The Empire Strikes Back – Part 2

This is probably not going to be a lengthy entry. I am both confused and angry, and I feel like there is a cloud inside my head that is going to prevent any eloquence. I have spent the last two days in prayer and fasting, but I have found no discernment to the issues in front of me. I have no doubt that this is due to my own flaws. Sometimes I am so dense that I feel the green algae growing in the dayroom has more insightful opinions than I do (not to bad-mouth old greenie. Just because he has no vascular system doesn’t mean he doesn’t play a mean chess game. And besides, he’s been here longer than I have).

Last night, around 10:15, they brought me a mattress, so I could at least avoid the uncomfortable choice of having to sleep on either the concrete floor or the steel bed. None of the rest of my items had been returned to me. I didn’t have any sheets, but unfortunately it wasn’t cold out (we have no climate control here in the winter time) so it wasn’t a big deal. None of the guards had any idea when I would get my things back. At 4:45 PM today, the property officer wheeled my belongings back to me on a cart, and after the obligatory hand cuffing, my cell door was opened and the bags brought in. I was enormously pleased to find out that nothing had been planted, like drugs or a weapon. In fact, they didn’t find anything that they could level me for, because I didn’t have anything. They did confiscate some items, and I have included the paperwork I was given (see picture). It does not include many items that were taken, but it at least does show that I am not making this up. It shows that they took my magazines (a few National Geographic and Popular Sciences, though I am not sure why, as they approve of both), my three books (David Dow’s Executed on a Technicality, William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, and George Martin’s A Game of Thrones, all of which were let in to the unit by mail room, only to somehow violate the book policy once they were in the unit), my “altered” headphones (these are made of very cheap plastic, and they had cracked, so I repaired them with a pencil, some rubber bands, and a dab of glue), an altered knit bag (no idea on this one, I bought it exactly like that from commissary), my bottle of “unknown” pills (this one was my mistake, I am pretty OCD and I had put my calcium pills and my multi-vitamins in the same bottle to save space…lesson learned. If they had been drugs, though, I would have been leveled real quick), 153 envelopes and 24 first class stamps. You have to have your name on these items, and I did. They claim I did not, but if you will look on THIS FORM, the handwriting for the phrase “with no name or number” is different from the rest. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions. I do not believe it to be a coincidence that my typewriter mysteriously developed problems, though the broken piece of plastic that holds one of the supports for the rubber paper holder could have been broken accidentally during the transport. Either way, it was easy to fix.

The signals are easy to read. TDC is not subtle. This will continue. The only choice I have to make is, do I feel that the good that is done through this site (though most of this is invisible to those of you that do not correspond with me) overrides the unpleasantness of having the system’s ire directed at me? Will they find a shank the next time I’m searched? Sigh. I have another entry that I have already typed up which has nothing to do with any of this. I will probably send it out in a few days, but it might be awhile before I write anything new. I am really going to be concentrating on whether this is something that God wants me to continue.

To those of you who write me, and with whom I have developed a positive, God-based relationship centered on mutual personal evolution, thank you for the support the last few months. I’ll still be here, even if this site is not. To those of you who write me your angry diatribes (though there have been far less this week than last, one to be exact), you may have won this one. That’s ok. I don’t feel any anger towards you. I know that one day we will look back on this from a much higher place, and chalk it up to Satan and his ruinous presence. Until that day.

© Copyright 2007 by Thomas Bartlett Whitaker.
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