Antibodies to Spiritual Paresis

And on and on it goes. I’ve been awake now for 51 hours, and counting. I cannot fathom my brain’s deranged executive logic behind this behavior, for the life of me. I am obscenely tired, but every time I lay down, I end up staring at the ceiling for an hour before my OCD has me up and pacing about for something to do. I’ve always had a touch of the gremlin-like presence of insomnia, but since I arrived here the bastard has grown teeth. I feel as if there is some unspecified menace looming around the corner, a very Harold Pinter-esque sentiment. It’s hard to fight something you can’t identify.

I think it quite silly that any one of us should ever really be surprised by anything which happens in life. That said, I have been pleasantly comforted by the letters regarding the posting of my psych evaluation last month. I was expecting a more vitriolic response. As stated, I have a policy of not discussing in great detail matters of active litigation, but I can say that the report was about 90% accurate. Which is really quite impressive, considering I am a man of some subtlety, and the docs only had me for one day. I can really only identify one major area of error, and I have come to understand how two round comments were somehow wedged into square holes, but that is ok. Actually, I very much want to discuss this topic, as it affects my perceived sexuality and therefore my manly ego, but it will have to wait. I feel this uncomfortable need to clean up that particular misunderstanding, but…hell, I’ve taken a progressive stance on this issue for years, saying that I believed the question of homosexuality to be a very complex subject involving genetics and environment, and wishing certain types of people would ignore their dusty, retrograde, worm-eaten opinions on the matter and just let people live in peace. I would be hurting my gay friends if I tried to distance myself from them by acting repulsed by the thought that the report said I had certain latent tendencies, as if I thought there was something wrong with them. I know what I am, and so does everyone who has ever known me, That is enough for now, and I will just have to clean all of this up later, after my habeus is ruled on.

While the opinions on the report have been mostly positive, another group of close friends have cautioned me that I have gotten a little more caustic in my writings of late. One even informed me that she vastly preferred my earlier works, which is a little depressing because you would like to think that if you work at something for so long, you are going to get better at it. Maybe I am more abrasive now than I was two years ago, but lets trace the trajectory here, ok? Start with a lonely and messed up kid who was probably a little too smart and worldly for his own good, and watch him as he descends into a pattern of behavior that is ultimately self-destructive and homicidal. As should have happened, this boy-man is arrested and spends the next four years either battling insanity in solitary or defending himself from hyenas who walk like men in GP. In the midst of the soul-crippling depths of the hole, he discovers that God has left him, and he has no choice but to try to find his own way in the twilight gloom. The lighthouses he eventually stumbles across to guide him to safety have names which are familiar to some of you: Hume, Dostoyevsky, Spinoza, Russell, Schopenhauer, Camus, Hitchens. His ideals – once nebulous and cloudlike idols unattached to reason – solidify into concrete form. After a while, he is even able to look himself in the mirror, and soon after that the old feigned self-defensive confidence is replaced by the real thing. The pride which begins to creep into his writings – and which so many deign to condescend upon – is really the inevitable audacity of the self-made intellectual. What I’m saying is: there are not a lot of pathways though this hell which end up in a better place than where you began. I like what I am becoming. I’ve never been happy with the man in the mirror, so pardon me if I pay little attention to people who offer me no advice or an alternative way, only criticism or the false comforts of naïve, populist religion. Mea culpa! Mea culpa! It could go no other way.

It probably wouldn’t go any other way for you, either. During WWII, an interesting social experiment took place in the stadium of the University of Minnesota, under the auspices of the U of Minn’s Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene, and supervised by Dr. Ancel Keys. The purpose of this experiment was to study the result of starvation on a social group. Volunteers were selected, and most of these were individuals who were deeply religious/spiritual. They “almost universally believed” that enforced starvation would “bring them closer to God” (once again proving that the “universal” has always been constructed through and out of the particular). What occurred was the exact opposite of what they expected. A “modern feral community” resulted and after the experiment ended, all of the participants admitted to being shocked at how thin were the veneers of their morality. Experience, it turns out, is the great equalizer, and it has been my experience that those people who are least apt to throw stones are those who have lived through the most turmoil. No wonder the suburbs of our nation have become a moral wasteland, despite there being a church on every other corner.

