I would like to serve the movement by getting killed. This would be my crime, a dirty scourge of humanity named Sherwood Burke would get killed first. I would like to bleed to death in front of everyone, I want to go cold in front of the cameras. I want to be known as a person that got shot for political reasons. I want to be like Socrates, Jesus, Marcus Cicero and William Wallace, I want to be executed. But no one will let me die for a reason. Instead one day on some stupid Wednesday I will die in a gun fight over a drug deal gone wrong. Maybe I will outlive all this incarceration and die a peaceful old man with a wife, surrounded by children who love me. No that won’t happen. I am determined and I take it very seriously that my life ends up shitty and stupid. Instead of marching on Washington or on Wall Street, I will play video games and smoke weed in living rooms full of thrift store furniture across America.
No one at Wall Street is thinking about me in this treatment prison. They don’t care about me sitting in here rotting away, they probably think I am the scum of the earth too. I feel like scum, I feel like shit that needs to be wiped and flushed down the toilet. People look at me and think I am what is bad about America. I shouldn’t join any protest, I should just stay in correctional facilities.
I have no voice.
Criminal Thought #4. After I get out of prison I will finish college and get an economics degree. I will go to New York and become a stock broker or a hedge funder, I will work my way up and achieve a high-level position. They will be very impressed with my organizational and troubleshooting skills. I will be in charge of things. I will have power. I will have so much money I will buy into large businesses and sit on the Board of Directors. I will give myself bonuses. I will rake in the cash. I will hire lawyers to find loopholes so I don’t have to pay any taxes, it will be funny as shit. I will use the whole world as my playground, nothing will matter to me. I will hire lobbyists to deregulate my sector of the economy. I will not give a fuck about workers or nature. Fuck nature will be my slogan. Fuck the middle-class will be my slogan. Fuck everyone that gets in my way. I will only think about myself. I will pay my entry level employees $8.50 an hour, I don’t care if they have mouths to feed or student loan payments, it doesn’t matter to me. I will only put my factories in China and Mexico, and if I do put a factory in America it will be in places that give me a 15 year tax rebate. I hate taxes, I hate the worker. I will vote to have health insurance taken away from millions, I will vote so hospitals let people die who don’t have health insurance. I will watch the masses burn. I will vote to take away social security; I will watch the elderly burn. I don’t care if the elderly are homeless, fuck ’em, why don’t they work harder? Take a fucking bath and get a job. That will be my slogan, my life-affirming prayer to the gods, take a fucking bath and get a job. They will take a bath and get a job making $8.50 an hour. I will make millions, maybe even billions. I will care about nothing, my life will be good and theirs won’t, who gives a fuck. I will start giving giant campaign contributions to politicians, I will make them into what I want them to be, they will do what they are told. I will give them prestige and power, my prestige will be less than theirs but my power will be greater, who gives a fuck about virtue, about goodness, about harmony, when I will have all the power. I want all the power, I want everything, I will become part owner of oil companies and banks, then I will be like a god. I want to be like a god, I will rise so high that Forbes will put me on their cover. Everyone will know then I am truly a god to be feared. I will never allow a union at any of my businesses, I will never allow my workers to strike or ask for better pay. I will fire them all if they want anything. I will not pay my taxes, I will get offshore accounts to hide my money. It will be beautiful, but sadly it won’t be criminal. Which means I can’t do it, I only like to do criminal things.
Criminal Thought #5. I am sitting on the lower floor. I keep looking at my fellow prisoners. I realize I don’t like them. I am like them, but I can’t relate. They apologize for their crimes, they feel bad about doing horrible things. I don’t feel bad. I tell my case manager that I feel bad to get out of here, but I don’t actually feel bad at all. I don’t give a fuck about all the people I ever beat up, I don’t care about doing drugs, I like drugs, I don’t care about the things I’ve stolen, I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me. Sometimes I sit and wait for it to bother me, I try to get the guilt to come, maybe swell some tears, but it doesn’t come, nothing comes, I feel innocent. I need to rephrase that, I take full responsibility for my crimes, I did them, I chose to do them, but I don’t consider your verdict valid. I went to prison because you have the weapons, the people with the weapons wanted me to go, so I went, that’s all. I am here because of weapons. I don’t have an army to combat you, therefore I must recognize your authority and do what you want.
