Crash Escapes

Since White Bear insisted the cruel & unusual clause of the Constitution dictates three-hours of exercise in the yard, and I had not any beyond the perp walk, he threatened to sue and the jail administrators caved. It was a small jail with a minimal honor yard. My eyes would be ready to find blind spots and weak points in the yard.

The first day I was brought to the yard in shackles alone. White Bear’s one call to the ACLU remedied that. Day two, though I had the yard to myself, I counted twenty guards in the small confines of it. I tried jogging but, every ten-steps, an officer stood in my way so that one lap around the yard made for almost two. The reputation for violence that preceded my arrest could have been the motivation for the obstruction. The guards, frustrated that their tactic failed to rankle me, bumped and jostled me at times too. They could have had orders to provoke an attack because no officer in his right mind would lean on an inmate like that since California's prisoners bill of rights was enacted during Reagan's term as Governor. Instead,they muttered insults as I passed, like, “What’s the matter Kraszhinski, no one to rape here?” … “Working off your jizz bucket?” … “We got some juvies in here that you might like.” … “Maybe we can put a buck in your cell.” … “Pay-back’s a bitch.” It would make it too easy for them if I powered through them.

I stopped by the weights bench and rings. Stripping down to the jailhouse boxers and tees, I did a few turns on a set of rings. I was still in good enough shape but faked being weaker than I was. A guard was watching me, “Not bad, Kraszhinski. You learn to do that in the Army?’

The isometrics I did in the cell had worked well enough to keep my strength up. “Yeah, not so hot now. I'm over forty, ya know. Age slows ya down. Besides, my hands are gonna blister. You guys have any tape?”

Things like tape in prison and jails is a security item kept locked up. The guard came back with a roll, “Hold ‘em out. I’ll wrap ‘em.”

“Wrap ‘em thick. I have a girl’s hands now, you know what I mean.”

Another guard saw what was going on and stepped between us, “Yeah, tape ‘em up good. The pervs got blisters from chokin’ the chicken.”

I picked up my jump suit and started some laps around the yard. The jerk was just using amateur Psy-ops tactic… Harass… never let-up on verbal abuse… physical abuse is the last resort before torture. They’d already used isolation and sensory deprivation on me. I’d done them all on prisoners myself. Never had to get down to pulling nails. If only they knew what I could endure when I fell back on what I did best. Not only was I trained to endure this, but trained to do so as a volunteer lab rat for the CIA while tripping on Lysergic Acid Diethylene. The few of us, those of us who had the aptitude to pass that extreme, laughed and called it the Acid test.

Lap one: The trick was to know that; whatever the experience, whatever the hallucination, whatever the fear evoked… it was all in my head in the space between the scull and the inner-sanctum. They, the guards, were trying to get in there… Don’t believe that which is outside the head and but believe what is facing me. I go inside but go way-in there… way-in, all the way to … the Holy of Holies… where… no one impure… where no pain, no threats of imminent death … all of the external is not allowed in… they are to be dealt with. Equilibrium.

Lap two: What is exploding in the cavern of the scull is irrelevant to the mission. The mission isn’t to survive. The mission, once captured, is to preserve and restore chi, resist, escape … or otherwise take command and direct the energy and purposes of the enemy against themselves. Even death holds nothing on me because it too is an escape and escape is a tactical victory.

Lap three: I have no beef with law enforcement. Most are well intentioned and honorable but, when incarcerated, no matter my personal feelings about an individual corrections officer, those feelings are never to get in the way of the previously described mission. Any inmate of any value, in any prison, has to have a similar aim or they will give up all hope. The prison of self is the same. Hope isn’t the door to the inner-sanctum, it is the key. It only opens the door. Once the door is open you leave hope at the portal. There is no going back from the brink of the ultimate death, the death to self, the death to ambition, the abandonment of hope, given over to the sea of consciousness where the heart of compassion beats. I neither love nor hate the enemy. The enemy is just another dancer to the drumbeat of the cosmos… too far out there for ya? I think so, but I don’t even try to come back from it. The only thing left is to dive into it or else go back to the oblivion of drunkenness. Peggy Lee sings in my head as I jog one step at a time, “if that’s all there is, if that’s all there is my friend, then let’s keep dancing. Oh, Sweet Buddha, you are so full of shit. Will I ever come back from insanity once I’ve tasted the nectar of its virtue? Naw, but not because I can’t but because I have no reason to.

On my way around the yard I can see there's two sets of fences to pass to the outside. Between the fences is the lane that the guards pass through to change shifts in the tower. One came in through a gate. He left it open for the other guard he would relieve. And there it is… the Bardo… the gap between guard and the tower. Low part of the chain-link fence and razor wire… I see it… a blind spot… the tower changing of the post… One of the guards stopped… His shoelace had become loose… turned his back to me… squatted down to tie the lace. A Shoelace! The Bardo between here and now, shit or get off the pot. Holy Shiva! BE HERE NOW! Dance! It isn’t speed, Miyamoto! It’s Musashi rhythm… cadence… the beat… the pulse of the gods… a cosmic RAGA… now dance! 

Within the inner sanctum time is suspended… wrap my jumpsuit and around taped hands… Fly away in skivvies, tee, and shorts. The guard was still crouched over… I leap-step and spring-board from his back up and over the top on the razor wire… both hands protected... up … Fosbury-flopped, momentum flip lifted hands planted on razor wire… handstand on both sides of the post tumble over the razor wire’s edge that cut through the material of the hand wrapping of the jump suit but hardly scratched the surface of the tape over the palms… not enough to draw blood. The springboard guard looked frantic... eyes pleading towards the tower. He yelled… “Fuck! Kraszhinski! Stop! Halt!”

This was a small county jail and, though the tower was the only place where firearms were deployed, the changing of the guard had both pairs of eyes on clipboards and forms… bureaucrats with badges busy. Not long… but just long enough.

 On the ground…  a car … a woman in the car … waiting for someone… probably the guard getting off duty. Waiting for ME! It’s an easy snatch… she screamed… yanked her out the driver side door. It’s more than serendipity… a collision of elements. Like the dash to the Saigon Embassy in 75. Only better, no mortars. The cosmos would disregard the physics of it, if the need be, but doesn’t. It never does. It makes sense somewhere beyond the mathematics between Quantum physics and Newtonian mechanical clockwork of the universe… a peg kicks another cog and it never has to do anything like a miracle. I heard more yelling… alarms… klaxons blasting and a full-on squeal of tires… a turn… a ditch … a farmworker’s truck… keys in it… Stop! Make a trade… drive away and out of sight of the car. Find some clothes under the driver’s seat. Ah, a San Francisco Forty-Niner’s hoodie and a pair of coveralls. Coveralls too small. Highwaters! I’m off… on my way to the Island Mansion. Find Max. Is he still in Vacaville?  Vacaville, it is. A reunion.