by redclay | Sep 16, 2022 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction
By Ashley Plummer
Third place winner, Nonfiction/Arlington County Detention Facility/Heard/OAR writing contest, August 2022
If only life was all we had dreamed or planned for it to actually be. Lord knows in my plans being stuck in this awful reality here in Arlington County Jail. Was not thought of. While this is my reality today, though Never in a million years would you see these clicks associate in the real world.
Take a bipolar Junkie, Skitso Alcoholic, Bipolar depressed tweeker and a Hoe. Talk about a rap sheet to talk about for days together. These four ladies even find Sober Fun when no choice is given. Not sure if it lack of brain cells they have individually or all together. Can’s say there is ever a dull moment when the time is allowed to come out and express themselves.
Unfortunately the time out due to lock down has become slimmed down to very little. Extreme excitement to be able to interact with others. It’s a struggle to Not be all wound up, make too much noise. Its bound to get rowdy. Especially woman who all have Life never really turns out how you planned or dreamed it would.
I was told growing up to go to school and focus on learning what your being taught. Your bound to graduate high school then off to college. Graduate college land a life time career in your major. Life an amazing life. Get married and have children. Love life!
If that wasn’t the furthest from the truth. Never was sat down and actually told about mental health. Hell it didn’t exist! Wasn’t taught what Bipolar, Anxiety, depression, and past Traumatic Stress disorder was actually capable of.
Once it really began to show at a young age it was hush, hush. Now today it has become socially exceptable. Society in todays world has inevitably created bipolar junkies, skitsofrantic alcoholics, bipolar-depressed Tweeker’s and Hoe’s to feel we only click together in a place so close to hell we can feel the heat rising in our bodies. Only feeling normal mental health issues, there is definitely going to be some noise.
Of course rules are given and applied. Soon noise warning are being thrown out. Each group of women will get quiet maybe thirty to sixty seconds, then the blame game of where’s the noise coming from? Groups get defensive. Noise rises again. No more noise warnings for us. It’s back to the conferment of our cells, along.
All over again. Hoping and praying your personalities are ready to come out to play nice with each other. Need one or two to be able to read and write, sure would be a very long sentence without each other.
Wait arnt I not suppose to be experiencing all my other personalities on a daily? I thought me getting up before the crack of dawn divulging in these medications was to help that? Sad part makes me wonder will I ever actually have my own true self, thoughts, or opinions? Guess that takes us back to the beginning.
Normal enough to experience life, when become locked up within these walls forced to be medicated, sober, and yet together! What has society really become today? Why has it made each and every woman hide or ashamed of who they really are? Have we women allowed it?
Oh, that’s right we live in a man’s world. F*** that! It’s time, my time to take a stand. All of us women together! Laugh out Loud. I know that was a very funny Joke.
How long have we as women been trying to get other women to come together. To help build each other up? Too damn long. Of course no changes. Never quite understood how we as women are, so quick to come for each other. Especially when a third party is involved. Man or woman. Always be said she said. Even in a place like Jail.
We woman know we have no choice, but to be around one another, every day for however long our sentence is. Still always going to be females that cant get along. Regardless, we only have so much space we can actually go to escape on another. I try to understand who’s bright idea it was to put more than six mentally unstable/stable women in a closed in area. To tear each other apart.
Of course when an altercation happens then the questions begin? Seems la little a** backwards if you ask me. When you get booked into the jail it’s a process as with anywhere. Except for here in Arlington County Jail you go thru a whole mental health evaluation. Evaluation allows staff to know if you unstable or stable enough for general population. Which only means you can mentally handle being around others as mentally unstable.
Anyone could totally fake their way thru the fifteen min evaluation. Hell how many of us actually arrested sober? At the time of you still feeling nice floating, giggly. Ready to just get a quiet place to ride your high, dunk out.
When the time comes next morning that you crash. They come banging on your door talking about chow time or trays. Bam! Instant smack in the face, wakey, wakey and yup your stuck like chuck.
The first few days they dry you out. No medication, no interaction with others at all. The hour out your cell is just enough time to shower, make a call home. Back in your cell the interacting with each personality begins.
