From Incarceration to Freedom in Six Months

By David Blue

A fellow author asked me, “Will you edit my book?”

I wondered, “What would make his book different from the hundreds of other books on the market?” Before I could shoot him a series of questions, he said, “People like to hear about other people; they like to get into their business.”

Do you?
Do you like to touch perspectives of both good and evil?
Do you like it when people are unpredictable?

Then you will be glad you chose this book. It bursts with expressions and experiences. It is a series of switchbacks, regarding:

Love—
Fear—
Family—
Failure—
Deception—
Prayer—
Truth—
Growth—

Business —whether for profit, or non-profit, for human interest, or for spiritual gain, I promise you, you will get involved in “other people’s business,” “In Six Months.”

Enjoy David Blue’s letter collection of dicey life events, and their spin-off situations.

I did!

Sincerely,
Bonnie Denny

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664156050

Book preview

Chapter 1

Six Months

Month One

I was sweeping the floor in the DRDC, when I noticed her. She was pale white. I have dated girls and women pale to chocolate. All women should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Immediately, she looked away as I gazed into her eyes. Her shyness wrapped me into a still quietness. Our conversation seemed to twirl me around aimlessly into an empty abyss. The conversation, although brief, was centered on something I needed to hear. We talked about life after this incarceration. The very next day I was sweeping on her floor level. We exchanged information so we could write one another. We weren’t supposed to have conversation with opposite sex inmates. I told her that she had a very pretty smile. There we were the two of us, dressed in matching colors. Who would have thought I would find a woman in there dressed in orange? You see, in that place, it’s just not a common thing to find anything positive about such surroundings. We started to write extensively. Only months lay ahead, until I would once again be free. I tried to convey that to Sadie, hoping she would somehow be impressed by the stability I represented.

Sadie’s first letter was brief. In the county jail, when one received a letter, it was like the biggest thing going. For individuals who are locked up, receiving a letter is a link to the outside, even if the person writing you is a fellow inmate. Sadie’s letter started with the normal salutations. Sadie hoped that I was found in good spirits and blessed. Sadie was happy to find someone she could write. She began to share with me about her grandparents and her children. Her parents were successful in their endeavors. Sadie’s grandparents had vision. They were immigrants from Germany and Mexico. They wanted to help people who could not help themselves. Sadie explained to me how she was glad she met someone she could write letters to. It made her feel very comfortable. Sadie told me she was moved spiritually when she first saw me. She mentioned that she was back in Cannon City. She also mentioned how the Federal Attorney was trying to pin more charges on her. She was fighting to get them dropped, or at least lessened, because of her current time served.

I wrote Sadie back with the usual salutations. I mentioned that I hoped my letter found her blessed. I expressed that I was happy to receive her letter. So many times jailhouse writings left you empty after a while. I said this would be the very last time I would make rounds.

This wasn’t a place for a man and a woman. You see, sometimes you write and never get fulfillment; I mean get to finish a relationship you start. I explained how I made it to the facility, and the short time I had left to serve. I was doing a one-hundred-eighty day turn around. I was charged with parole violation. I explained how fortunate I was to have been sentenced under the new law. Under the old law a violator of parole would have to do undefined time. The new law gives no more than one-hundred-eighty days, or six months for an infraction against your parole.

Sadie and I started writing every day. Our letters were never sexual in nature, but intimacy was an intricate part of each letter. Some contents were spellbinding, really. Many, many letters were exchanged in the months that followed.

Here is one of those captivating letters from Sadie:

Sweetheart,

I’m glad you enjoyed my paper on love – your love and God’s grace has given me insight on subjects that have been difficult to write on. Sex was an especially difficult subject and I had to do some serious pandering. First I changed the title from Sex to Making and sharing love. For in the past I had sex but never shared love as I have with you. Sharing and making love is much more than one body entering into another. So this is what I wrote of making love.

