what’s painfully clear is, that’s the last time I was free. What’s worse? (Brace yourself) I wasn’t really free then, looking at the world through my rearview, scared to death, praying…actually praying that they don’t pull me over this time, half a step ahead of the Grim Reaper, half a mile behind my potential, and the more I think about it…maybe prison saved my life.

Booking…booking (how ironic)…booking processing, one cold holding tank to another until it all blurs together. In shock, numb, I drifted through it all like an animated corpse, real resident evil, no T-virus.

Bits and pieces, stabbing at my memory like wicked shards of shrapnel, wiggling, each a hornet’s stinger, working in deeper and deeper until buried, surfacing at will. Forty years was sufficient kindling to spark the cold fires of depression. Missing my kids, worried about what…who, my wife was doing, striving to accept that I’d ruined my young life, and refusing to accept that I’d ruined my young life. The Trizadone was a welcome blanket which I pulled over my head to block everything out and myself in.

In a drug induced stupor, full beard, hair uncombed, unbrushed in a curly mini-Afro, county jumpsuit too small and ill fitting, eyes unfocused, uncaring, drooling and unaware…I let myself go. Pinocchio to the state’s Gepetto, I became as uninvolved in my own life as a wooden puppet, waiting eagerly to say “Ahhh,” open wide, swallow, feel nothing. Merely existing, life on a string.

A guy named Suge, for reasons I can’t fathom, took a liking to me. He got me to go to recreation one day and we walked around the small yard. He talked, I mainly listened, somewhat myself in the mornings, drugs having worked their way out of my system.

His cousin approached, launching into some garbled gabbing about who was locked up, knocked up, on the run, and in the ground. From there he recounted some of the drama unfolding in the “hood” between the locals and the Katrina evacuees. I listened with about 10% of my available mind, and studied my county issued canvas shoes with whatever was left. Suge spoke rarely.

When rec was nearly over, we walked over to a slab of cement facing the basketball court and sat down. Suge didn’t talk much, but when he did, he said something, speaking excruciatingly slow with a heavy, syrupy southern drawl.

“Say…” he said, and trailed off.

I was studying a hole in the sole of my shoe, looking at my dew dampened grass stained sock through that hole.

Suge is a big dude. I’m 6’4” and 230 lbs, but solid muscle. He turned his bald head to me.  “Say, mane?” When I made eye contact, he continued. “Mane…that fool’s my cousin, huh? Fool ain’t talkin bout nuthin.” He paused. I waited. “Way I see it…mane, he ain’t worth my time.” He paused again, watched other inmates play basketball for a while. So I watched some of the violent game too. 

“Mane…if I cain’t gain nuthin from you…and you cain’t gain nuthin from me…we ain’t got no business talking to each other. That fool wasn’t talking bout nothing,” he finished.

Although I agreed, I didn’t say anything or even nod. I just studied my dirty sock. He turned again and looked sharply at me.

“What chu gone do wit choself, mane? Dem drugs got you all fucked up. You better snap out of it, young blood. Act like you know what time it izz.”

Thinking that he was through and feeling kind of sorry for myself, I let his words sit on me like a ton of bricks.

A minute or two passed. His big arms resting on his raised knees, bald head between his legs, looking at the ground, he asked, “You ain’t tired?” There was irritation in his voice. I wasn’t sure what he meant. In a short time I’d become dependent on the pills, no sleep came without them. As a matter of fact, some nights I’d hide the pill under my tongue then sell it for some Ramen noodle soups. Those nights sleep was as out of reach as my children and the world I’d abandoned. I’d lie in bed listening to my eyelashes scratch the rough sheets I laid on, tracing the film that crawled across my eyeballs each time I blinked. No, I wasn’t tired, but said nothing.

Raising his head, squinting into the sun, Suge said, “I’m so God damned tired, mane. Tired of surviving.” The exasperation was almost as thick as his drawl. He turned and looked me square in the eyes. “When are we gone stop surviving…and start livin?”

It was more than a question, it was a challenge. Just then, thunder boomed in the steel gray sky and the heavens unzippered fat rain drops that fell so fast and hard that they hurt. Suge stood, looking at me still sitting like a moron. “Come on, young blood. We finna go write yo T-lady. Tell her these people got chu on these punk ass pills.”