Like damn, what did we get ourselves into? Welp! Buckle up baby, its going to be a bumpy ride from this moment until the date comes for a to leave out them doors. Never realizing how much on a daily you take for granted. Telling yourself, damn. Why am I so hard headed? My momma was right all them years ago. Of course I didn’t want to admit it to myself. No let me alone my momma.
We tell ourselves as long as we dont say the shit out loud no one will know the truth. Saying it out loud makes it a reality. That’s all to real once it’s left your mouth. At least that’s what I tell myself. All, but one of my personalities agree. Hahaha!
Of course always going to be that one! She just believe she knows best. How many of you are thinking damn, earlier in her story was she actually talking about four separate women? Nope, was totally talking about each and everyone of my own crazy, wild, and free to roam as they would like to personalities. Dang! Got you there.
Hmmm did this story just get more interesting? Definitely what we call a page turner. The suspense is killer, huh? Never seen that plot twist coming first few pages at all?
No we sit behind these walls medicated. Righting ourselves ask why we wont’ allow the other to come out to associate? Cant we allow ourselves to be free and express every emotion we feel at the moment it’s felt.
Logic says it’s not normal, but what if its our normal? Who is to tell me what my normal isOK! So while here I have to obey your rules, even though they make me hate everything and not feel like myself. Though the very day I leave out these doors. Across the thresh hold to freedom, my freedom. I will toss the medication that has made me hide who I am daily.
Freedom tastes oh so good. Only now weeks have passed. Remembering I had tossed them “normal meds”. I’m beginning to fight, battle myself every personality that is of me. All knowing oh to well where this is going to lead. I indulge, just to silence it all. Only for a little while.
It all begins again, all to soon. Self medication has begun. Becoming the bipolar Junkie just to sleep. Now I cant stay awake time to wake the bipolar-depressed tweeker. All to not become victim to being raped, abused, and robbed left to die along.
Soon I release the skitsofrantic alcoholic who can no longer be tamed just to be able to cope with the disgust and shame of myself. Only one left to come out is the free spirited, wild, dont have a care what people say hoe. She just knows her time is coming to be expressed.
Lord knows my body is soon to be craving more of all the drugs, alcohol. All to just keep my body functioning on a daily. Sleep with whoever she can be it man, or woman, old, young, clean, or dirty. Only requirements are money or drugs my body needs at the time of desperation.
Just like that the vicious cycle has you trapped all over again. Realizing not long now we will be right back to square one. Within them walls, waking up hating what I have become. Obeying rules I dont like nor get to make for myself. Waiting for that make me normal medication.
Asking ourself will I ever escape this nightmare. Will feeling like myself ever exist in this life time or the next? Praying to god for serenity, strength each morning just to wake up. In reality what is normal? Will we ever really know? Guess just have to keep the faith, find others like yourself so your not forced to hide who you are ever.
Acceptance from others is hard to find, but accepting yourself is a well taught lesson to learn. Love yourself enough to not punish yourself. Don’t get caught up in the viscious cycle of self destruction. Hela easy to bury yourself and who you are in the cycle, but getting out is far and inbetween.
You have to love yourself for others to love you. Stay focused on happiness. Hold that pretty head up high. Never allow your crown to fall. Beauty is within.
by redclay | Sep 16, 2022 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction
by Michael Elliott
Second place winner, Nonfiction/Arlington County Detention Facility/Heard/ writing contest, August 2022
“Mr. Elliott, Good Morning, My name is Ryan such and such, from the Philadelphia Public Defender’s Office. My job is to come and present to you the smart room numbers as to the sentencing guidelines, as well as an offer from the District Attorney’s office concerning your case, …excuse me,…cases. It is my understanding you have been charged with several armed robberies involving SBI… and a home invasion.”
“Sir, what is an SBI?” I ask him, very detached from the meeting, already preparing myself to hear some off the wall stuff. Knowing the current situation to be, sorry but there’s no other way to put it….F***ED.
“Serious bodily injury.,” he says as he’s rffling through court papers a tone as detached as my demeanor.
“Here it is,” he says… “Mr. Elliott the smart room sheet says that each of the armed robberies with your prior drug convictions is: 30-60 years….each. The DA, at this point is willing to give you 4, 15-30 year sentences, ran concurrent…if you decide to sign it today.
