SKIPPING APRIL FOOL'S DAY

One year ago on April Fool’s Day I received my parole papers with a yet to be determined ERD (Early Release Date) and as I reflect back—and here is where I admit that yeah, Charles Manson is indeed crazy—but as I go back in my mind to that particular day, knowing that in due time I’d be a free man (with restrictions of course), I can’t help wondering just how crazy Charlie really is? Or me? Or anyone else for that matter?

In Marlin Marynick’s “Charles Manson Now” he quotes the infamous prisoner:

Got a bunch of dumb people who think that this is their house. They’re working to protect their slave masters. They’re slaves, man. More locked up than we are. So should the associate warden or program administrator who can’t do anything … All he does is come back and get a cup of coffee and a piece of paper and walks around with it all day. So he can take his paycheck back to his wife, who is his warden, she tells him what to do. p.272

I go back in my mind to an empty house, I’m alone, I’m perusing the paperwork, the conditions imposed on me. I try not to pay too much attention to Charlie’s words:

A lot of people don’t know the way a court works. See, the civil court and the divorce court run on the criminal court. Different chambers of justice, and honor, run upside down, and backwards. p.74

I did an 18-year sentence, I allowed my identity to be stripped, and now I’m following the conditions of my parole. I can still hear Charlie:

All I mean to you is what you can make out of it, what you can get out of it … I’m the money, I’m the card game, I’m a deck of cards.  p.320

No one is ever truly free. We all have to answer to someone. Also, I know that quoting Charles Manson makes me guilty by association, makes me CRAZY. At least on paper. Again, I’ve shown my hand. So hit print, copy, and file. Marynick’s explanation regarding “doing time”—WE’RE ALL DOING TIME—depicts the gravity of my sentence, of my parole, of my status:

Letting a person get close to you and exposing too much of your personal thoughts or feelings is dangerous because that person is highly likely to use that information against you. p.145-146

Again, hit print, hit print, hit print … run with it to the wild buffalo … how dare he quote Charlie … that’s just insane … and this here is my proof.

*****

Pictured at top is yours truly enjoying the fruits of his labor.

Pictured immediately above, from Marynick's book, is one of Charles Manson's art pieces, where the page folds - kind of looks like a butt crack.