Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Memorable scenes:Shawshank Redemption morgan freeman-red is free from pr...
December 20, 1977
As Exhilarating as yesterday's surprising news was, it is as equally frightening. I have been released before on a number of occasions. 17 1/2 years have been spent in over a dozen institutions throughout my young 33 years and never have I made it. As Red is oft quoted, I'm an institution man now. For the past 6 1/2 years I have been told when to wake up, when to go to sleep, when to eat, what to wear. Everything has been provided for me. And if I wavered from the rules there was solitary confinement to remind me just who is in charge of my life. And NOW, now I will be a free man with every decision now mine.
I don't know, on this date, when actually I will be released. The whole preparing for release can be overwhelming to say the least. I don't have a job nor place to stay, though for the first month or so I will be staying at a halfway house. A decompressing chamber if you will to allow me to secure those sorts of things. The halfway house can be a danger itself, you are still in prison just without the walls to surround you. One false step, fail to make the 4 O'clock check in, be in by 10:00 pm, come in drunk, are only a few of the things that can get you sent right back inside and your parole revoked. For the moment I can only think on how I am going to make it.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
When you are a little kid you are most vulnerable to the stories that are being told to you by all sorts of relatives and older folks who have access to you like babysitters. Unless they are reading out of a book (and those speak for themselves as purveyors of truth, fiction or fantasy) you again, the child that is, are vulnerable yet still.
When I was a wee one being raised on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood, soon to be home to the Blackstone Rangers and Jeff Fort, I heard many stories about my family.
One was that my dad had been a boxer and fought under the name of Tiger Thomson. When later in life I asked my Uncle Elmer, my dad's twin brother, was he ever a boxer and Uncle Elmer just laughed and said no he never was.
My dad did walk with a limp and to that I attributed to a fight with a bear that he had had. Again, probably not true.
But the biggest story that requires a little imagination was that my sister was kidnapped and left on the doorsteps of an orphanage and was almost adopted by a family before my parents got wind of it and they in turn sued the orphanage for $100,000. Trust me, if you had that kind of money in the 40's you don't continue to live in the ghetto which is where we were 10 years later before I in fact was sent to an orphanage.
The other part of the kidnapping/$100,000 story was that my dad drank up all the money in the bars up and down 63rd street. Now that part I can believe, if they ever had it in the first place. My dad died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 52 so to say that my dad could drink a bit is an understatement.
Years later I forgave my dad for the less than emblematic life he gave us. But I want to qualify that forgiveness. My mother would always say she could forgive but she would never forget. And that attitude about forgiveness is widely stated and accepted as the thing to do. Not so, say I. I too was forgiven and I dare say for a good many things that not even my dad had done. Yes, I am talking about Jesus forgiveness. When he died on the cross for our sins, he didn't just die as one taking the rap for them I understand what that is. He took our sins as if they were his own. And we know He was sinless. And when he forgave us our sins he buried them as far as the east is from the west. Yes, he forgot them. I'm going to let you figure that little bit about forgiveness yourself, because it might just take the Holy Spirit to break it down to you for your own satisfaction.
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit-
This technically is still morning given this post says its 9:04 am.
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