“Mr. Elliott I’ve looked at the discovery of your cases, and my advice to you sir…is to take this deal, it will only be offered to you once and after today it is off the table,.. And the DA will be pushing for the max on each case.”
When he said he looked at the discovery I damn near laughed in this man’s face. I didn’t even have a preliminary hearing yet. what discovery could this…gentleman…have? He doesn’t have the slightest clue of any detail of this case, let alone any idea that I know enough, that his “advice”, almost made for [a] very unexpected right hook from yours truly.
How dare this man come to me at 9:00 AM on a beautiful Monday morning, and advise me to sign my life away knowing nothing but was said in an arrest report. And here is the biggest fact of it all…I was innocent.
The story didn’t start here, this from when what I can remember, is the day the fight started,…the fight…for my life.
I kept having this horrible dream that I was in an orange jumpsuit, and in a cell from what it looks like. It was exactly like a cell in Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility…CFCF…or if you’re from Philadelphia and have had the pleasure of making through those sliding gates… Most of us know it simply as THE “F.”
But it was just like that. And I kept sayin to myself “this dream sucks, why can’t I be on a jet ski somewhere?”
Then for some reason the cell door opens and I heard my name “Elliott…21 cell…social worker” I kept saying to myself “this dream is too vivid, I don’t like this.”
And then I began to realize as I got out of my boat (a bed on the floor due to overcrowding, 3 men in a 2 man cell) this was no dream… it was truly a nightmare…. I was in prison…AGAIN.
I was taking a lethal amount of Xanax, most days at that time, and days consisted of becoming conscious or waking up, smoking a cigarette, thinking about my children, my wife, how they were gone, and how they were never coming back, me trying to make some money to at least try to develop some kind of existence and move on. I would make a respectable dollar then my addiction to escaping would kick in, I’d end up with least 10 Xanax in my hand, then mouth and hello darkness my old friend….rinse, repeat.
God only knows what happens to me and I didn’t care what happened. I woke up the next day and I wasn’t banged up, bruised, or bloody, I’m sure I had a good time. But now I’m in jail, and have no idea how I got there. And what made it super trippy, I don’t remember cops, the precinct, going through intake (which takes no less than a whole two days, at that time…), I was completely baffled, not to mention, still high.
So I float on down to the social worker and the first question she asks me, is the money question: “Mr. Elliott, do you know why your here, and do you know where here is?”
I tell her her I know I’m in the “F” but have[n’t] the slightest idea why. She says “I’m gonna give you all of the info I can.” So I’m assuming I caught another possession with intent to distribute (PWID). That’s what I go to jail for anymore…. Selling dope (not proud in saying that) please don’t misunderstand that.
As she continues to look at her monitor, her demon demeanor begins to change with every arrow down. She looks, at me, the screen, me, the screen. I’m thinking to myself, open paren well damn, how far down does she have to go? Close paren, when finally she says
Open paren there must be some kind of mistake and they might of duplicated the record of putting this in the system twice. Because it says here, you’ve been charged with “1… Period two period. No…. 3…. Oh wow…. 4 armed robberies”… “and a home invasion”… “Mr Elliot, your bail is set at $800,000 cash, no 10%.
I couldn’t believe it, I don’t rob people, but I honestly had to consider the possibility… I was underlined on xanax. I call them “I hate life” pills. They truly make you disappear, but for me, I also have zero inhibition on them as well, they are dangerous.
She sees the color in my face disappear, as well as any kind of connection to reality in my eyes. Of course, she asked me if I was OK… I think I nodded or said something. I don’t remember much after that, walking back to my unit and such.new paragraph One thing I do remember…. For the first time in my whole life I knew what being hopeless was. The only vision, image of a future, the only thing left and life for me was me swan diving off the top tier of my unit, and my brain matter bouncing around the day room and my spine bent and broken into a “Z”.
There was nothing left for me. My life was over, last to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The city of brotherly love. Not to mention the six detainers I had. I knew I was gonna sit in jail fighting 36 charges 10 felonies: numerous gun charges assault of a Philadelphia detective, two shooting victims, it was more than a hopeless situation. I just sat numerous years on detainers under the presumption of innocence, I last ten years on location of the county jails state road, for being a drug addicted pain riddled man just trying to provide some kind of life for his family that he can only dream about anymore.
