Metamorphosis

And here I am, in King County Jail, Washington, USA, “the land of the free”, awaiting the day when the servants of the state will lead me away into what they fondly believe is the dark - the dark they fear; the dark that gives them fearsome and superstitious fancies; the dark that drives them, driveling and whining, to the altars of their fear-created, anthropomorphic gods. Some intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men like Judges Doerty and Wartnik, Washington Superior Court, are monstrously cruel.

To further paraphrase Jack London, I have thought much on these matters through bloody nights and sweats of dark for months that seemed years long, I have been alone with my many selves to consult and contemplate them. I have gone through the hells of all existence to bring you news which you will share with me in a casual comfortable hour reading digitized pages.

I spent time in the dark, solitary confinement, that inmates call a living death. Through months of death-in-life I managed to attain freedom such as few men have ever known. Closest-confined, not only did I range the world but I ranged time. They who immured me gave to me, albeit unwittingly, the largess of centuries.

The residents secretly detested the old lag, Felippe Jacques When he approached them with his plan to jail me many of them laughed at him and turned away with curses about the stool. But he fooled forty of the bitterest ones in the Council House ghetto. He approached them again and again. He told of his power by virtue of his position as trusty to Stephen A. Mitchell and Audrey F. Dunbar in the administrator’s office also his control of the computer lab. But in the meantime this suborner’s too-lively imagination ran away with him. He made a slip that will probably put his accomplices in jail. [Noblesse Oblige]

As a result of his perjury, Doerty gave me twenty-five days of solitary confinement which placed me in the condemned cell in which I now write. And I, just released from eighty-six days in the dungeons and time in the jacket. I, whom even the guards ranked as too weak to work in the road gang, I, whom they left alone to recuperate from too terrible punishment caused by wrongful injection of drugs by jail authorities. At this stage I entered or, rather, I departed, for they took me away out of the sunshine and the light of day to the dungeons, and in the dungeons and in the solitary cells, out of the sunshine and the light of day, I rotted.

And here I must close this first chapter of my narrative. It is ten o’clock, and in murderers’ and rapists’ row that means lights out. Even now, I hear the soft tread of the guard as he comes to see whether I have died and to urinate in a broken toilet outside my cell door leaving a stench that permeates my cell all night. In this place mere living censures the doomed to die! [01] [Ode to King County Jail]

Published for almost sixty years, I exposed Judge Wartnik’s wife Lynn, a former co-president and now director of Council House, Seattle - a government financially-assisted independent-living complex for senior citizens. I discovered after many months of investigation that Lynn had committed gross misappropriation of federal funds and abuse of senior citizens (tenants) in a consort with about fourteen other directors and administrators (landlords) and had complicity in alleged homicide by abuse. [Homicide by Abuse]

Instead of challenging my allegations the directors unlawfully locked me out of my apartment/office for ten months without allowing me to collect my possessions or due process of law. They then arranged for me to receive an indeterminate sentence that resulted in 86 days in medium and minimum security general population. Later, they arbitrarily had me moved to an additional 25 days in solitary confinement in company with murderers and rapists. After the fact, they used perjured testimony, much of which they suborned from gullible senior citizens, to support their actions. [Rampant Judicial Delusion]

The directors retaliated against me for publishing constitutionally protected information obtained from public records by trying to kill the messenger. Without access to a lawyer, Doerty immediately had me placed in a tank (cell built for twelve that houses 18 inmates) without allowing me time or opportunity to purge the fabricated contempt that he used as a reason for imprisonment or time to put my affairs in order. This process has become a national pastime when journalists do not allow themselves to become embedded in the bureaucracy to write government propaganda.

Washington state courts routinely sacrifice moral principles to political expediency. Increasingly, judges and lawyers have corrupted the American legal system beyond recognition. Legal philosophy has descended to nihilism - pragmatism that tends toward amoral behavior by judges who reject moral distinctions and repudiate previous legal theories.

Intolerant judges have lost sight of the moral foundation for rule of law. They routinely destroy individual freedom and deny the right to equality before the law by denying litigants a hearing. They propound a belief that future social improvement depends upon demolishing established political and social structures and defying legal principles.