Sex, like all things, is righteous to the extent that heaven meets the earth there. In modern times, the physical drama of sex is overrated, and over-valued; while it’s spiritual meaning is under-appreciated. We tend to overemphasize, to literally idolize sex, not because we appreciate its importance but because we do not. By cheapening sex we fail to honor it. By casting a garish, ugly light upon its very detail, we hide our faces from its mystery.

Making love is not, in essence, about the body at all. It is an opportunity for us to remove the emotional armor with someone who wants us to remove it and who wants to remove his or her own. Problems occur when we make love with people who have no desire whatsoever for us.

To be so naked in their presence, which has no sense of the sacred responsibility, it is to hold another person’s heart in their hands. (Dave and Alex definitely didn’t)

Sex, when it’s a vehicle for love, is holy, sex without love is dangerous. (Joe, Alex, Myla) It leads to pain and some level of emotional destruction, whether consciously experienced immediately or not. Sex should be a deepening of communications, not a substitute for it. Sex that is sacred is a marriage of hearts. In this fierce and fiery joining the beginning of the world is reenacted. Something is born whether we conceive or not, for we are chemically altered, profoundly changed by the act of having fully exposed ourselves and shared our love so deeply.

It is one of our sicker cultural obscenities that we present sex to our children via media in such incredibly casual, loveless images. It is an area where the modern home is bombarded with darkness; where sex is degraded; where love is degraded, the world falls apart.

But when honesty, vulnerability and kindness form a backdrop to the emotional risk of the moment, making love is an experience of great light. Its healing power is legion. Great sex is an emotional starlight. We can have sex a million times in an effort to achieve that one in a million of making love.

If we had over the moon sex on a regular basis, sex that rings from the soul & sends shockwaves through us (as it will be with us), there would be less disease, less anger and probably less war. If every man and woman alive could feel the therapy, delirious rush of the soul when it touches the soul of another, this world would be a happier place. God celebrates pleasure; only people condemn it.

Our demeaning, gross and pathetic attempts to sexualize the world inappropriately – libidinous products that we do not need in order to manufacture false desire to feed our commercial machinery – is an immorality. It lacks respect not only for human beings, but also for the role that making love can and should play in a spiritually mature existence. Why do we as culture sensationalize and exploit dark and meaningless sex? I think it’s because we lack the experience of dazzling light. In failing to cultivate a healthy respect for sexual power, we become vulnerable to its misuse. Anything repressed expresses itself inappropriately. A righteous experience of making love cannot be found outside a spiritual center, an authentic human soulfulness, because nothing can. That which is within us can save us, but the same things misused are the things that will destroy us.

There’s a state of being that is raw and authentic and fiercely graceful, like a prima ballerina dancing is her prime. Sex in that place is more than sex – its making and sharing true love. With every couple who make it past the sad disconnection of sex that’s just sex to the fire at the center, the world is brought closer to the end of its pain. How excruciating to have touched that place and then, to land unsuspectingly back in the world as we knew it: the cold, none intimate, un-soft world of people who cannot find each other. That’s why we should never have sex casually. If you’re not with a person who’s an artist at love, the art of love is a dangerous game.

A lot of people can join the view of heaven that making love can give. But there aren’t a lot of people who can stay awake in the morning who have the personal skills to hold the vision once the sun has risen and the world is calling. It takes depth and maturity, or the innocence of youth, to have the personality structure it takes to cherish today who we cherished last night.

So be careful but brave – that’s what the spiritual world tells us. And God – what would he say? Oh, I think he would say, be careful but brave. In your arms you are holding the precious creature: my child in whom I am adoringly pleased. Love him and honor him, be kind to him and bring him deep peace. Pray that your energies might bless and protect him. Surrender your heart and surrender your soul. (That is how I’ll always feel about you)

Pray before, pray during, pray after! So my love after much prayer and pondering that is what came from my heart. Making love is not a casual undertaking for me, it never has been but it’s definitely not now. Your complete love gives me the freedom to open my heart and soul to you without paralyzing fear. I thank you for allowing me to fly with the wind within the existence of your incredible love.

I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to communicate through letters because it is a form of freedom to say what is on our hearts – things we might