I was done. I’m tapping out. I am sorry babies…. Joan…. I just wish I was a little stronger…. Hopefully this dog makes it to heaven
My life literally flashes before my eyes, all of my hopes, dreams, memories, of a childhood that seemed as if that was only a dream I would never return to but wanted to so desperately., if only to hug my mother again. You want talk about emotions? I can’t even begin to find the words 2 Fay and express, in the void, that has manifested in my soul, or try and count the number of pieces my spirit was broken into.
All of this happened to me…. In a single moment. I can’t help but try to see clearly enough to write this… The tears still come uncontrollably seven years later. That moment can’t be acquired at a university, that moment can’t be bought, that moment is the realization that your life is now…. Over.
It still takes my breath away as I try to articulate… What it is… To be… Hopeless alone… Broken… And hopeless… But still breaking… Barely.
When I got back to B-12, my housing unit in the F it is a quarantine block which is significant to mention. Every quarantine unit has a caged off top tier open perens specifically designed for hopeless, but suicidally ambitious inmates such as myself close paren. Apparently I am not the first with an idea a permanent solution, but either way. A minor obstacle. An obstacle minor enough for me to say to myself “I’ll wait until the whole block is out for rec, and I can get far enough out on the ledge without bothersome correctional officers finding themselves not wanting to do all that paperwork. This is where things actually become “spooky” in my life. Spooky, but…. Just downright ironically, I don’t know how else to put it.
So, here I am 33 years old, 60 Tanners equaling a combined 43 years of probation, if you run them consecutively. Charged with four armed robberies, two people shot, a detective assaulted… All allegedly.. Multiple gun charges 36 charges all together ten of which are felonies, the Commonwealth needing only to convict me on just one, for me to say bye bye to streets, haven’t seen any of my children in five years, and believe me… No lack of effort on my part open paren that’s a whole other book close paren.
addicted to drugs…all of them. With absolutely no support: family or friend. Just waiting for my cell door to open to lay down until rec. The officer buzzes my gate, I go in, gate shuts…BOOM!!
As I’m standing there, I notice that this isn’t my cell, I start yelling “CO…CO… I’m in the wrong cell, this ain’t my cell!!”
“Yes it is Elliott, 21…Elliott’s in 21…” she says on the PA system.
“It can’t be my cell….” I’m saying to myself. “That boo was not there.” I glance over ot the table, see MY paperwork, this IS my cell….
Let me try and pain this picture a little better. My mat is in a plastic “bota” on the floor. I’ve been on this particular floor for a couple days, bottomline, my eyes have perused this entire cell at least 95 times. That book, on the floor under the other bunk was NOT THERE when I left.
It is now here not only here but dusty as if it’s been there for quite some time. I’m trippin’ now. I’m trying to figure out rationally how this can be. There is nothing written on the back of this book cover, it’s just white and dusty, pages a yellow that only happens to books that are old.
I can’t help myself. I grab this little dusty, unknown, wipe it off with the back of my hand, flip it over, and the two words that titled it were “HERE’S HOPE”…well, let’s just say…I damn near pissed myself laughing mad. That was so funny to me in the darkest most sarcastic mockingingly way.
At that current juncture the plan was still the same: the sweetest swan dive CFCF has ever cleaned up when that gate cracked, but now, at least I had something to read, in the meanwhile. Something to kill, really, pun intended. I hoe that’s how you use that.
I never in my life has read the Bible, actually sat down and read any one book, let alone all the books, in it’s entirety. I know nothing of Jesus, other than Christmas is His alleged birthday (I hope I used that right) and I got the presents (sweet deal). And He was murdered by a mob of Jews, but made it look like the Romans did it.
This was the extent of my theological section, and had no idea dear ol’ Captain Noah, with his boat of animals, send him pics, the mad man Moses the fugitive, who was rainin’ frogs on the Pharoah on his pyramids. On Easter Weekend, having to eat pizza on Good Friday (yes Freiday was always pizza, and always good) had anything to do with each other.
