Boxed In
A stay in solitary confinement
The nozzle was a keyhole. This is the shower? I thought. Something I recognized as a button: I pressed it. Water trickled from the spout. I looked around, collected my orange pants and bunched them up to form a barrier between the lamely collecting water and my bed. The space of about one and one-half feet. I received a shower and fresh clothes three times a week. Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. One uniform in the meantime.
I learned to be ready, and never took very long. I readied my fresh clothes, which came in a rolled bundle, on my mattress, away from the shower. I learned to store an old towel to hold the water. I kept my soap in the corner where the stone masonry met the cold floor.
The inadequacy of the shower announced one of many moral positions that became rivets in the framework of my life. The spareness of the space encapsulated persevering truths about choice, expectation, and exhaustion. Deliverance and fact. Like a wanderer in the desert trapped by sand, endless sky, and deadly heat.
Harshness and depth that remain after you’re stripped of who you thought you were and introduced to who you really are. Realizing: gauntness is more than physical decrepitness. Spiritual gauntness colors your face ashen, makes you granite stone, makes you hold your breath for days, maybe even months.
Sundays were cleaning days. Around five o’clock work detail inmates visited us under the supervision of the guards, to hand out cleaning supplies. One small pre-sprayed white cloth, a broom, and a dustpan, all handed through the food slot. When I was finished with those items, I was given a mop, if I wished it. Once cell cleaning was complete, we were given fresh linens for the week.
Sundays were nice because we had the ear of the work crew for a few minutes. Learn the scores of a game, maybe, or catch a funny joke. To laugh for a second was relief. It was nice having them there even if you didn’t talk. For 15 minutes we weren’t alone. I usually didn’t talk to them. I didn’t need to. It was enough to know that someone was standing close by. I never wanted to appear desperate.
Some of the guys in solitary really had a tough time — breakdowns and the like — and some of them made it known. Losing control of your emotions announced weakness. In prison, you never wanted to seem weak. In prison, strength was everything. Even if it was a ruse. Even if it was an apparition.
Sometimes, when the guards weren’t around, we’d yell through the doors. It wasn’t easy. These were thick steel doors that muffled most of the sound, but if you put your lips and ears to the cracks, you could communicate, barely. Most of the time I didn’t know who I was talking to, or what was being said to me, but it made no difference. For the space of a second, I was connected to someone.
Once a day they brought a book cart around. We were given one book at a time. It was there that I read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein for the first time. I had no idea how much I’d share with that banished, undesired, and detested creature. I spent some time thinking about that. How a man can be created by people, then hated by the people that made him. In a sense that’s all prison really is. Frankenstein.
No windows is tough. You don’t realize how much you need to see the world until you can’t. Humans are composed of molecules called hope, and when you cannot see the world, you forget what you have to hope for. Then the imagination must gallop to compensate for the loss. We need to see the world. We need to see grass and leaves and birds soaring in the sky. We need to see clouds. We are of the world, and when we see the world, we remember that we’re its members and joints, that we had a past and could have a future. Alone we are beams. Together we are joists. Together we are architecture.
I was allowed “outside” one time. For a half hour. Four stone walls surrounded me. Above me a chain link roof was all that kept me from growing wings and flying away. A bird in captivity. I looked up and saw gray clouds. It was cold. Branches from a tree swayed in a stray crosswind. I saw no birds, but I heard a crow talking. I imagined a very large tower. I imagined a city. I imagined starry constellations, dots sewn together to pull in light years like folds of fabric.
Then it was gone. I was taken back to my cell. In 45 days, I left my cell for 30 minutes. The rest of the time I saw walls.
I read other books. What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula. I don't recall much except for this quote: “All great work — artistic, poetic, intellectual or spiritual — is produced at those moments when its creators are lost completely in their actions, when they forget themselves altogether, and are free from self-consciousness.”
That was something I knew about. Writing took me many places, but they were never in our dimension. Writing picked me up and carried me out of it (whatever it was) like a two-dimensional drawing rising out of the sketch pad and walking. Writing took me out of prison and out of life; it took me somewhere powerful. I didn’t always understand where I went, but I belonged there. 20XX continued to grow.
Writing was not easy in there. First, I had to secure a writing implement, which required the cajoling of more than a few guards. Then there was the matter of paper. Occasionally I was able to convince a guard to shed a single sheet of paper. Most of the time I wrote on legal letters, envelopes, or on toilet paper.
It taught me to be patient about the process, since I was so limited in my ability to transcribe my ideas. I wasn’t going anywhere, and the overwhelming nothingness in front of me was blinding. Also, the intentional lack of communication. I didn’t know why I was being kept in isolation and I didn’t know for how long. Those were things the guards did not tell you. They left you to wonder. The power inversion was part of the effect. A mental assault designed to break you down.
You can’t understand how information positively correlates with sanity until you’ve experienced its loss. With adequate information the brain becomes a computing asset. Without it the brain becomes an unwieldy liability. Information, for the brain, is like oxygen. In prison I learned to harness my mind. My creativity. It kept insanity on the doorstep. My mind was the only thing under my control.
Solitary confinement changes you. It wears on you and breaks you down for all the reasons you might suspect. I read The Prophet for the first time. He had this to offer:
“Long were the days of pain I have spent within its walls, and long were the nights of aloneness, and who can depart from his pain and his aloneness without regret?”
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
Reflection inside of a dark box. That’s how it felt at times. At other times it felt like reflection inside a burning lamp. Sometimes I was too hot. Sometimes I was too cold. Comfort was rare. The thin mattress made everything hurt, and the small space drove me mad when I allowed it. I cried. I screamed. I kicked and punched, but there was nothing to kick or punch that would not hurt me right back. When I’d read for as long as I could, I’d set the book down and jerk off to kill the pain and misery. It came back quickly.
The lights stayed on 24 hours a day. Even at night. This way the guards could observe us when they made their rounds. That’s important to understand, that we were under observation. Not just imprisoned, but under observation. This implies that we were sick, and they were not. This implies that they were more human, and we were less human. Or that we were different creatures entirely.
we are all of
us cubes floating
just barely off
the ground
motes in ether
miniature packages
wrapped in
miniature packages
tending to
the silence inside
us.
Conversations with self. Conversations with God. People I hated. Speaking to anyone who would listen. I spent hours pacing back and forth, recounting the stories and experiences of my life. I’d walk through them in excruciating detail. Searching for my fault and my accountability, I invaded my life’s moments with surgical precision. When I cheated on my wife. When I was dropped from Ranger School. When certain people died. When I walked away from relationships. When I snorted my first line. When I let the phone go to voicemail. When I was too afraid. When I walked away. When I should have stayed. Little dust left behind in little places. Mud tracked into hovels on the other side of the world. Metal whiskers grinded off my person and left behind in places like Istanbul, Jerusalem, Amman. Decomposing portions of self left behind in Ramadi, Panj’wai, Kyrgyzstan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Cairo. My dreams. Dreams of dreams.
Breath. In. Out. Wadded up toilet paper shot into the toilet. Shot into a styrofoam juice cup. The next meal still hours away. Cracks in the concrete. Peeling off ribbons of paint. Flipping the mattress. Pushups, squats, depression, despair. Planning out cups of water. Motivational self-talk. Life examination. Another book. Storing my anger for later. Another book done. More grinding down. More floating. Particles inside particles. Silence.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