I can’t remember giving Suge my mom’s address, but I must have because she wrote me and told me to call home.

I’d rarely tried to contact my mother, convinced 
by the demons whispering in my ears that if I 
left her out of it, she wouldn’t be hurt by it.

During those six months in the county, I’d rarely tried to contact my mother, convinced by the demons whispering in my ears that if I left her out of it, she wouldn’t be hurt by it. Truth, I’d not done right by my mom prior to my incarceration, so my guilt became a great sea of doubt with us standing on separate shores. Then there was my perverse devotion to my wife (now ex-wife, but I won’t put her on trial). Regardless, by that time, I couldn’t recall why I hadn’t called.

Hearing my mom’s voice was hearing love, a sound…feeling I’d suppressed. There was no anger, no judgment in her voice. She reassured me, asked if I was eating, if I needed money? I was starving, broke. My wife sent $20 in those six months and hasn’t sent a dime since. (But I won’t put her on trial, she doesn’t owe me anything.)

Call it a mother’s intuition, Momma knew something was wrong, wouldn’t let up until I cracked. Instead of a nut, which I was becoming, she got Hoover Dam.

I cried, confided, confessed my thoughts of suicide. She rewarded me no pity for that. Instead, her words were, “Jason, you listen to me. I didn’t raise any quitters. You man up. Do you hear me? You don’t have any say so, your life isn’t even yours, it belongs to those children. Your life is not over. What if one of those babies needs a transfusion or a donor and you’ve killed yourself? You suck it up. I’m not going to have this conversation with you again.”

If it sounds harsh, you didn’t hear the love in it. My fifteen minutes was up. She told me that she loved me, to pray and that it was going to be alright. Suge’s conversation followed by the words of my mother landmarked a vital, crucial turning point not just in my sentence, but in my life.

Over the next weeks, I scribbled chicken scratch letters that brought on more admonishment, but this time about the drugs. She complained about not being able to read a God damned word of my illegible letters and told me (through clenched teeth), “You better not take nare nother pill!” It was not up for discussion.

It took a few weeks. Gradually, my mojo crept back. I wrote like a man possessed. Letters, raps, poems, short stories, even started a novel. This went on until I caught the chain to T.D.C.J.’s holiday unit in Huntsville, Texas. Most of my work was lost. Undeterred, I wrote new raps, new poems, completed my first novel.

The writing was therapeutic, soothing, an escape, a challenge, and much to my surprise, people liked it and wanted more. So more I gave.

January 2007, I was reassigned to a unit in Midway, Texas. It was there that my mojo was stripped from me like medals from the breast of a dishonorable soldier. Christmas cards and money had come from my mom and my “Aunt” Carolyn for Christmas 2006. Then nothing. I’d been assigned to a disciplinary unit with one of the worst reputations in the state, notorious for gangs, rapes, deaths, drugs, knives, cell phones… Hell, it was like being confined to low income housing in the underworld. I won’t say I was scared, but I definitely could have used the magic of a Mother’s comforting words.

For more than a month, no one wrote, no one responded to my letters. And my instinct told me that something was terribly wrong.

The gangs interrogated me, recruited me, mistook my arrogance for attitude. I was teetering on the brink when I received a letter in early February addressed from my momma, but written by Carolyn. Wrong. Very wrong.

It turns out that my mom was somewhere on her deathbed after several botched surgeries that nearly killed her.

If you’ve ever seen the Short Circuit movies or The Jetsons cartoons, you’ve seen a robot cut off from its power source. Well, that’s what that letter did to me. I shut down.  Sure, worry and concern were my chief emotions, however, hurt and anger pushed at the boundaries. It was impossible for me to believe that no one thought I should know.

Unsure of how to cope, I lashed out at everyone, taking no prisoners, cutting into my entire family with razor edged verbal Kitana blades. So much of my focus was poured into my fury that the will to write, to create, slunk into the darkest recesses of my mind. In that lightless midnight, my inspiration all but vanished.

My mother recovered, went from skeletal, drawn and colorless to something more lifelike. Still, driven by a mother’s love, she came to see me, bringing my kids when she could, calming the storms of rage consistently churning within me. Seeing her, especially my children, vanquished the evil brewing in the cauldron my heart had become. Some of my family members began to write with justifiable trepidation, dipping their toes into the water to see if the cold would bite before stepping in.