Other than they all had really cool ….BEARDS. Kind of went to left field with that, or as they say sophisticating, on a tangent! (Did it again) oops. I will not continue on that one…lol…BRITNEY SPEARS!! Kelly Clarkson. Like Steve Carrell in [the movie] 40 Year Old Virgin, who actually played in Evan Almighty…where he portrays NOAH…Boom. I took off all the tangents…(Darth Vader voice) “The circle is now complete.”
All that say basically I knew absolutely NOTHING ABOUT GOD. And at that point, in that cell, one door from ending my life. T me …(for the child who might read these adult words) F*** GOD!!
But I was bored and tired of thinking, so I read this New Testament ,and was just patiently waiting for my cell to open. I don’t even want to tell you that it was a Friday when I talked with the social worker xxxx and how I read that New Testament 7 times during the course of the weekend from what I was told, because when my bell finally opened it was Sunday during dinner.
I don’t remember my cell opening all day Saturday or Sunday for meals or medication. I read the Gospels and Epistles like a novel.
I had a hard time “seeing” what was happening but I read it enough to get an image of Jesus. But it wasn’t Jesus that made an impression that developed an itch that had to be scratched. It was a particular verse that grabbed my spiritual eyeball and shook it like a pitbull on a chew toy….
1 JOHN 4:8
END
Typist note: 1 JOHN 4:8: “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (NKJV)
by redclay | Aug 26, 2022 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction
Imperfect Democratic Systems
(translated from its original Spanish language submission)
by Luis Carlos Peniche Garces
Second place, Nonfiction, Heard/Alexandria Detention Center writing contest, July 2022
Given its origin in Greek semantics, in which the basis of power was given into the hands of the people, chosen by the people and for the people, we can now move forward and ask if our actual “democracies” are in accordance with these principles of the sociopolitical genesis of the rule of law.
By virtue of the power of our great leaders over time, we find ourselves with a diversity of tendencies to extreme autonomy, which are fed by religious alignments in great part, ready to change the geopolitics of their territories, handing the decisions to the lavish empires, kingdoms, emirates and power to the Roman Church in all its evangelical populations of the entire world.
We only need to go back a little in our history to put on the table the question of whether we are condemned to repeat it for not having learned the lesson at great cost to our species or, on the contrary, whether we are obligated to discard the weight and turn the page with hopes of assimilating the life lessons and not forgetting the errors committed.
If Marx and Engels returned, they wouldn’t think that we would be a reflection of their theories, hurled with red banners of great relevance in the contemporary world… one needs to note that these were the pillars of a system which today represents one of the valid alternatives in half the world.
The democratic socialist systems, with their own peculiarities as in the Popular Republic of China, where its conception originated in the classic Marxist theories and the Leninist models and at the same time instructed by the ancient Soviet Union, gave as an alternative a different path of thinking and autonomy from the democratic states such as USA and Western Europe in its totality. Democratic systems, which, as the years have passed, have become victims of innumerable attacks with internal destabilizing forces which today lack a clean leadership and with collective objectives which rise above individual and party interests.
It would be very interesting to consider objective reasons which might lead us to conclusions about whether we are on the path of our democratic constitutions or, on the contrary, whether we have fallen on the utopian path of the bureaucratic demagogy.
Democracies that are called examples of the world and vectors of free thinking and precursors of free economic growth are seen today in the dilemma of social chaos and inequality of its people engendered in an identity crisis of nuclear family and total loss of the fundamental essence of the human being treated with dignity and equal participation in the society which supports him. We clearly see the ever growing breach between the 1% of the rich and the 99% of the remaining citizens who struggle for survival in a macabre swarm of commercial monopolies and economic groups which exterminate without mercy the longing for common prosperity.
The kidnapping of the parties and their self interests over the common good which is sheltered in a democratic constitution is every day more alienated and distant from its protective principles and brings us to a reality which we cannot hide behind the mask of “corruption.”
The consequences we have seen to belligerent acts which reveal to us substantial political actors in our democratic charters are not clear evidence of our manifestation in the legitimate constitutional right to vote. Today we find ourselves on a totally lost course in a globally enmeshed world of extreme political polarizations, forgetting the fundamental essence which is the welfare of the people.
