The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live
We have glorified wealth and freedom so much that it is impossible for most of us to truly believe that a man can truly be happy in a shack or within the confines of a prison cell.
This is the most immediate fruit of exile, of uprooting: the prevalence of the unreal over the real. Everyone dreamed past and future dreams, of slavery and redemption, of improbable paradises, of equally mythical and improbable enemies; cosmic enemies, perverse and subtle, who pervade everything like the air.
Is it possible that my walls are specifically erected and intentionally reinforced out of the fear that God calls me to an existence without walls? And if this is so, do I realize that I am the warden of prison that I created in which I myself am the prisoner?
He tried to measure his day by tallying the hours on his wrist.I wiped it off and called him a prisoner.He placed the hours on a scalewith hours from former days to compare.I took a hammer and broke it all.He bent down and picked up the shards of minutes firstthen swept the seconds.I told him he’d missed a spot;there were some sparkling specks left.'What are they?' he asked.'Those are moments,' I said.'What are they made of?' he asked.They are times, I thought, when you win a raceor win a heart.They are times when you give birth or lay something, someone to rest.When you wake up in the morning with a smile because anything is possible.When someone compliments the thing you hate most about yourself.Times when you are embarrassed.Times when you are hurtful.Times when you relish in a hearty meal.Times when you service others and are content with a well-spent day.'What are they made of?' he asked again.'They are made up of times when we are fully present.'I picked up one of the specks with the tipof my finger.'Do you remember this?' I asked.'Of course,' he said, 'I was whistling in the kitchen that morning.''Why?' I asked.'Because of the knowledge that I was loved.
Our hearts are all prison walls when we hold people captive with chains of unforgiveness.
We’re all livin’ in the past...we’re really always eighty milliseconds behind life happenin’. ...that’s how long it takes our brains to comprehend what’s already taken place right in front of our eyes. So, I guess I’m not alone. Everyone’s livin’ in the past, to some extent. I’ve just become a prisoner of mine. ... I’ve become a prisoner—willingly. But then I guess you really can’t be called a prisoner if you willingly carry the chains.
I was a prisoner inside my own body. I felt desperate, angry, stupid, confused, ashamed, hopeless and absolutely alone... and that this was of my own making. I could speak at home, how come I couldn't outside it? I have never been able to find the right words to describe what it was like. Imagine that for one day you are unable to speak to anyone you meet outside your own family, particularly at school/college, or out shopping, etc., have no sign language, no gestures, no facial expression. Then imagine that for eight years, but no one really understands. It was like torture, and I was the only person that knew it was happening. My body and face were frozen most of the time. I became hyperconscious of myself when outside the home and it was a relief to get back as I was always exhausted. I attempted to hide it (an impossible task) because I felt so ashamed that I couldn't do what other people seemed to find so natural and easy - to speak. At times I felt suicidal.
Suicides - you read of it…but you don’t know the truth, if you were to see it you would go insane! Cut throats, cut wrists, hangings, suffocating, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, more shit. Suicides always shit themselves, did you know that! Life’s final shit, the final act of madness; smell that you rats! Clean me up you pigs, zip me up in the bag you scum and get me out of here… Get me the fuck out of here…get me out!
In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.
So if all what I’ve said is the definition of insanity then the next thing is how do you define an evil bastard? People can mix evil and insanity up, thinking both to be the one and self same thing…wrong! Let me tell you about evil, first you smell it, secondly you feel it, thirdly you taste it and finally you need to destroy it.
They soon lost interest in Sofya. She was just one more prisoner -with no more idea of her destination than anyone else. No one asked her name and patronymic; no one remembered her surname. She realized with surprise that although the process of evolution had taken millions of years, these people had needed only a few days to revert to the state of cattle, dirty and unhappy, captive and nameless.
