9k4g
Personal Journal

6/11/18
Thoughts run through my mind and often disassemble before I get pick up a pen, and there is no way I can put them back together. My mind has become as slow as my body.

I did do a painting over the weekend: a woman standing in the water wearing Levis, a T-shirt, and a big yellow hat watching a man sailing on the lake. Who could these people be? I know I sure enjoyed smiling. I hope she enjoyed watching me as much. :) Painting is the art of revealing the sensuous and the visual appearance of objects and events. Each painting can have a different memory for each person who sees it. Lost again.

I just read that states like Oklahoma and Nebraska are seeking lethal injection cocktails from the black market. Why not just hook them up on an IV of fentagle citrate? But then they would just go to sleep and die. No pain, no suffering. Can't have that.

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6/12/18
4:45, and the morning light has already begun to rise over the hills across the fields behind my cell. The sunrise is always beautiful and different each time, pleasing to the eye. This morning it is mostly white with a light pink running along the ridges. In the winter, the morning skies are filled with all the colors. It's a pleasure to be able to sit here and watch it. I can't feel the heartbeat of my Jeannie so far away, sleeping and reaming of such a sunrise.

"The Starry Night", Van Gogh's most famous painting, represents the view outside the window of his sanitarium cell, painted in daylight as a night scene. How lonely he was.

Nostalgia is sweet and good for you in small amounts. Just don't get lost in it.

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6/15/18
We were locked down yesterday morning because some metal got lost in our mess hall and the guards had to go over and search for it. I don't know why they're worried. There hasn't been a real stabbing here in years. Maybe that's why they're so worried. This hasn't been like a real prison, more like a hospital.

They've been sending younger people with no ailments. It gets so an old man hardly knows anyone. I'm lucky right now, I have a good celly, Little Jimmy. But he's going home in less than 90 days. :) Most of the ones they've been bringing here aren't doing a lot of time. They've telling John Q that they weren't sending these people to prison no more because, mostly, they're non-violent and it costs too much to house someone in one of these cells.

They lie about how much it costs. Try a $100,000 a year or more. All you have to do is take the population and divide it into the budget. Don't forget the money coming from the school budget. And then there's the slave labor (PIA), where they make things and sell it to agencies around the state. Not my money, not my call, and I'm unable to work anywhere.

Today looks like a nice day. Cooling off into the low 90s. The vets are having a walk/run for the local vet group in Ione, so I'll go out and walk a few miles for them. I'm going to go walking anyway.

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6/17/18
I don't know how much I'm going to be able to write this morning. My hands are swollen up. Both of them, the right one worse than the left. :) They swollen up sometime at the end of the walk/run on Friday. The swelling left my feet and a little in my hands overnight, but they've often swollen up some in the morning. I enjoy writing here early in the morning in the quiet, watching the sun come up over the hills. I write in my journal or a letter to my Jeannie. It relaxes me, stops the boredom, and keeps the anxiety at a distance.

I do manage to get other things done. I read. I've been doing crossword puzzles the last six months. Surprised at how much I don't know or remember, and can't think of at the moment, even spelling. :) So I spend a lot of time in the dictionary or my desk encyclopedia (this is where I go for information and I can read it all day). I also do drawing and painting when I'm feeling just right. I love to paint but have fallen off the last couple of years. If you ask me, I'm a great painter and an even greater poet. :) But then, ain't we all painters and poets. Artists. :)

Hello, peaceful and quiet, cool with clouds. Leave a message if you're so inclined.

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Things I don't like
and don't need
American flags made in China
being bitten by a snake
small talk at the urinal
being bitten by a dog
people who swear too much
being bitten by a spider
accidentally flashing a gang sign
being bitten by a bat
unnecessarily loud noises
being bitten by a child
reheated food
being bitten by a horse
not getting the joke
being bitten by life
being the joke
being bitten by you
being without you

5/1/18
Steve Burkett

Thank you to everyone who has left me a message over the year. They mean a lot. I hope everyone is able to read at least some of my writing. :)