The constant displacement of marginal communities with basic coverage and minimal conditions for survival lead us to anthropological and sociocultural dystopias which have no other solution than the concentration and balance of opportunities. Opportunities which only have a handle in the enrichment of the people in their principal source of growth which without doubt some are those “already in the know.” The lag in our communities in the training of its members from the basic marrow which is the formation of a nuclear family in circumstances of minimal human dignity and access to benefits of a participatory and resilient democracy.
The actual development of our democracies reflects a future which, if we don’t act in time and with tolerance, in addition to the proper containment of counting agencies, will surely be a disaster to a system of participatory democracy which will surely lead to chaos.
Recognized economic indicators such as the World Bank and the United Nations in their financial divisions show us how the geopolitical and economic panorama has given an extreme directional turn to systems such as the Democratic Socialists in China, which are positioned as primary world economic strength and to Russia as pioneer in the Advanced Nuclear Armament.
Could it be that the Chinese socialist democracy is showing us better results? Or could it be that Democracy is not a system of imperfections but an Imperfect System?
by redclay | Aug 26, 2022 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, non-fiction, Non-fiction
Concrete
by Trulynd W. Hall
First place, Nonfiction, Heard/Alexandria Detention Center writing contest, July 2022
Imagine, two slabs of concrete around three inches thick, so six total when combined. The task is to break both of these with your bare hand, the only buffer being a t-shirt or towel. This is the 2nd degree black belt test final obstacle.
Getting a black belt is a momentous moment that less than 30% of students at a studio reach. It’s a difficult mountain to climb but also just the beginning of a martial arts journey. Many stop at first degree but there’s over ten degrees to black belt. Each degree taking more time than the last, for reference it takes around one and a half to two years to normally obtain a black belt.
It was time for me to take my second degree test. I was told I’m to break two slabs of concrete. This worried me more than the over seven hundred push-ups and sit-ups or the multi man sparring. If I hadn’t seen my Master break 10 concrete blocks consecutively, I would’ve never taken the test.
To prepare I take one of the slabs home. Every day and every night I see it. I woke up and went to sleep with it as my last seen item. This continued for four months. Any longer and I might’ve considered it a relationship.
After two hours of physical torture, it’s time to break the concrete. Many might believe that if you weight were more or have bigger muscles then it’s a cake walk, they’d be wrong. I’m 5’5” and around 155 lbs at the time of my test. Breaking the concrete is about technique. Which is a result of strict discipline, to maintain your training.
I stand over the blocks. Everyone is shouting and cheering for me to break it. I hear none of it at the time. The world around me whites out and it’s nothing but me and my task. My focus at its all time high. My Master watches dubiously as I let out a scream. Jump. Swing! The sound of stones smashing together as they hit the floor echo. I give a thumbs up and and have a seat. My only thought.
“First try baby!”
by redclay | Jun 9, 2022 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, Non-fiction, non-fiction
“Chasing Faith” was retitled “Why I Write Graffiti” and published in Arlington Magazine in January, 2019
By Shane Mills
First Place winner, non-fiction, Arlington County Detention Facility/Heard Writing Contest, July 2018
Behind me fluorescent lights of the skyline fade in and out through the smog. Behind that, millions of stars and the moon provide the only light required for this act of creative destruction.
I stop for an introspective moment and ponder the timeless open-ended questions: “Why are we here?” “What’s the purpose of this life we’ve been gifted?” I snap out of it and get back to the answer I’ve come to know best – my personal pursuit of happiness, here among the abstracted topography, the animated characters of vibrant colors.
A perfect balance of anticipation, exhilaration, satisfaction, and bliss. Whatever the meaning of life is, I can’t be too far off. If only I could bottle this concoction and share it with the world, because in this moment I am truly free.
This is a story about, as Paulo Cuelho in his classic “The Alchemist” states, following your “Personal Legend,” finding your true passion, and never letting that fire inside burn out.
The topic at hand touches on mine, but it’s also more universal that that. So, I implore you to find whatever it is that you love, that makes you tick, and never let it go.
No, I’m not in Disneyland. We’re under a bridge along the train tracks running through a seedy section of the city, because with gentrification encroaching, this is the last stronghold of a pure living, breathing urban art form. I’m here doing my part to keep it alive; I’m here with my cans communicating presence.