It wasn’t enough. September 21, 2007, ten days after my 27^th birthday, some guys tried to escape from a nearby unit, killing a female officer in the process. Administration locked down our unit.

The lockdown was welcomed by me. I was juggling college classes and working nine hour shifts in the kitchen. I cherished the break. That break was short lived though as the lockdown was lifted after about three hours!

Groggy, restless, irritated, I got up to go to supper. I was tying my boots at my cell door when the officer assigned to our cell block came to my door. This ogre’s name was J. He was my height, but much heavier, kind of put you in the mind of the character “Bull Shannon” from the old TV sitcom Night Court. Except this guy was not witty and goofy. Correctional Officer J was a functional retard with the people skills of a rabid jackal, one of the guards that makes you wonder “who’s hiring these clowns?”

Now keep in mind, my fury was internal. Since I can remember, “cool” has been one of my defining characteristics, something I prided myself on, my ability to be super cool. Wearing my problems on my shoulders is not my style, plus it’s something that will get you dispatched in the penitentiary. As in the world, I try to fly under the radar, live and let live, point being, I’m no instigator, not an antagonist, but I’m still a man.

When the officer halted his butt at my cell door, I looked up. “I’m coming, man. Let me tie my shoe?” I stated/asked in a low tone, working sleep from y voice. Instead of walking on or even shutting my door which was his right, he said, “Move your bitch ass.” Then walked off.

Fumbling with my shoestring, trying to get a grip on the rogue silverback pounding at my inhibitions, roaring to be free, I practiced anger management, taking deep breaths.

Growing up, my mom always said, “Your first mind is God, instinct.” My first mind told me to skip chow and eat at work in a few hours. I can’t really say why I ignored that rational thought. But I did, and the blood lusting beast inside of me beat its chest in victory and anticipation. 

Isn’t it funny how the Devil works? Looking back, I can see him perched on the ragged ledge of my soul, grinning malevolently in triumph. He’s nothing if you don’t empower him, but give the bastard the slightest toe-hold and he latches on like a vice, nightmarish leach.  I approached C.O. J, only he and I standing on the third tier/row/floor.

“Excuse me, Officer?” I spoke, wide awake, seething. He turned around and glared.

“What?” he replied, more of a threat than a question. 

I took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t disrespect anyone. I don’t play the “bitch and the hole” games. I respect y--” 

He cut me off, stepped right to my face. The sour small of his breath only fanned the flames already flaring behind my eyes. “I said, move your bitch ass!” Definitely unquestionably a challenge. However, looking into his beady eyes hiding deep beneath his jutting brow, I saw a vagueness of the sort associated with feral dogs, no calculation of his danger, no intelligence.

Smiling a smile of superiority, I stepped back, clasped my hands behind my back and walked past him on the narrow catwalk three flights up. “You’re right, tough guy,” I laughed without looking back. “You win. But you ain’t sold me shit.”

To be such a big dude, J covered the space between us quickly. Before I knew anything, he’d seized both of my wrists and whipped his leg out in front of me in a clumsy attempt to trip me.  Standing my ground, surprised at his inability to move me, I said cool, calm and collected, “I’m not going to let you trip me. Let me go.” J ignored me, grunting with effort, but unsuccessful. I repeated myself.

He started yelling, “Fight! Fight!”

That’s when I lost my cool. Using my legs I bodied him back and against the bars, slamming my head into his face. Then the beast tore free, surging with pent up energy and rage. I went blank, rogue, berserk…one of my curses…it’s what I do. I lost all control, and if offered a million dollars, I still couldn’t honestly tell you what happened from that moment on.

Some indeterminable amount of time later, after the handcuffs had come off, I sat in a darkened solitary confinement cell, playing the “if I could go back and to this differently” game that had become too familiar.

…alone except for the hideous drooling ghoulies that giggled and danced obscenely at the edges of my vision like demented fallen cherubs.

With no sheets, no property, no peace, I sat on the cold iron bunk, my head cradled in my large hands, alone except for the hideous drooling ghoulies that giggled and danced obscenely at the edges of my vision like demented fallen cherubs. I was the butt of their depraved joke, baited in by a man-child with the I.Q. of a harvest mule.

