Sober Gay Poz Ex-Con

The original Vermeer has a completely dark background, it has always seemed unfinished to me as Vermeer rarely missed a chance to illuminate with either soft daylight or evening candle. As sacrilegious as it is to say  such a thing about a Vermeer, inserting a window from Wyeth feels like an improvement.

It's Mandela's 90th birthday, What a chance to acknowledge an amazing life. His 27 years behind bars would have broken most men, instead he turned it into the single most powerful act in the movement to bring down apartheid.  What a mindblowing concept.

I'm thinking of such things as we count down to the last days of Steven's imprisonment. After 10 years, on July 22 he will be paroled to a halfway house in South Dakota.  How do you make sense of spending your thirties in prison? You accept the things you cannot change, and change the things that you can.  Steven accepted the reality of prison, took responsibility for what he did to get there, and slowly and painfully learned to maintain a spiritual sanity in the midst of insanity.  Through the blog, he's been able to crystallize  the last year of his bid into the most amazing writing.  He rendered an experience which could have been meaningless into one that is redeemed by art. Because his writing can only be termed art.

One thing about windows in prison. You can see out--usually a dismal view of other parts of the prison--but no one from the outside can see in. The blog gave the outside world a view into his life, and the lives of many of the other men who would have otherwise remained invisible.  Knowing he was read by those on the other side of the wire was like a breeze through that open window.

MCO 2008