What started, some would argue, during the Great Depression with train hobos signing their monikers on boxcars as they travelled across the country and some even developing a following through the compulsion, and essentially the rudimentary beginnings of what is now termed “fame” or trying to be “up” as much as possible (both terms being lingo for prolific repetition and overall quantity of that moniker on surfaces far and wide (Bozo-Texino), has morphed and poly-morphed into a worldwide underground art movement now with different genres and sub-genres each with different societal acceptance and cultural respect).
Like most crafts, hobbies, interests etc., there will always be the opinionated ones to comment on legitimacy:
- The classic Porsche enthusiast who detests anything other than manual transmissions
- The street skater who lives and breathes to kick, push, and coast around the city will claim Tony Hawk is a sellout.
From surfers, hackers, musicians, and everywhere in between, every scene has them, the detractors from within the structural confines of that culture, their scene, who might argue that when you take something you do for pleasure, for pure, organic enjoyment and try to capitalize on it, to monetize it and turn it into a commodity, you are a sellout. You have lost the true meaning of what got you there in the first place, that not all things in life should be viewed as potential income, and when you capitulate to the outsiders, the mainstream, the corporations, you’re an accessory to cultural appropriation and you’re part of the problem.
But I’m not here to argue semantics this time around. I’m here to give a window into the true essence of why we do the things we do, the passion behind it, and the deeper, profound meaning to this alter-ego we create for ourselves.
I’m here to get to the root of what it truly means to be a graffiti writer or street artist. The compulsion, justifications, rationalizations, that come with it. From the selfishness of writing on what isn’t ours to the selflessness of creating free public art.
Didn’t ask for it? Well we didn’t ask for presidents’ faces in mountains, or McDonald’s billboards crammed down our throats either.
Graffiti in its current iteration began in New York City in the 1970s on the subway trains. The city was in shambles, and near bankruptcy. For a lot of the youth the trains were an escape, a stress outlet, a form of communication.
These artists also know as “writers” could gain respect from their neighborhood and potentially other parts of the city by controlling or “kinging” a line with as many stylized “pieces” as possible. Some crews of writers claimed whole train yards for only their clique to paint in. The more trains your name was on, the more different lines you had kinged, the more property your crew monopolized, the more respect your alias carried.
For some that respect was alluring. Surrounded by blight, drugs, crime, and poverty, the opportunity to step into this pseudonym and have respect, celebrity status, fame, a sense of purpose, and belonging can be all to intoxicating.
Although I didn’t grow up in a burnt-out, apocalyptic Bronx I know a thing or two about seeking escape and searching from some kind of meaning, of wanting to find common ground when home life was anything but common. A desire to relate through the unrelatable.
My angst usually kept me involved in what I’ll call “fringe activities”: BMX, punk music, smoking weed, and through those my first introductions to graffiti. I can remember my first two instances of tagging something, first being my name with money comically coming out of the back of it in a culvert pipe when I was 11, and the at 13 spraying “Ride BMX ‘03” in a tunnel off of a concrete storm ditch we used to ride. Little did I know how it would shape my life for the better and for worse years later, or the profound passion it would subconsciously ignite in me.
What started as an anarchistic, rebellious sense of expression over the years has taken on so many additional meanings: catharsis, therapy, creative outlet, social medium, instant gratification, self-satisfaction.
What began with no artistic intention has turned into 30 color murals executed with ladders and scaffolding and walls painted at the Kennedy Center events. But it’s here, on the Red Line in N.E. DC that I am in my true element. This slice of the city at 3 am, while you were probably sleeping. I find my peace. I feel like I’m the last person in the world and I’m proving I still exist, if only to myself.
I’m busy being born.
I’d be lying if I denied the egotistical aspects or the overall existential crisis playing out every time I paint a new spot, after all, this is the equivalent to a boiled-down, in-real-life social media profile where we curate how we want others to view us…bright, funky colors and loose letters for the hipster maybe, or dark colors with jagged sharp letters, and a gangster hip-hop character with a gun so they know I “go hard”, or a philosophical quote so they know I’m deep…
But aside from how we want to be perceived on the outside, that doesn’t explain the cause for the emotion it evokes within, why for 12 consistent, consecutive years I’ve spend multiple nights a week in otherwise unsavory areas or all day on weekend out in a secluded section of woods underneath a highway painting walls.
