In his cell, Ashker began to call out to leaders of Mexican American and Black gangs in cells nearby and listen through a vent. Their conversations turned to stories of moral beauty: talk about parents and grandparents, fathers and uncles, sisters and brothers, and children. And how hard solitary was. Ashker and his neighbors called for a truce among the rival gangs. On July 8, 2013, Ashker led that hunger strike, which involved more than 29,000 prisoners protesting that solitary confinement is a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits the use of cruel and unusual punishment. It was the largest hunger protest in U.S. history. Now that is vast. In 2015, the case was settled in favor of the prisoners, and more than 2,000 prisoners statewide were moved out of solitary confinement.
When Louis introduced me to the SQ prisoner, we made glancing eye contact, a 250-millisecond act of recognition. I felt a rush of goose bumps at being part of something much bigger than any study I would ever do or talk I might give.
At the end of that day, the men in blue stood to recite the principles of restorative justice. After the shuffle and groaning of two hundred people rising to their feet, a silence fell over us, in that powerful, quiet moment of shared attention. And then we all recited together:
I believe that violence is not a solution to any problem.
I believe that every person is endowed with a sacred dignity.
I believe that every person is capable of changing, healing, and being restored.
I pledge to respect the dignity of every person.
I pledge to overcome violence with love and compassion.
I pledge to accompany and support anyone affected by crime on their healing journey.
I pledge to be an instrument of restoration, of reconciliation and forgiveness.
At the last word, “forgiveness,” men turned to one another to shake hands, clasp arms, chuckle softly, and make eye contact in the aftermath of allowing goodness its own speech. The room seemed illuminated. Standing at the back of the chapel, Louis and I broke a rule: we embraced. We did so at that slightly oblique angle at which men are wont to hug, one leaning a shoulder into the chest of the other.
That kind of embrace was the last act of reverence between Rolf and me. A couple of weeks before his death, he had been reclining on his couch in the living room, drifting in and out toward a deep sleep; the opiates rendered it oceanic and dreamlike. He rose to a sitting position on the couch and called me, my wife, Mollie, and our daughters, Natalie and Serafina, over to come near him. We pulled in chairs, sitting in a semicircle around him. He gave each of us gifts, telling stories, so often humorous and quirky, about the place of our moral beauty in his life. My gifts were a red, white, and blue wristband, reminiscent of the headband of the same colors that I wore every day when I was thirteen, and a French Opinel knife. I touch its wooden handle every day. The sensations that arise through that tactile contact make me think of Rolf’s hands.
Labored, deliberate, Rolf slowly stood up. Body angled by pain, he shuffled to his kitchen. I followed, my body’s motion synced up with his since our first years of life. There we embraced. For only two or three seconds. But it felt longer. As we released, he looked to the ground and said:
We made our way.
Other than those words, I can’t really remember what we all said that last day in conversation. There was no summing up of a life or speechmaking. What I remember is feeling his chest and shoulder leaning into mine, the top of his head touching near my temple, his large hands on my shoulder blades, and the feelings of awe that ensued. I feel this tactile impression of Rolf today when I embrace people, like Louis. It brings to my mind Rolf’s face and eyes. I can almost hear his laugh, and how he answered the phone “Dachman!” It sends me down webs of memories of his courage, kindness, strength, and overcoming: how as a fifth grader he protected the least popular girl in my seventh-grade class from eighth-grade bullies; how he loved to barbecue for large crowds of friends; how he could throw a softball into the sky until it would disappear; or how in his everyday work as a speech therapist he taught the impoverished and most ignored children in our country, who have lived lives thrown off course by ACEs, to utter the sounds of speech. Allowing goodness its own speech.
My default self rightly observes that I will never feel that embrace again, or be inspired by new acts of his moral beauty. But my body tells me in this sense of being touched that he is still somehow nearby. That our life together is registered in some permanent, electrochemical awareness in the millions of cells in my skin that make sense of being embraced by my brother. That there is something beyond the corporal body of others’ lives that remains in the cells of our bodies when they leave. And that there is so much moral beauty, and so much good work to do.
FIVE COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE How Moving in Unison Stirs the Awe of Ritual, Sport, Dance, Religion, and Public Life
Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and that quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation. . . . Probably because a collective emotion cannot be expressed collectively without some order that permits harmony and unison of movement, these gestures and cries tend to fall into rhythm and regularity.
• ÉMILE DURKHEIM
After graduating from college, Radha Agrawal led a hard-charging life in New York City as an investment banker, drinking cocktails she had no thirst for and having conversations that left her mind wandering. Things changed at Burning Man, the annual celebration in the Nevada desert.
Like festivals throughout history, Burning Man weaves together the wonders of life in an experiment in collective awe. Money is not allowed (although the celebrants are usually wellheeled!), so people give to meet mundane needs, enjoying rushes of oxytocin and vagus nerve activation in their acts of food sharing, trade, and grateful embrace. Desert sunrises and sunsets begin and end each day to the whoas and aahs of appreciative observers. Music and dance move people into patterns of collaboration, openness, and curiosity throughout the day. Trippy, immersive art installations astonish throughout the pop-up city.
Radha was transformed in dance:
I couldn’t sleep and rode my bicycle out to deep playa (what they call the far ends of the grounds) by myself and found a giant art car (a converted bus that had the most epic sound system I had ever heard with the most incredible bass that I could feel deep into my bones) with a converted roof that was now the throne of a DJ and a hundred-plus people in the sexiest costumes dancing. I threw my bike on the ground and found a spot in the dusty dance floor and closed my eyes and felt the music and bass course through my body in a way that I had never fully allowed (I was sober too!) and let the beat move me the way my body was meant to move, probably for the very first time.