A Mission of God

Blues Brothers Bar Scene

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Springtime. Two months before the end of my first prison bid, I'm standing waiting for my door to open along this top-floor tier of the cellblock. Evening meal …, and with my elbows on the bars, fingers will comfortably lock my hands around my neck, and I patiently, pensively watch the rain water pour down drops of large drips from the long, tall window ten yards in front of me. 

My drugstore burglary days are over. I was a short haired, clean-cut looking, scrappy, skinny kid of seventeen when I committed my first of twelve-successful, the-last-two-I-got-popped-for drugstores. And only several days after the thrill of accomplishment from the first one had settled the notion would always remain, that I cannot be doing these for the rest of my life. Someday, for some reason I have to stop before I get caught and …? upset the apple cart.

I never became psychologically or physically addicted is why I went all the way up to fourteen. I could go for six, seven weeks with the occasional cannabis buzz but then one day see another easy ds somewhere, and to realize the amount of quality euphorics to be had, and this thought was too difficult to say no to. A simple early morning act coupled with the realization of the acquisition of thousands of quality euphorics was what was addicting. I could empathize with the Ray Liotta character who thought he could remain a life-long gangster in the movie, Goodfellas, but I also knew that someday I should stop myself from these criminal acts. The more times I do one, the more chance of getting caught, I know.

The perfect crime is a crime where the victim doesn't even realize a wrong has been committed. The longer one can keep the victim from realizing, the more perfect the crime. Knowing this and I know I'm a fairly two-bit, sloppy but cool type of …? dude.

"Places to go. People to see. Things to do." I'm reminiscing about events as I watch the rainfall. Good times. Only good times. There is a reason why Federal Law prohibits dispensing without prescription, and I was careful to whom and when I did allow others on rare occasions to indulge with my euphorics. My conscience is clear, … and it's over. 

I saw Janet for the first time six months ago. The prettiest "thing" this side of the Mississippi River. Nice, wonderful thoughts had been I to be waking up to that face, committed to her. So freaking pretty, she was … .

As I stand I speak the words in silence to myself, more so to listen to myself speaking the reality of the situation as if unbelievable the reality of what I was and was doing in the past will only be memory.

"I'm never doing another…, It's over. Never coming back here again." One could coil and snap their fingers is how fast my mind conjured the next words spoken and heard with that same voice I had just used.

"You're not leaving till you're done." Tetrahydrocannabinol is a fat-soluble molecule, and perhaps one of those molecules just got released within the bullyish, sardonic quarters of my brain and triggered another hallucinogenic thought to mind, … the thought is odd, strikes me funny. 

I read the Bible occasionally; kept my mind occupied during my first prison bid. During my second bid I'll study it with my keen, 139 IQ point mind, with my very well critical mind. This day standing at the cell door the command I'll speak to myself with my own volition is flippant and jocular. The rain has picked up intensity, and the sky has darkened for a moment this spring day of May.

"Jesus, if you're for real? make the rain stop, … right now."

I know the verses chiding those two thousand years ago who were asking Jesus for a miracle, and here I am today doing the same. What's next for me? Maybe a year from now I'll spend a few months talking in tongues just to see what happens around me. Kooky religious thoughts I'm planting in my head, and I snicker to myself after closing my eyes, placing my forehead in the crook of my arm. For a few long moments I'm thinking nothing …, eventually to hear a bird chirping. I open my eyes, pick my head up. Outside the rain has stopped. Sunbeams of light reflect off open window panes of glass. Water drops falling through the air are becoming small, and less and less frequent. 

'Bats in the belfry,' is the sense that comes to mind. 'Just coincidence.'  It's freakin' springtime. April showers bring May flowers, 'ya know? I close my eyes and place my forehead upon my arm, again. I stay like this for (if I recollect correctly) not more than ten, fifteen; twenty seconds to hear within the darkness of my mind, the rain falling outside. I pick my head up and watch the rain falling down …? falling fairly fast and furious again. Falling down fairly well to make me think that the rain had indeed stopped, like I had asked, and only too soon to start up again.

Four months after being released I was rearrested and sent to Clinton. The rain falling episode was more a coincidence and didn't convince me, convict me of my status with the Creator until I wrote those initial literal drafts and then to realize the Cartesian graphs while I was residing in various facilities during my second bid. Nowadays, I wouldn't trade places with anyone. Dan Aykroyd and Jim Belushi were only goofing. But nothing and no one today could convince me otherwise: I'm on a mission of God.

Next blog post will venture into aspects of my heretical theology: why Jesus couldn't just stand on his head to take away "the sins of the world." 

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