I think that most would expect to find such an ethical null-state here on the Row. They would be right in some cases, but would find themselves astonished at the moral grounding in some of my neighbors. It sort of feels like finding an oasis in the desert, to be honest with you. That water is so much more refreshing for the effort required to find it. Most incredible to me are the survivors of truly atrocious lives – lives best represented by either a doormat or by the image of a ghost wandering across a city, unable to touch or be touched by the thousands of people he meets. – who nonetheless still manage to find the ability to weep for a dying friend or take the risk of trying to climb back on the cantankerous horse of love who has kicked them off countless times. Such men amaze and motivate me. I’d like to introduce you to one of them, my good friend Kevin Varga. When I first met Kevin, I couldn’t speak to him. His name – my brother’s – made me nauseous just thinking about it. When I was in Monterrey, I was once in a bar and struck up a conversation with another American, who eventually introduced himself as a Kevin. I had to leave the bar, I got the shakes so bad. After a year or so, Kevin made it though my defenses, and he has become one of the few men here who can make me laugh my real laugh, the one that touches all the way to my eyes. He has a voice all his own, and I will let him tell you about himself.

Is man inherently good? Many would try to answer this with an unequivocal and resounding Yes, but that is only because we each wish to believe ourselves and being “good”. But are we good or just the products of our environment? Please allow me a few moments to tell you of my story and then you may decide for yourself whether or not I am in fact a good person, a bad person, or a victim of my environment.

This story starts with me, when at the age of ten I got into a minor scrape with the authorities. I had vandalized a local store (I spray painted my name on the side of the building; this was 1978). When the police brought me to my mother’s house she told the officer that she no longer wanted the responsibility of my well-being. Not to paint too grim a picture of my mother, she was dealing with my youngest brother’s cancer and she spent most of her time in and out of the hospital. When she heard anything from me it was that I was running wild. I guess looking back, I wanted attention and since I was not receiving any I did what I had to, to gain my mother’s attention. Imagine how I felt at ten years old to hear my mother telling the police officer to take me, that she didn’t want me! I was placed in a home as a temporary measure until my mother decided to take me. But I was hurt and angered that I felt this abandonment. Of course, at the time I could not have so clinically seen my actions, I just knew that no one wanted me and that no one cared what I did, so I ran away from the home. Every time I was brought back I told them I would just run away again and again. That was when it was decided that I would be placed into the juvenile detention center. I had not committed any crime like the rest of these boys but I was treated the same as everyone else.

This JDC was a new and frightening world for a ten year old. These boys ruled by fear and brutality. I had two choices: I could either become a victim of any of a number of the bullies there or I could learn to fight so that when it came to it I wouldn’t be such an easy conquest. At first I was beaten several times, but each time I learned to fight a little better then before long no one thought it was worth the trouble to single me out. The JDC is intended as a holding facility only. But since I had not committed any crime my “time” was never determined. I was in there for over a year until my mother decided that she would attempt to deal with me.

For the first time in over a year I was to deal with normal people, which on the surface may sound easy but consider this; soldiers who return to the world from war often have problems reintegrating back into society. I was walking home from school when I came upon two high school girls physically taunting my little brother who had gone through radiation treatments so that all of his hair had fallen out. Well I protected him from these two girls who were both older and bigger than myself. They ran home and told the story of how I beat them with trashcans even though they had not a single mark upon them. I was sent back to the JDC, this time for assault. I was declared a ward of the state of Michigan and I was sent off to a juvenile institution where I was for two and a half years. Upon turning fourteen I was released back into the care of a mother I no longer knew to a world that had turned its back upon me.

I was placed into high school where I was expected to put the institution behind me. I went from a place that once more was the strong preying on the weak to a normal Norman Rockwell painting. How was I to deal with what a normal teen would if I was taught only to lash out at anyone I perceived as a threat? It wasn’t long before this attitude led me to striking the vice principal in a fit of rage. They deemed me to be a violent and uncontrollable youth and sent me to yet another institution. This one was worse than the first two that I had found myself in. I was in a group of young boys aged from 14-19 that had like myself been brought up in the various placed around Michigan. The Adrien Training School is what is called PPC or Positive Peer Culture. They intend for the boys to police one another, but what it was in reality was just another form of the strong preying on the weak as the different factions would prey on those who couldn’t stand up for one’s self. So in a sense the structure of this place forced you into a faction since it was suicide to be alone there. I was never one to conform to any structural dynamic so I of course rebelled. I was in the ATS for almost two years when the administration said that I was not fit to complete their program. Namely I refused to participate in that gang mentality that was forced upon me. I was then sent to the worst place in Michigan that you could possibly be sent to. The Green Oak Center was infamous at the time for the brutality that goes on behind its chain linked fences and razor wire. This was actually a juvenile prison, known as the last stop. If you are sent here you are there until you turn 18.