A few days later, the substitute council lady (kind of a court appointed attorney that works for the court, not you) brought the paperwork to my cell. I was charged with disobeying a direct order, threatening an officer and assault of an officer. As expected, I was irate. The Sgt. who’d locked me in solitary had listened to my side and promised me that I was just in pre-hearing detention while the case was investigated. He never once said “You’ll be railroaded and your side of the story won’t matter one bit…boy,” but I would have been better prepared if he had.

My ten days in solitary confinement were spent humbling myself, getting my head ready for administrative segregation or medium custody…behind some nonsense. The morning I went to disciplinary court I reverted to the zombie mentality of the county jail. Captain M was hearing my case and known to be a real hard ass. We’d never interacted before, but his silver military buzz cut and ruddy granite face said enough.

I sat. He gave me a once over, then began the hearing. When I told him my side of the story, he wasn’t satisfied. Snatching up the phone, he called for the officer that had written the case. I was doomed, if my fate was in the hands of a Neanderthal like J. When Sgt. M entered the room, I was confused. Captain motioned towards me with his hand, “Do you know this young man?”

Sgt. M looked at me dumbfounded and pushed up his glasses (a nervous gesture). “No sir,” answered Sgt. M. “Should I?”

Captain’s face flared hot pink. He came halfway out of his seat. “Yes, yes, you should know him! You wrote him an assault on an officer case for Crissakes!” growled Captain M.

Sgt. flinched. Somewhat amused, I shifted in my seat to see what Sgt. M would have to say to that. His eyes fluttered around the room, anxious bluebirds looking for escape. Finally Sgt. M’s pale blue eyes settled on me then flicked back to the Captain. “Oh yeah…” he began.

“Get out of my sight,” mumbled Captain M, dismissing Sgt. M with an absent flick of his hand. Sgt. backed out of the room, fumbling the door shut. Captain studied me for a long time, making me very uncomfortable. “Well, young man….gonna have to cut you loose,” he said calmly.

I dared not smile, but inside I was doing the running man. Now, to this point, I didn’t mention the dwarf of a Black man sitting at the table, my appointed substitute council, because he was nobody, as unimportant and uninvolved as the chair he sat in.

“Wale,” he started, sounding like some sort of weenie cowboy, drawling through his nose. “You diid instagayte tha argament…” and left that hanging.

What? What gave this guy the right? I couldn’t conceal my disbelief and glared at him openly. I should have left that office without a case, thanks to Sgt. M, but my hardworking public defender saw to it that I got the disobeying a direct order, the direct order being “move your bitch ass.” Go figure. The 45 days of restriction and life on “G” block are stories for another time.

Following all that, I wrote raps, monstrous raps. I went from being nobody, just a dude from Houston that could cook, just a “neutron” (someone who’s not into a gang) to being “ol boy outta H-town, a fool on tha mic!”

I got caught up in the little celebrity, smoking weed to “peak” my creativity. It got to where I needed to be high at all times, like I was in the world. And that’s exactly what I did, stayed high, out of my head high, escaping reality, grasping at straws and calling them stars.

My arrogance mutated grotesquely while my ambition to do anything waned. I carried myself as if I were above the law, comfortable with my status, numb to the world…my days started at 2:30 a.m. when I got up to go to my vocational culinary arts class. I thrived in the kitchen for food is my first love. The same applied for my culinary arts class where I exceeded all expectations and set the bar way too high for my classmates. When not at school or work, I was sleep or high…or high and sleep, trying to mate with one of the female guards who called themselves my “friends.”

“You don’t know me, but I’m thinking about you.”

My existence went on like that until Christmas of 2008, that’s when Jan came into my life. She sent me a Christmas card that said, “You don’t know me, but I’m thinking about you.” Yes, that caught me off guard and I responded defensively. Jan saw through my defense and we’ve been writing ever since.

She has been there through the traumatic injury of my knee and my hard fought rehabilitation. She writes even when I don’t; she never judges and treats me like one of her own children.

