Biting Myself

   Most of the other prisoners here on death row are fairly preoccupied with their appeals and other legal work. So I’ve had to invent ways to politely parry conversations that head in this direction since I have no interest in that kind of stuff at all. I’ve managed to come up with an explanation for my unusual lack of interest that I think most other prisoners can understand. I do it by putting it in terms that they are all familiar with.

   I tell them that in my view the system is the worst criminal of all, in every sense of the term. Then I ask them to imagine what they would do if a gang of prisoners accosted them in the shower, put a shank to their neck and said, “If you suck our dicks we might let you live.”

   And, before I get a response I sometimes remind them (depending on how far I want to take the conversation) that they actually have three choices. They can suck dick, and hope to live, or accept their death with at least some dignity, or play along long enough to try to bite off a dick, and then die knowing they at least hurt someone in the gang.

   Most prisoners quickly embrace this third option. So, I tell them I tried that already, and there are drawbacks. First of all, you have to take the dick in your mouth before you can bite it, and secondly, it’s a lot harder to bite off someone’s dick that it sounds, even under those circumstances (I say, “trust me, I know”).

   Most prisoners seem to get my point, but insist that they’re going to fight and bite first chance they get, and the conversation either turns, or just ends right there. But, what I have yet to tell any other prisoner, simply because I have not me tone who has asked, is that the reason I did the insane things I did (i.e. rape and murder children) was because I was trying to bite off as many dicks as I could before “they” killed me. But then something happened that allowed me to “see” that I was only biting myself.

[J.D. 3-7-2014]

No Excuses, And No Reasons

Sometimes I think that maybe I just got weak, and that's the real reason I brought Shasta home and turned myself in instead of killing her the way I intended. But, if the truth were as simple as that I would have embraces it and killed myself a long time ago.

The real reasons that I stopped killing people remains as much a mystery to me as to anyone. And yet even though it is a big mystery to me, I can't help but feel I somehow KNOW the reason on some level that words, or even thoughts, can't touch.

If I say it was because I got weak, and caved in to my human sentiment, or if I say I had a revelation - even just a psychological one - and realized the horrific error I was making, then I am still only inventing reasons - or "stories" as any neurologist would tell you - to explain something that happened that there is simply no "rational" explanation for.

After I was arrested I kept telling anyone who would listen that there was no excuse for the terrible things I had done. But, what I didn't tell people, because I did not yet understand, was that there was also no reason (that words will ever express) for why I stopped doing those things and turned myself in. And yet at least when I did try to articulate a reason I invariably qualified it with statements about the ultimate ineffable nature of the reason I was attempting to express.

But now I can finally admit, just as there is no excuse for my crimes, there is no reason for my surrender. And yet, despite this truth, the fact remains that I did stop killing, and I did turn myself over to the police, and I did freely and truthfully confess to my crimes with no coersion or benefit for me (i.e. I made no plea deals in exchange for a confession I hadn't already confessed). Something caused me to make a radical change in my behavior, and numerous brain scans, and psych tests show conclusively that it wasn't psychological (or at least not neurological).

So what happened? When the world (i.e. society in general) knows the answer to that question - without words or reasons, as I do - then, and only then, will there be hope for real peace.

(J.D. 3-2-2014)

I Was

I was, therefore I am and will always be.

Albert Einstein once wrote in a condolence letter to the family of a good friend who had died, "For us who are convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent."

The point he was making is the same as the one I am making with the statement above, "I was, therefore I am and will always be."

If we exist at all, in any moment in time, then we exist for all eternity. This is what a "convinced physicist" realizes. It is a self evident truth, but one that only becomes apparent when we are able to see past the illusion of time, as Einstein so precisely articulates. Mystics have been seeing beyond this illusion for eons, and they have been saying the same thing as well as our illusion-based languages would allow. But only recently have physicists been developing a new language that allows us (THEM actually) to discuss these "scientific" truths directly for the first time. As a result, these truths are seeping into the consciousness of everyday people, and soon an awakening will occure on a global scale, exactly as the prophets have long foretold.

In fact, from the correct perspective, the awakening has already occured. As I realized shortly after my arrest in 2005, and have asserted many times since, "If it has an end, then it already has."Which is just another way of saying the same thing.

(J.D. 2-25-14)