Below is a reading from my book THE OTHER ROAD AHEAD followed by a comment inspired by the selection.👇
Even though it has been several years since I had this conversation I remember it as if it just happened. This story represented something bigger than the subject of the encounter and formed a metaphor that persists.
It had been a number of months since I had seen my dear friend Rich. Then while filling up my truck at the gas station I spotted him and walked over hoping to get some news about him and his family. I asked where he had been hiding himself, that it had been quite some time when last we met.
Rich was a bit younger than I, tall lanky rugged, a stark sculpted face with blond hair tinged with red, bright blue eyes set deep in his ruddy weathered features. If there was such a thing as a Celtic Cherokee then he might have been the phenotype for a person bred deep in the Ozark hills. However, his trademark easy smile and gentle demeanor was not visible. He appeared stressed and battle fatigued with a “thousand yard stare” plastered on his face.
“Did you get a new job? I knew you were looking”, I asked. He scowled, “Yeah, you could say that.” I felt a tear in the fabric somewhere. The energy he had changed and chilled. “Where are you working?” “I got a job at the Walls, in Jeff, been there about six months.”
“The Walls” was the fortress-like prison in Jefferson City, Missouri that had a ghostly reputation1. Neither inmates or guards rarely spoke a kind word about this infamous facility that was primarily designed for incarceration and little else.
Rich continued, his blue eyes now an inky black, “It ain’t good, I just needed the money.” I said nothing as he lite up a Marlboro from a soft pack, “It eats your mind.” He took a long drag off the cigarette then blew out a cloud of pale smoke and said, ”I can’t tell which side of the bars I’m on and it gets worse every day.”
The conversation didn’t get any better even though I changed the subject to more general topics. We had known each other for years and I could tell he was deeply troubled. He had lived a tough life working with his hands but had a sensitive freedom loving gentle soul which now seemed trapped in a spiritual cul-de-sac.
Not long after I heard that he left the haunted Walls and eventually moved himself and his wife to Taos, New Mexico. I was bouncing around from place to place with the art show business and did not keep track and eventually we were both gone.
Over the years I felt the same strange ensnared energy from other people who were incarcerated, not behind stone walls, but behind the walls bound up by fate, circumstances or just plain fear of change. Trapped behind dark walls of imagination, dread, and karma.
Like my friend Rich freeing oneself may require the frightful geographic cure or some drastic spiritual change but we can open up to a world we create.
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