After six long hours of driving and three rest stops, Tiger pulls up to a snow-topped, metal speaker box just outside the State Penitentiary's first gate in Walla Walla. As he rolls down his window and snow flies in his face, Joshua starts begging for a Happy Meal.I turn around, snapping at him. "This ISN'T MCDONALDS and YOU AREN'T HUNGRY. NOW SHUT UP BRAT."A loud scratchy masculine voice blasts out of the speaker. "CAN I HELP YOU?"Tiger leans out the window, as he answers- We're here to visit Raven Chandler."HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE?""Yes sir. I've been here A LOT." "WHERE'S HIS MOTHER?""I don't know.. I haven't seen her in months.""NOT THE PRISONER'S MOTHER. THE BRAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR JEEP.""Oh- HIM-" As he turns, smiling and sticking his tongue out at Joshua, I lean towards his window to answer the guard's question. "SHE'S IN VEGAS, SIR. I'M BABYSITTING. HE'S MY GODSON." When the speaker remains disturbingly silent for far too long, I continue. "HE'S A GOOD BOY SIR. HE WON'T BE ANY TROUBLE- I SWEAR." "THAT'S RIGHT," Tiger said. "HE SWEARS ON THE LITTLE BRAT'S MOTHER'S GRAVE.
She is shocked by the rows of thick Plexiglas windows, each equipped with a telephone, each with a prisoner on one side and an outsider on the other. There is a teenage girl chatting with a prisoner who is presumably her father. There’s a married couple talking to their daughter. There’s a woman with a baby in her arms, sobbing into her phone as she begs her husband not to plead guilty for his crimes. Jail is terrifying to Geraldine, not only because it’s a house of criminals but also because it’s a cold slap in the face, a reminder of where she will eventually end up. “You’ve got to stay with me the whole time, Callo! I’m serious, you CANNOT leave me here.”“I’ll never,” Callo vows, but he’s eyeing her strangely. “Just remember which side of the glass you’re on right now, Geraldine.
Insanity is a very lonely and empty existence - it’s painfully true. They may laugh and smile, and skip and dance, but behind all the faces there is hollowness like a bottomless pit. The living dead, depression is a terrible illness, so is psychosis, the mentally inflicted beyond cure.
Nowadays I just don’t care; I’ve taken the Frank Zappa stance. I am who I am! Some love me, some loathe me, some respect me and some despise me. But after all that’s been, I still love the insane! As they’re exciting, dangerous and highly explosive! For me mad dogs are gentlemen.
I went through a period where I couldn’t keep off the establishment’s roofs, it was a serious urge I had. To look at a drainpipe and start shaking with excitement, nobody knows the feeling of hitting a prison roof, not unless you’ve done it. Let me tell you, it’s like a lotto win - it’s power. You’re the governor; it’s a kick in the teeth to the system.
Violence leads to madness, it fills you with crazy thoughts. You sleep it, eat it and shit it. You become a time bomb. They push you a bit more – you blow up. They beat you and you survive. You get strong and you blow again. So how long can a man live this way? I’ll tell you…until he dies, if need be. It becomes a way of life, but I don’t remember it, why? Simple…it’s painful; it’s empty and alone. Your cell becomes a hole in the earth, it sucks you in. You drown in your own bitterness, it’s not right to live this way.
Prison madness is much the same! Insanity is plentiful in prisons. These days with the drug culture it’s not a lot of difference, as a lot of convicts make themselves psychotic and paranoid. Many end up killers, all over petty and minor problems. Where men would once squabble, fight and kill over a ½ oz of bacca they now do the same over a gram of white powder or a bag of brown!
Urges like the loony who enjoys strangling, it’s his buzz. He gets depressed when in seclusion, as he can’t strangle anybody so in the end he hangs himself in turmoil. Their brain can’t handle it. He wants so bad to kill, but they will not let him, so he has to kill himself.
The asylum years taught me a lot about myself. Bear in mind I’m the only lunatic in the United Kingdom who spent time in all three max secure asylums, which you should now know are…Rampton, Broadmoor and Ashworth. Don’t ask me which is the best or the worst, as how do you compare insanity with insanity?
Broadmoor creeps into your blood, the walls touch the sky and the grounds suck you in, they’ve even got their own burial ground. We called it the ‘madman’s hole’, it smelt of fear; a stillness and even the birds seemed to have a stone face like their eyes were made of marble. So many monsters, men of hell, I don’t know how a sane man can keep sane in there.
She sat in a secluded room, she was mad, but she could not accept it; so she was neither sane nor insane. She could not be either until she knew herself, so in limbo she must die. She kept stuffing toilet roll into her mouth. They found her choked to death!
I am a creation of the establishment, I realise I’m not as strong as life itself, but I also realise death will suck me in. The eyes and fingers are pointing in my direction. For me, there is only one way – one road, one signpost; it reads, ‘Hell’. It’s a one-way ticket; there are no brakes on my vehicle, there is no way out, only one way in.
