November 7, 2015 - 13:37
Sheila asked me to post this excerpt from Jack Morris's October 4, 2015 letter, which she read @ the end of her talk last Wednesday night:
Let me tell you about an adventure I had this past week. I have been trying to get an examination men usually get when they pass 50 for about three or four years now. Anyways, last week I was taken outside the walls of Pelican Bay on an hour and half drive to the medical facility in Eurika, CA. It was wonderful. It was very early in the morning when the guards came to my cell and told me I had an outside medical visit scheduled. I was stripped and chained up (leg irons and waist chains) and placed into a van that had steel cages constructed inside. The cages were so small I only had room to sit. My view of the outside world was through several two inch holes cut into the sheet metal the cage is constructed from. Nonetheless, you can press an eye up to the hole and see out. Of course, even this view is somewhat obscured because the van’s outer windows have all been tinted so they are almost black. But, you can see. These are on the side. There is a 3” x 6” clear window in the middle of the cage so as to allow the guards to look back into the cage to see whoever is back there.
Through this small window you can get a front view of the drive, and although extremely limited, what a view one sees. We traveled through the Redwood Giants, the mist and fog of the morning lazily hung midway between these monsters as the reached upward touching the sky. At several times the light penetrated the cover of the mammoths exposing a light beam and the multiple colors of the fall seasonal changes, browns, golds and fading greens. It was religious at times, until, that is, we broke from the cover of the mist only to see the Pacific Ocean both peaceful and tranquil as far as one could view and wild and powerful as the waves broke and crashed against the rocks and shore.
I wanted to dawn my birthday suit and vie into and be engulfed beneath the evolutionary beginning to re experience creation millions of years gonebye. The water looked freezing but I knew it would cool the fire in my veins. By the time I was returned to the prison my mind was exhausted by the visual stimulation but my heart was overflowing with mental images I will live on for decades to come. After a decade of incarceration I had forgotten the brutality of imprisonment until I see freedom through a two inch arc cut in to steel plate of steel. I once again long for freedom.