Alexis de Tocqueville, [02] described American lawyers as a natural aristocracy - the intellectual basis for a profession based upon venerable precedents, formality, and predictability. At that time, judges stood apart from the majority and citizens respected and relied upon lawyers to avoid potential tyranny. The public no longer shares Tocqueville's view evidenced by the proliferation of jokes and cartoons about judges and lawyers. The legal aristocracy has shed its professional independence for commerce, personal greed, and self-aggrandizement.

Litigants can no longer trust judges to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law consequently they lose all respect for the process. Judges see judicial power as a weapon of revenge against heterodox opinion. Increasingly, they use anger and incivility to intimidate witnesses that do not conform to a preconceived ideology. They assault the self-respect of litigants to silence them and indulge themselves in ex parte relationships to achieve personal agendas. They take journalists hostage then demand silence or self-censorship as an unconstitutional ransom - a Kafkaesque situation to say the least.

Doerty has repeatedly thwarted appeal of his decisions through manipulation. He has denied lawyers access to court records despite a supreme court ruling that requires the appellate court to hear the case. Moreover, his Chief Administrative Officer, Paul L. Sherfey, has unlawfully withheld hundreds of documents after repeated public records requests and despite state public disclosure laws. Doerty has now effectively recused himself and a different judge will probably preside in the trial court to decide any issues referred by the appellate court.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. [03]

Kafka conveyed in The Metamorphosis [04] the essential vision that condemns a writer to irreparable alienation which gives him the strength to contemplate his own death then survive to prepare for new deaths. In the interplay between death and survival exists an element of freedom. The struggle to maintain clarity demands another interplay between life and death. The writer must not sacrifice himself to the writing instead he dies immediately for the persona has no substance and exists only as a construction of the craving to write.

The forecast of a terrible death for not having lived expresses the mode by which one understands estrangement. Political prisoners do not deliberately promote their condition and writing becomes their only relief. Now, political estrangement has become rife as world-wide capitalism has become the norm to the detriment of the world and the soul of society.

Kafka understood political estrangement more than any other writer of the last century. Like Kafka, modern writers learn to comprehend all forms of alienation from their own experience. That experience allows them to use words powerfully to counter the terrorism imposed upon them by despotic judges. They illustrate their condition by grasping that writing rewards them for courage in accepting death - a situation described by Antonio Gramsci when he wrote about dissent from prison in 1928 :

I would like you to understand completely, also emotionally, that I’m a political detainee and will be a political prisoner, that I have nothing now or in the future to be ashamed of in this situation. That, at bottom, I myself have in a certain sense asked for this detention and this sentence, because I’ve always refused to change my opinion, for which I would be willing to give my life and not just remain in prison. That therefore I can only be tranquil and content with myself. [05]

Ironically, a reconciliation of opposing demand and restraint placed upon writing by unlawful court orders portends a secular means of salvation which results in spiritual excellence through change - metamorphosis. The German for metamorphosis Die Verwandlung also means theatrical scene change - a move from one aspect of persona to another. Both writers and actors frequently experience such changes. The professionals among them understand those changes and maintain real perspective. [Art of Thespian Lying]

Some judges deny their own part in a sort of demonic withdrawal from reality that manifests in an inability for them to return from their fantasies. When decisions appear fantastic then delusion probably helps concoct them. In a fantasy world, traditional Aristotelian rhetorical structures cease to have relevance and dénouement, solving problems conclusively, serves no useful purpose. The judiciary must not determine that a writer deserves punishment for writing because it violently imposes upon conventional reality and constitutional rights related to free expression and assembly.

General Population - 27 February through 23 May 2002 - 86 days

In solitary confinement, self-perception goes through important shifts although time moves on relentlessly. When self-consciousness begins to dim so does any sense of time. Prisoners with predetermined sentences can make calendars and check off the days in anticipation of release. The few that suffer indeterminate sentences have nothing to count. For them, obliteration of time coincides with obliteration of self. An indeterminate sentence affects a person very differently from a sentence based upon time to be served. Nothing to count takes away any expectation of release. One can only record the passage of time.

Solitary Confinement (23-hour lockdown) - 23 May through 17 June 2002 - 25 days

More important, unconscious freedom helps one avoid the Faustian phenomenon, the sale of one’s soul to the devil in exchange for power and wealth as one’s tormentors have done. One avoids developing a similar diabolical personality to that which inherently pervades their psyche. Perversely, oppression encourages one to rewrite reality to overcome and enlighten oneself. However, unconscious freedom helps prisoners, denied their humanity by tyrants posing as arbiters of justice, to accept their situation.

