Breakdown in 4s: The curtains are now open - fearful, clear insanity.

I tossed the envelope in the shelf space cut into the side of the slab. It reads #4 on the envelope over my name and SID number. Pod 4. I started to think about it, and my brain snapped open, a part of it that has been shut off, the thinking part, really, and I started jotting down things that ran across my mind with 4:

  4 legs to a dog.

4 quarts to a gallon.

4 body systems.

4 primary body tissues.

4 gospels.

4 rivers from Eden.

4 pecks to a bushel.

4 oceans.

4 elements.

4 seasons.

4 business quarters.

4 quadrants to a circle.

4 suits in a deck of cards.

4 limbs.

4 horsemen.

4H clubs.

4th dimension, the coordinate dimension to the existing three dimensions, related as time, to describe any event. Einstein derived that there is an extra 43 seconds of arc per century relative to Mercury’s orbit.

4 Rushmore heads.

4 food groups.

4 directions.

4 faces of God, or rather Ezekiel’s vision of God: 

4 living creatures.

4 is the last description of basic grouping: 2 is a couple, 3 is a few, 4 is several or more.

4 to an ideal family.

4 outer spheres.

4 layers of earth.

4 colors of race.

4 phases of life: youth, adult, middle-age, elderly.

4 main principles of evolution: embryology, morphology, biogeography, paleontology.

4 sub-sections of evolution: population genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, and genomics, which is basically machine-driven genetic sequencing.

4 rows of checkers/back row of chess.

***

Impatient today, languid, angry, a man unkind. I would seriously not wish this upon my worst enemy. I want to be whole again, to feel the air pulsing around me, the beat of the city, the warmth of life. All this dead time, though it occurs to me that I’ve spent a great deal of my life in a small room writing, and it also occurs to me that being able to leave that room was part of the glue that held me to it, because what was on the other side of the door was the enemy. The jobs, the faces, the human race going on mechanically, all of it was the enemy in my youth. It’s reversed in here, like how obesity once meant wealth. And nothing is more mechanical than jail. Shit, all those hours I thought I was beating the rap, all the time I saw the general public as something to avoid. I was a young fool in love with the word, and that’s all there was to it. Knowing that now hardly lessens the grip I have on that time. It calls me back to it, actually, but there is nothing further from the romance of life than jail. Nothing. Even death is a release, a peace, or it must be.

What I wouldn’t give to be in a bookstore again, to have a selection of true literature from which to pull, to see a novel of mine perched upon their shelves like a trophy. I have to beat this case, Helena, I have to see the impossible through. Let their evidence tower over me, but let three jurors see the burning truth, see through the contrivance of the state, the bullshit of the state and the corrupt police work, the lies from the midget whore, with her freakish, little hands holding a tissue to her nose. Let the state throw me at the wall. I have to be heard.  

Small disgusts are luxuries now. Boredom, a day trapped in the house due to weather, a shitty job, bills, one beer until payday, a flat tire, a bad driver in front of me, a parking ticket. Luxuries.   Hardwood floors, and the carpet of a staircase. Closing the door behind me in the bathroom, a toilet seat, hot water. A living room past a kitchen, a cup of coffee on the table by the couch, the sweet taste of music, the idea of drinking whiskey after the Sun falls. All of it, and so mad am I with love for the world in this cell that it breaks me to tears.