Sometimes I stare into a pool of piss, I see my reflection, I picture a hole in my face, there’s nothing there, it’s vanished. I watch the maggots turn to flies, and they fly off with bits of flesh from my body. I attempt to wipe it clear from my mind, but the nice thoughts get swallowed up. I can’t think nice for too long…it would destroy me.
Take outside - freedom. What is it? What does it mean to a madman? I’ll tell you, we go years through a lifetime with no love, no sex, no nice food and no nice clothes. So when it comes…we choke on it! The kindness strangles us; we can’t cope, so we make pigs of ourselves.
You get used to the brain being squeezed. At nighttime in the darkness of your emptiness, it seems to swell back up and gives you some peace. In the darkness even the pain is not so bad. A bruise heals. (Time is the treatment.) But it’s your mind that’s tortured. Your thoughts are in turmoil and despair. Feelings of awesome revenge and destruction manifest themselves.
I personally could never come to terms with my label of ‘Criminally Insane’. Just because of my violent outbursts in prison, don’t mean to say I’m mad. Obviously I had become a disruptive element within the penal system. Uncontrollable! Unpredictable! But that don’t make insanity!
Just imagine, you’re on a stretcher in the hospital, being wheeled to the operating theatre, they inject you, put you to sleep…anaesthetic. You drift into blackness, you’re out and you’re the closest yet to death. Then a surgeon cuts into your body, rips you open, goes deep inside. Looks within, pulls a bit out, puts bits in, sews you up. Then! If you’re lucky, you awake! Some don’t wake, this is my point, will you wake? Why should you? How can you? That’s the black hole of madness you’re in! Screaming to get out: ‘Alive’ or just ‘Sane’! You want out of it, you want to see the light!
Just take my advice and stay away from those psychiatrists they’re dangerous. And if you’re 13 years old and sitting in front of one do what I never…chin him ‘cos if you don’t you’ll live to regret it. You talk to your mum and dad (they know you best) and keep your problems in the family.
Insanity can be a heavy cross to bear; I mean look at all those people in loony bins compared to those that are free and walking the streets – a tiny percentage are classed as mad. The incidence of mental problems amongst people is said to be rising, so what do they go and do, they cut the amount of asylums by half! Whoever makes these decisions has to be a loon and a half!
They ask themselves: “What will he do?” “How will he react?” “Will he go mad?” “Will he bite?” “Will he be armed?” They’re pumped up with fear. Adrenaline pumping, fingers tense on the trigger, brains racing. And I’m cool as a cat! The name ‘Charles Bronson’ causes panic! The name ‘Mickey Peterson’ causes stress! The police all love to arrest me, as I’m the most exciting madman they will ever arrest! It’s a fact. So here I am years later, and I’m still the madman. There is no escaping my past.
Mad people are very emotionally orientated! They have complex feelings, they’re easily upset, but are also easy to please! Most mad people have lonely lives, as nobody understands them. So they become “Lost Souls.” They dream a lot. Go within their minds to search - some will turn strange, become dangerous. So a madman is created! His world becomes a mission.
I’ve been an inmate in Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth. I was one of ‘them’. I was once Britain’s most unstable madman! This book is a complete one off! If you’re a nervous type of reader then don’t read it. You’ve been warned! You are now entering the world of insanity; please keep hold of your sanity until the book comes to a stop!
In the case of Albertine, I felt that I should never discover anything, that, out of that tangled mass of details of fact and falsehood, I should never unravel the truth: and that it would always be so, unless I were to shut her up in prison (but prisoners escape) until the end.
The thoughts of a prisoner—they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?
THE CURSEMay they neverReturn home at night...May you have no part of eventide,May you have no room of your own,Nor road, nor return.May your days be all exactly the same,Five Fridays in a row,Always an unlucky Tuesday,No Sunday,May you have no more little worries,Tears or inspiration,For you yourself are the greatest worry on earth:Prisoner!
After a week he was moved to a different wing and into a shared six-by-eight with a grizzled old con called Alf. He had faded tattoos that stained most of the visible skin on his hands, arms and neck a dull blue, sharp eyes and a thick beard that made his mouth look like an axe wound on a bear.