Matthew Stout

Soledad, California

6/23/09

Today I continued reflecting upon my life and what experiences I’ve had. We spend life trying to be happy and prosperous, yet happiness seems short lived and fleeting at times. The happiness we desire comes in many forms but never seems enough. Life is such a mystery. Do we eve fully understand all of life? Why do we not unite? If were not related, or a friend of another, we act like we don’t see another in need. I thought we’re all capable of teaching others, why is it that we don’t strive to inspire everyone we come in contact with? We all have a talent. I have been so depressed lately, I think it is due to realization that I’ve wasted so much time of my own life. I only pray I can give to the world with time I have left. What if we could all write a diary everyday, the digest of all humanity, the information would be a bible of life? I would want to know about my family and I could learn from others. For all records in life why is it that we don’t keep a daily one of our own life? 39-years-old and I just realized this, wow. I think the secrets of humanity would be deciphered. The bible is what? Writings of all those, eons ago, they knew to write, tell us, and now we should all chronicle our life. I shall.

6/30/09

Today is a day I reflected on my life. Life is the great unknown. The more you explore, the more you realize we all seek happiness, prosperity, love and new experiences. I often wonder why we’re so driven to news, drama, other people’s mishaps or successes. Curious? I think we’re analyzing, trying to see how we compare, how we can learn. I spend so much time dwelling on trying to get ahead in life that I missed the aspects of life right in front of me. It never fails to amaze me how we filter things out in life that can help us navigate our daily routine. I have no clue what life is about anymore. What is our true purpose? We condemn those who kill yet we justify death or intentional killing and call it justice. But a lot of times the people who kill are with mental illness. Illness nobody cared about until it was too late. Crime and punishment is but our excuse to be angry and retribution. My life growing up was chaotic; my mother was extremely abusive and alcoholic. I became what I was raised to become. Was society there to help me? Nope! Did anyone say “poor Matthew, we need to help him, he is angry and uneducated because his mother is not a loving or nurturing individual?” Do I get justice? Do I get help? Bah! I know this is my history and unless I change my perception on life I’ll never grow. Everyday for me has become a blessing where in the past it used to be just another day, because now I realize, we don’t know if “later” exists. I was thinking abut writing a book or a novel. Here I am in the University of life-state Prison. The transformation my life will undergo. I should title my book “The Making of a Saint”. The reason- I am going to spend the rest of my life giving myself to those in need. The life saving business. I have time to spread peace and kindness to everyone I come into contact with. I don’t have all of the answers, but I look forward to gleaning them from the world. Well, I am going to humble myself and pray for all. Now I am going to say goodbye to June 2009.

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Richard Navarro

San Quentin, California

June 6, 2009

Diary entry 1: I don’t want you to get me wrong about the things I wrote yesterday. Yes, at the age of thirty seven, it is nearly impossible for someone like me to change. But change I will. No matter how impossible it may seem. I won’t be like Mike, John, Martin, Dave, Greg, Ralphie, June and many, many others I’ve known, all of which are now dead. I refuse to be another victim of the ridiculous California 3-strikes law. I will make it out of this. I will make a life for myself one day. I have dreams. I want to write books. I want to sail around and explore the world on my own 28’er. I have life, out there, to live. I won’t be stuck here forever. I won’t. I am going to make it.

June 9, 2009

It’s hard sometimes. Being in here. You can’t always control your train of thought like you would like to- like you try to. Being in reception makes it all the more difficult because of all of the cell-time and lack of distractions. We’re in our cells, here, 23 hours a day, 7 days a week. There’s no TV, no radio or music, no packages nor special order, no real yard time. All you have are the books you can manage to scrounge up, the letters you write home, and your thoughts to occupy your time. When all you have to do, all day long, is read and think your heart can become heavy and it can wear you down. It does me at least. No matter how hard you fight it, no matter how hard you try and avoid it by burying yourself in a book; eventually your thoughts will catch you, spring on top of you with the vicious and heartless proficiency of a tiger after prey. There’s no escaping it. It always happens. Your mind turns towards the past, to all of your actions, interactions and deeds. The ones that hurt the most are the ones that concern or involve other people. Unbidden, your mind goes back, in a kind of endless morbid replay, to all of the worst mistakes you have made, eating at you from the inside out, relentlessly, until the sorrow and pain are almost physical. At these times it’s all you can do to maintain your sanity, to not break down, sob and cry, like a small child, because all you want to do, all you think about, day-dream about, is making it right. Yet, and this is the cruelest or torturous, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Nothing. Not one. Nothing you can do to make right your mistakes or the wrong ways you’ve treated people. Not until you get out that is. But by then it is too late. By then you’ve already been driven half-way insane with regret and are so guilt ridden that you can no longer function as a normal human being out there in society, and are doomed to a self-destructive life. One where you can never have anything; nothing real, nothing of quality. This includes friendships and love as well. Even though you want it, even though all you want is a decent, simple life filled with friends, a family, to find satisfaction in the small things in life (because they’re the most real), when all you want in life is a place to call “home”, it is denied you because you no longer deserve it; because you yourself won’t allow it. This, instead, becomes our true repentance to society, not the time we serve and suffer in prison. We give our lives up to nothing; we spend the rest of our lives on nothing but emptiness, loneliness, suffering and pain. We never stop hurting ourselves (and thereby others) and beating ourselves down until there is nothing left and we are either killed in the streets, get life in prison or O.D and die. If only I could see them all again, face to face, just for one tiny moment…but since that is hopelessly impossible then just one would do, any one, it doesn’t matter. God I just wish I could see and talk to somebody, because then I could finally say “I’m sorry”.

