Friday, July 14, 2006

When I came to San Quentin in l980, rehabilitation had not yet become a dirty word. During my years at the prison, I was trained in data processing; took Arts—in-Corrections classes; attended church programs; participated in the Course in Miracles, Toastmasters and Transcendental Meditation; read books on tape for the blind; and played Pozzo in the 1988 prison production of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."

But my "rehabilitation" started before getting on the bus to Quentin. In the months when I was still in the county jail, I sat stunned by all the words the district attorney used during my trial. I had no idea what these words meant, and I told myself then that I would not let unknown words trap me. I started studying the dictionary in jail and reading all I could. I began to awaken the sleeping student inside me, and thus took my first steps on my journey.

At San Quentin State Prison, I checked out all the books I could get from the prison library and education department. In one notebook, I wrote definitions. In another notebook, I used my favorite words in sentences. I became enraptured with words. I said certain words aloud numerous times, and pondered a word in the way I pondered the garden in front of the prison chapel or a sparrow singing in a tree. I took all the adult high-school education classes offered in the day time. At night, I took all the college classes and self-help/personal-expansion programs offered. All of these programs stressed taking responsibility for your actions, forgiveness, growth, love and peace.

Words would be what self-rehabilitated me and my thinking. I learned a few new words each day, and each new word brought forth a geyser erupting inside my mind and soul. The more words I read, studied and pondered, the clearer life became. I became richer and deeper inside. I could see, taste, feel and touch the growth taking shape inside me, and I understood things I had never understood before. It was like I walked down an endless hallway full of dark rooms and, with each room I passed, a light came on and I learned something new.

Now, it is 2006 and a different world. There are no trades or higher education classes offered in the prison where I am housed. Last year, the California Department of Corrections was renamed the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, but I know from my studies that words can be used to clarify and words can be used to confuse. If the word "rehabilitation" is to be more than a meaningless string of 14 letters, the state must muster the resources and will to offer again a wide range of programs such as those offered in California prisons 20 years ago. These are the programs that allowed many of us to change ourselves.

For, ultimately, rehabilitation is always self-rehabilitation. Prison had to offer the programs, and I had to make myself active in these programs and in my own self-directed studies. Self-rehabilitation works. I had to choose to change, which meant to get to know myself and find my niche, bliss and myth in life. I had to till the endless gardens in my mind, heart and soul. I had to become anew, despite being in prison.

Looking back, I see how words -- unknown words particularly -- intimidated me all of my pre-prison life. Words like "grammar," "language," "composition," and "algebra."

Words used by the D.A., such as "propensity," "purport" and "depict." Not knowing what these words meant cut me off from getting to know parts of myself. My self-rehabilitation started with words. At first, I only knew this subconsciously. After years of constant growth, writing, and studying myself, words became my life, my light, my shining soul in the darkness. Words were my dreams, my wood to stoke the fires of my spirit. Words coming out of realness are redeeming.

Spoon Jackson has served 29 years of a life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence and is currently imprisoned at California State Prison, Sacramento. To read more of his writing, go to: www.spoonjackson.com