I’m locked in a perpetual race to nowhere. When I’m not painting, I’m mapping other cities. I’m walking around on Google Maps on street view mode seeking rooftops or following train tracks on satellite view til the tracks dip under roads or run past abandoned looking buildings. I’ve even gotten good at spotting walls from above and knowing if they’re tall enough by the shadows they cast.
An unquenchable thirst to be everywhere. I want regional saturation, then national. I want it all. What I want is an omnipresence! But that in itself is the unattainable end goal. Everything along the way means just as much as the finished product.
The missions with friends, the exploration of forbidden, often long-forgotten places, mutually finding the beauty in urban decay. The laughs and collaboration with the eclectic group of individuals I’d never have gotten to know.
Racial, social, musical, and political lines were blurred. Doesn’t matter. We’re brought together because we write graffiti. We are street artists who have a shared perspective on our cities’ tunnels, train tracks, rooftops, and alleys.
Sometimes, the destination is the journey, just as much as crossing the finish line. I’ve embarked on this great adventure, somewhat unknowingly, with my outward manifestation of an inward escape, building a nationwide network of like-minded people keeping this art form alive against all odds.
So as long as I’m breathing, and this fire keep burning I’ll be following my “Personal Legend.” I’ll be expanding my legacy, leaving pieces of me scattered around like hidden treasures for when I am no more. I’ll be pursing infamy.
I’ll be chasing faith.
by redclay | Oct 20, 2021 | Creative Writing, Detention Center Writing Contests, non-fiction, Non-fiction
Jeffrey Melendez
Third place, Nonfiction, Heard/Arlington County Detention Facility writing contest, August 2021
I can still hear Da Bronx and smell the Bronx. It’s his own world. Very different very unique very alive in spirit, in culture. All different types of races, ethnics, different flags hanging from windows, Puerto Rican, Nigerian, Cuban, Dominican, Jamaican, Ethiopian. We all from different countries but we stick together here in America, here in the Bronx. If we can make it in New York City, we can make it anywhere. I’m proud that I was born there. I still hear police sirens, honking horns in morning traffic different languages Chinese Swahili Spanish.
I hear car alarms going off and ambulance too. People screaming inside the Yankees stadium. I hear Mr. Softee ice cream truck. I can’t forget I hear the A, B and D train. Music playing through thru windows speakers blaring Salsa, Rap, Merengue, Reggae, Hip-Hop, Soka, Bachata, Danie Hull. The fire hydrant popped because it’s hot that’s all. White man pull-up in the white vans, asking for papers. Pops working late to put food on the table.
You see me I ain’t have the same luxuries I have 2 grandmothers in different countries. I’m a first generation born American I can’t say I’m going to grandmoms today she 2,000 miles away. In the Bronx I can hear families argue about eviction notice. From High Bridge, Kings Bridge, 3rd Ave. Big Brother telling Little Brother don’t be a loser be a winner.
Moms going to a corrupt church the pastor is the biggest sinner. Moms cooking food, gun shots go-off her son ain’t coming home for dinner. In the corner smells of delicious Jamaican food, curry chicken, coco bread, and beef patties and in the other corner Giovannis Italian Pizza up the block, the Chinese spot. Down the block Dominican restaurant fry plantain with everything delicious. Never mind that half the buildings are rat and roach infested, Black and Brown around here we got Big money invested. We unite U.N.I.T.Y Latinos, African Americans, East Africans, West Africans. We all learn from each other different foods, dances, languages.
This is the Bronx. We are stars. On the rooftops we look up we don’t see stars. We see Police Helicopters and the Goodyear Blimp above the New York Yankees stadium. Shout out my Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans, Hondurans, Haitians, Dominicans, Nigerians, Trinidadians, Asian, and Italians. The good men doing time in Rikers Island. People taking meds in the Asylum. My young youth in the street wilding. No matter where I go I represent where I’m from (The Bronx) I’m from DA B.X.
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