Beneath the Wheel

The fight against social convention

Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash.

Nothing was so dissonant as the jail days when sun came through in sheafs of straw. I stood behind bars but saw between them. Like stepping

in the mouth of a tunnel and trusting it to open again. Seeing places I could not touch became an art form like painting or wood working. Something you discovered

in the toughest moments of your life. I saw them clearly because I couldn’t reach them. Like if I’d been able to touch them, they’d have fallen apart. The city was a crack house filled

with users. I saw them clearly, the drug houses and the people inside them. The whole city under X-Ray. I paced the length of the jail with panther movements, washed

laundry and delivered to each cell. Then gave a knock on the bars and said goodnight cell 717, we got us more of the same tomorrow. I retired to my bunk and took

up Beneath the Wheel by Hermann Hesse and opened the cover. Inside was an inscription by the man who’d gifted the book, which read:

Hans was a sensual kid but forced into an academic life, one he would master but not one he necessarily wanted.

I read the entire book. All the way to the end when Hans drowns himself in the river. The narrator was right that we are all floating…