I think I commit crimes because I don’t know anything. I just don’t know anything. I think knowing something implies ‘a calling.’ People in America have ‘a calling.’ God told Heidelberg that she should be in corrections, Heidelberg believed God and worked in corrections, she likes corrections, she likes power, she likes the snobbery of looking down on criminals. Now, of course God didn’t call her to work in corrections, there was something about her childhood that led her to having a certain personality that found working in corrections very exciting. I have never found anything that exciting, nothing calls me. My personality finds the world and its work revolting. The modern world revolts me. Actually I don’t know if the modern world revolts me. I don’t know what revolts me. I wanted to be something, I know that, I grew up thinking that I would grow up and be something. I got good grades in school, I was impressive, I played football and scored touchdowns. I have had sex with attractive women. I have touched young firm breasts and ran my penis along long smooth legs. I have no worldview, I don’t want to just believe in being Democrat or Republican, or Green, or atheist, or Christian, I don’t want any of it. It all seems like shit made up by advertisers. But this is stupid, simpleminded complaining. I have never felt like I was part of the group. It doesn’t matter what the group is, I just don’t know how to feel like part of it. I want so badly at times to feel One with other people, I want to walk into a bar and start dancing with well-known friends, I want to go to a political rally and feel the force of collective participation, I want to go to a football game and cheer in unison for Our team to win, I want to go to a family gathering and be excited about seeing cousins and my aunt’s new baby boy. I don’t even feel good around criminals, criminals are my people, but I still feel odd around them. I feel like I am missing something in my heart, I don’t think I am a sociopath, I am never really mean to people. I have empathy, I know that the resident supervisors have their own sad lives they must deal with, I know Heidelberg has her stupid problems, raising kids and being paranoid all the time has to be tough. I know this, I can calculate it all in my head. But I don’t feel One with anyone. To have ‘a calling’ a person has to feel One with some group of people, for example: people in corrections, people in marketing, people who are factory workers, people who are circus freaks, people who are accountants, people who are housewives, people who are in politics, people who are musicians, these are groups of people. They all consider themselves a certain type of person that enjoys being around those other certain types of people. I can’t find my group, sometimes I think, I almost have the group, I am almost there, sitting with my group, feeling One, but then, it is gone. To be in a group means to be part of Something, which means a person must believe in that Something, they must have faith in that Something. I have no faith which means I have no belief. How can I live without belief, without faith? I don’t know. My heart beats. I keep living. I keep feeding myself, every day NEOTAP feeds me and I eat. I am hungry, therefore I eat. If I really wanted to die, I would find a way to kill myself, I could find a way. But I don’t kill myself. Every day passes and I still have not killed myself. Why don’t I kill myself I keep asking myself. I have no answer, I keep eating and living, hoping that someday I want to be in a group. That one day a group comes and I feel One with it. And it feels natural. Oh man, what a phrase, it feels natural. I want things to feel natural, but they never do. Am I a fucking defective human being? I read once that Ulysses S. Grant failed at every job he ever did before he was general of the Union Army. Did he think these thoughts? I worked in a factory once and there was always a certain number of defective parts, am I a defective part? Would I, before the age of modern medicine, have died in childhood? I assume nature would have snuffed me out. But modern medicine has kept me alive. I shouldn’t be here. I should be dead. I don’t know if that makes sense. I can’t even believe my own logic anymore. Oh god, all this logic. I want something poetic to happen to me. I don’t want cognitive behavioral therapy to save me. I want some beautiful poetic experience to happen to me, where I know why I am here.