When I walked into the cell hall I was greeted by the cacophony of noise. The staff member was a large black man that looked as if he could snap my neck in his bare hands. I was taken into the office and they began to “Orientate” me. I was asked what crimes that I had committed and so forth, what gangs I was affiliated with. My answers displeased them (remember until that time I had been accused and convicted for a minor assault only where everyone else in that place were there for crimes ranging from a multitude of thefts to murder). I was in a cell hall with the worst of these “inmates” due to a report from ATS. I was given my housing assignment; thankfully we were to live in single cells! I was able to interact with the others. I was confronted in the bathroom by several black youths from Detroit. They demanded that I pay protection or they would make my stay a very long and painful one. Given the situation I did what I had been taught though my lengthy stay in other places, I swung my first at the nearest youth. I smashed his nose against the side of his face, and his two or three homies beat me unconscious. I missed the mandatory count and was placed into the isolation cell for 5 days. That was the standard disciplinary action for almost every rule infraction. 5 days in the iso cell is not a pleasant way to spend your time. The cell has only a toilet/sink combo that stinks due to its infrequent washings. The cell itself smells of stale sweat and urine. You are provided with two meals a day, both consisting of two bologna sandwiches and a carton of milk (to this day I do not eat bologna).

When my first 5 day stint was over I was never so happy to be able to take a shower, one of those luxuries that are denied those who would be crass enough to flout the rules and regulations of GOC. I will not go into a long and lengthy depiction of my stay in that hellish place; I was there until I was almost 18. I had an opportunity to run from there and I of course took that opportunity.

I am now on Death Row in Texas. I will never claim that I am an innocent man nor can I honestly say that I do not deserve to be in prison for my part of the incident that brought me to Death Row. I will forever claim that I took no active role in the death of the two men that I was convicted to die for. That being said, I will again ask the question: Is man inherently good? Am I? Or am I just a victim that was placed into a position to do what I had to, to survive in an environment? Could anyone claim that given that choice they would react any differently from me? Now before anyone will label me a heartless person I would share a more recent story with you.

I had been on Death Row for going on seven years when I received a letter from a most engaging woman from England. We traded letters for several months before I realized that I was falling in love with this woman. I never thought I had the capacity to love with such abandonment and unconditionally but she showed me that love was pure and giving. We married on November 2 2008. Then shortly thereafter her mother died and her letters fell off from twice weekly to nothing. I tried to understand that she was going through the loss of her mother, but I wanted to comfort her and help her through her tragic loss. I wrote a letter in anger and she thought I wanted to be free of her. Did she not realize that she changed how I felt about everyone? A mere few years ago I would have just shrugged my shoulders and moved on to the next conquest; I am unable to get past the hurt in my heart. I am heartbroken over this woman. I tell this to show that even a person such as myself that has seen the ugliest that man has to offer has the capacity to love someone so much that her happiness is beyond my own. So, am I a good man or a bad man? Neither. I am just a man. Each man is capable of the greatest good or the vilest of evils. Don’t believe me? Put on my skin and walk around for a week and that will show you that we are.

I thank you for indulging me and allowing me to share this time and space with you. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Thomas for giving me this venue to vent. I dedicated this to Samantha Jane Varga who showed me that love is real and not just an abstract idea.

Knowing Kevin has led me to one of my core beliefs: good and evil are not who we are, but what we do. Good and evil are verbs, not adjectives. Kevin recently got shot down by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, typically considered the last real court of hope, as the Supreme Court actually only looks at a microscopically small percentage of death row appeals. His last resort is to petition Gov Rick Perry for Clemency. For those of you in the Abolition movement, I am going to ask you to fire up your printers and send some letters to the addresses listed below. To those of you who were touched by what he wrote, please also consider letting the Governor know your thoughts on this man. He is worthy of a commutation to a life sentence. He is worth it. If you ever believe anything I ever write, believe that.

To see what is right, and not do it, is for want of courage, or of principle

Robin Norris
Attorney at Law
2408 Fir Street
El Paso, TX, 79925

Fax: (915) 590-9992

Governor Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428

Fax: (512) 463-1849

Chair: Rissie Owens
Jose Aliseda, Jr.
Charles Aycock
Conrith Davis
Jackie DeNoyelles
Linda Garcia
Juanita M. Gonzalez

Board of Pardons and Paroles
Executive Clemency Section
General Counsel’s Office
8610 Shoal Creek Blvd
Austin, TX 78757

Fax: (512) 467-0945

© Copyright 2009 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
All rights reserved.