The View from My Crypt
by Nate A. Lindell created

I WISH you could experience this view, the way I do, after having spent so many years (almost 12) in the Wisconsin prison formerly known as a supermax (like the performer formerly known as Prince... by any other name...), where I had NO view outside of my bunker, unless I was at outside recreation. Here my view is private, + I'm not quite as cold (although it is chilly in my cell) as I would be if outdoors; nobody can see me experiencing the view + jangle my musing with a "Hey! Whatcha lookin' at?" a "You weird", or other audible litter.

My drawing skills can't capture this view, as good as I know they are. No colors - not even my homemade paints; my property hasn't been given to me yet. Highest in the sky are pastel pink clouds, a light blanket of cumulus midgets, shaded pastel gray at each cloudlet's borders, where the coppery-red sunset failed to glaze them. The 20-or-so-foot-high wall, around a hundred yards from my window, thwarts escape, but is merely a mantelpiece for this painting, above which the attics of several houses + the dark limbs of leafless trees frame the sky.

PINK clouds in prison?

Satan or the warden must have overlooked this.

But he remembered the rec. yard, which was filled with dirty plowed-up snow + six sagging basketball backboards, only one of which had a rim attached. There was no life out there, though the clean patches of snow were glowing pink, blue where in the sun's shadow.

About 15 feet from my window is a weaved steel wire fence, topped by two coils of catch-wire - not razor-wire, which cuts you; catch-wire merely pierces into your flesh, snagging into it, only ripping it if you resist. Even the fence was beautiful, how it coiled, glinted pink/gold, or was black, depending on how the sun touched each section.

I stared out, smiling, DEAF to the shouts, laughs, threats, lies, + pleas for help ejaculated from the inmates in cells surrounding mine, CLEANSED of my memories of deliberately indifferent or indifferently sadistic staff, NUMB to the cold that boldly walked into my crypt from outside, SOOTHED of my ever-present angst.

Of course my life is, OUR lives are, not limited to moments of such savoring. Yet I wonder if it's worth wondering WHY NOT?