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Richard Valentine

San Quentin, California

April 4, 2009

I started a book called “Be Cool”. It is alright so far, I am half way through. I feel a little bit better today. Not so suicidal, and that is good. I am sick of being locked up for nothing. I guess why I love to sleep is because when I do I am off to one of the nine dimensions, doing something else. An external state of dream is heaven to me. That is why I entertain the thought of quickening my ascension to heaven. It is my way of pouting and throwing a fit that my imprisonment isn’t fair. I feel like a big baby when I express it and reflect on it. I know I am strong, and I do not want to be weak. My loved ones are my strength. I save hope, keep faith and always remember to live my dream.

May 8, 2009

I am a believer. It is a special day. A day of healing, a day of strength and power. If I cannot attain a happiness and love for myself cooped up, how am I supposed to have joy and love for myself on the outside world? God said to me that the world is my sentence. Only I can save myself.

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Thomas Turner Chambers

Bessemer, Alabama

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I received your packet of excerpts from our journals and other information about our project today, May 28, 2009. It was a pleasure to read the other writers and that others were interested with what we had written…and gratifying…I hope that my writing will help others understand that we realize that prejudice hatred and racism exist throughout the world, not just in our microscopic environment; furthermore, these trials are just as ominous a menace as the were seventy-five years ago.

…When I was sixteen years old in 1956, I joined the paratroops. I had completed my high school sophomore year the past May. After I had completed the aptitude tests the next day, I was given a high school GED…I was awarded a college one year equivalent. I had not attended any college studies when I was arrested.

I contacted the Veterans Administration and with financial support, I began my college education at Lake Butler. These studies accumulated in two degrees; an associated arts degree from Lake City community College in 1976 and a bachelor of science degree in industrial technology from Florida International University in March 1980. The degrees were given for night classes because FDOC did not schedule any college degree classes in the day time. Every able and healthy inmate was required to have a full-time job. During the years after Florida International, I have attended some post-graduate courses and have acquired several trade certificates.

I was interned in eight correctional facilities from 1972 to 1995. In 1980, I was transferred from Florida State Prison to Avon Park Correctional which was a more liberal facility. I took some course at Santa Fe Community College and Studied adult teaching methods through the education department’s partnership with the US Literacy Volunteers of America. I continued.to assist prisoners at evening classes with at least the basic fundamental of whatever discipline that was available.

…One of my better moments was when one of the guys in my program received his GED and later his associate degree in business from Santa Fe Community College before I was transferred from Avon Park to Polk Correctional Institution. I received a letter from Avon Park Educational Supervisor a few weeks ago and he wrote that my class had remained intact with my ex-student as instructor.

Evil does exist and often the balance between good and evil, light and dark, is as fragile as a dried tea leaf…I have always believed in the essential goodness of human beings, and that they have an inherent and indispensable force in them that can make them aware that they have a conscious that will guide them through their struggles with evil if they will only acknowledge it. I call this conscious the “Holy Spirit.”

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Curtis Roberts

San Quentin, California

April 4, 2009

I went all day yesterday without food, I am hungry too! It’s just that I don’t have any food in my cell to eat. At my job, the prison takes 55% of my $26.00 a month which leaves me with approx. $12.00 a month to live. Though I don’t have rent or other bills like people do who are free I do have expenses like: hygiene, coffee, creamer, sugar, food, haircut or the un-expected expenses like last week the ring Mommy gave to me got a crack in it. It cost me a jar of coffee to get it fixed by one of the inmates who works in hobby shop. So, for me its rather expensive to live—and that’s why I did not have any food yesterday.

…Life in prison sure is hard, you’d think after 14 years I would be used to it—but no, the only thing that’s happening for me is: I’m dying inside.

April 29, 2009

Today I go into surgery. I am afraid I will die. And it seems I have so much unfinished business…If these are to be my last words to you, Kitty, I say thanks to you and Anne who have encouraged me along this very long and dark rough patch. I say to my daughter, I hope (in) these 13 years of diary writings that you discover your dad’s heart. I love you my little girl.