In jail it seems that all that lies beyond plain death relates to tyrannical cruelty by judges:

Tyrants, in order to do both things together, both to kill and to make that anger felt, have used all their ingenuity to find a way to prolong death. They want their enemies to be gone, but not so fast that they may not have leisure to savor their vengeance. Thereupon they are in great perplexity; for if the tortures are violent, they are short; if they are long, they are not painful enough to suit them. So they go dispensing their instruments of torture. . . . [06]

Judicial perception of charity as a humiliation underscores the need for people with humility to take over. Instead of insuring charitable and fair treatment judges and their associates self-aggrandize while their families perform good deeds as benevolent dictators. No change will ever come about as long as they consistently demand a show of contrition with regard to age, race, and poverty. They apparently find it impossible not to make a show of their charity and good works and cannot leave without copious thanks. A profusion of benefactor names engraved upon everything that does not move emphasizes this point. In many cases, the cost of the engraving exceeds the cost of the gift.

George Orwell described loss of self-respect as a fate worse than poverty when he wrote about a screever (sidewalk artist):

He makes no excuses for his life and is not ashamed of his poverty or the fact that he must live on the charity of those who admire his drawings. He had faced the position and made a philosophy for himself. Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or let it trouble him. He may never escape from poverty, but he has freed himself from the guilt that burdens the lives of so many poor people.

Though society may look down on him he does not think less of himself because he is poor, nor does he accept the notion that he should be grateful for charity. He regards the loss of self-respect as a fate worse than poverty. In his eyes beggars are contemptible only if they come to share society’s contempt for them. When they beg, they must always have the decency to be ungrateful. [07]

Council House (Seattle) benefactors rank as non-profit hypocrites because they do not have the decency to allow the people whom they try to control to remain ungrateful for the indignities imposed upon them by administrators. Both the directors and administrators take away their self-respect by treating disadvantage as a shameful disease or a condition that signifies a sinful soul. Their condescension infects disadvantaged people until they become incapable of helping themselves. They deny their victims the right to change their circumstances and thinking - the ultimate spiritual metamorphosis that will keep them housed outside jail. The judiciary supports that thesis by denying due process of law. [Institutionalized Racism]

Clear vision questions whether social reality makes sense and that human behavior yields a discernable pattern that defines causation. Metamorphosis initially forces a concentration of self upon itself that endangers existence as a person, however, a state of solitude, as opposed to loneliness, overcomes personal deterioration. Some inmates use religion as a means of attaining that state.

Illogically, one derives hope for a release from an animal condition by creating physical comfort and adapting to adverse conditions. This separates consciousness from self. Ironically, as an outcast, one feels the possibility of relief. One expects an ultimate resolution instead of restoration of the status quo upon overcoming the abuse.

Physical pain prevents clear vision if one allows it to debilitate. It can turn solitary confinement into a nightmare. Many prisoners learn that calm and spiritual self-awareness denies fear and terror by converting solitary confinement into a state of solitude. That calm does not degenerate into silence instead it promotes clear vision. The lucidity and serenity of inmates during clandestine interviews proved that point - they had lost their despair through acceptance of their situation.

Where conclusion passes the point of absurdity through contradictory solutions - incarceration and freedom equally apply. Prison inmates can see no way out. They eliminate consciousness in a timeless animal world that they create for themselves. In despair, they become animal-like. In that state, they can never, well hardly ever, realize that salvation lies not in the elimination of consciousness but in a free union of conscious and unconscious existence. That gives rise to plans for the future without projecting outcomes - especially projections that include a return to jail.

The system needs changing not only in the attitude of those with power but a change in physical circumstances surrounding punishment. If one has nothing to lose why should one care about losing it? For example, the court order for telephone restriction automatically required a 23-hour lock-down, incommunicado, in solitary confinement (“the hole”) on the 11th floor of the maximum security wing of King County jail - despite special facilities for elderly inmates with TV and coffee on another floor. Why should a prisoner care about following societal rules when they base upon amoral premises that place him in a position where he has nothing to lose? [Cruel and Unusual Punishment]

Nmesis.

© Copyright 2002 by Paul Trummel
All Rights Reserved: 05 Jun 02/20:48 PST
Edition: #801-25-00/07-0129-10:16
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