At first I was reluctant to get too emotionally attached to her, fearing that she would tire of writing and forget about me, a harsh reality of prison. But she never pushed away. Jan and her husband Joe have been loving and supportive in a way that’s hard to believe. They have gone from total strangers in Colorado to surrogate parents.

Without fail, she sent some kind of letter every week, keeping my mind free. As a result, I spent a lot of time writing her. She’s commented on my ability to write several times in the past two years and I’ve enjoyed the compliments. 

In late January, she sent me a few pages from her husband’s blog about Africa (http://intoafrica2012.blogspot.com). Much to my surprise his blog was very interesting and informative. Blogs are new as far as I know, or at least I don’t remember hearing about any blogs in 2005. I was amazed at the possibility to share with the world, even just a fraction of what goes on in my head.

The next day, I shared the blog with an older guy, a history and geography buff, real pro-Black and pro-Africa…our roots and whatnot. He too was intrigued. While we discussed geography, politics and the like, the subject of writing came up. I told him that I love to write almost as much as I love to cook and later that day I let him read an editorial titled Imbalance of Power that I wrote back in 2008 about the state of the Texas prison system. Thoroughly impressed, he told me that I should write non-fiction. This guy’s a very angry, very stubborn kat, and the praise was something special coming from him.

The next day, the Saturday before the Pro Bowl, I happened to be in the dayroom and caught a special ABC presentation of ESPN’s “E-60.” Rachael Nichols was interviewing former Ohio State University running back, Maurice Clarett. They covered his breakout college season and his fall from grace.

After a high speed chase that ended with Clarett crashing his SUV which contained three loaded pistols, two loaded assault rifles and an open bottle of Grey Goose vodka, Clarett was sentenced to seven years in prison. On the program, they showed Clarett stepping inside a cell, the door slamming in a dramatic fashion behind him. His voice spoke over the image, realizing that once the door closed behind him, he knew it was real.

From there, Clarett decided to do something he’d never done before. He sat down and wrote his feelings. On screen, Clarett sat at an iron desk in a dark cell, writing. His voice said “Anybody who glorifies prison is an idiot.” I laughed my agreement and was rewarded mean mugs from my “fellow” inmates who obviously didn’t agree. Clarett’s wife posted his writings on a blog. For the third time in as many days, I was moved, inspired.

Clarett got out in three years on good behavior and is now a running back for some minor league team making $50,000 a year and taking care of his four year old daughter. Who doesn’t love a success story? How good is God that you can hit rock bottom and crawl back to the surface? Yep, crawl. I’m realizing now you have to really humble yourself in order to see life clearly.

Happy for Clarett and excited by my own creative juices beginning to simmer, I wrote my Aunt Joni and Jan inquiring about blogs. “How much do they cost,” my main question. I only have what money my family sends, nearly all of which is spent on commissary. However, I was willing to spend up to $30 to $50, although I didn’t have any blog know-how.

A week later when Jan’s letter came, enclosed was a letter from her husband, who had never written me. Not only did he compliment me on my writing, he was actually excited for me. He told me that a blog was free, that it just cost a little bit of time and said that he and Jan would set one up for me and enter my writings.

You cannot imagine how overwhelmed I was! I wrote him a seven or eight page letter and then tried to read. Dean Koontz is my favorite author, yet he couldn’t buff the edge off of my joy. I tossed and turned, dreaming of possibilities, worrying about content, as scatterbrained as a hormonal teenager. My thoughts went in every possible direction, I prayed with intense fervency, and I’m pretty sure I smiled in my sleep.

Early the next morning, bundled in my blanket against the nineteen degree weather, I opened my heart, letting my feelings fall on the paper in lines and circles. I’ve been writing for the last few days, barely stopping to eat, workout, bathe and rest.

In October last year I had a spiritual awakening. I no longer smoke or drink, nor do I have the urge. My positive outlook of the world from behind bars, an outlook that Jan is a big part of, has amplified to heavy metal proportions. I’m more free than I was prior to my arrest. I’ve long since come to terms with my wrongs, asked forgiveness from God, forgiven myself, therefore forgiving everyone else. And now, I’m back in the saddle. Yeah, I got my mojo back…and the sky’s the limit.

“The past is but the beginning of a beginning, 
and all that it has been 
is but the twilight of the dawn.”

--H.G. Wells