Author: nicole

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The Caring Community | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

As a new abolitionist, I often imagine the reasons people might oppose abolition. I hear all the why nots they silently levy. I compose responses to these imaginary rebukes, and in so doing, I look to established abolitionists for guidance.

In Instead of Prisons, the authors note several questions abolitionists confront. Two stand out:

  • What do we do about those who pose “a danger” to society? Don’t we have to solve that problem before we can advocate the abolition of prisons?
  • How can we work for needed prison reforms which require structural change within the society, before a new social order comes about?

Two assumptions seem to underlie these questions. Firstly, we can only work on one thing at a time, and after the attainment of a perfect solution, can we attempt something else. Secondly, abolitionists advocate a thoughtless and rash process by which prisons are torn down and people run, pell-mell, to freedom.

Both of these ideas are false. As explained in the attrition model, abolition is a long-term goal with several allied processes:

  • gradually reduce the current inmate population beginning with extreme sentences,
  • reconsider criminality and decriminalize certain behaviors, and
  • develop alternatives to imprisonment (mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, etc.).

There is little in this explanation about the human rights issues prisoners face. This is purposeful. The abolitionist’s goal is not simply to make prison more humane, but to stop caging except when there is absolutely no viable alternative. I want to state clearly, 2.3 million people behind bars should not suffer cruel and unusual punishment. And I do not see a conflict between supporting human rights and working to abolish prisons. However:

Our goal is to replace prison, not improve it.

But one does not dismantle a prison system without a corresponding change in the societal status quo. Society is as sick as the individuals who often wind up exiled from it. That brings us to a topic of personal import: creating a caring community. Drawing from my Buddhist leanings, I believe this to be the most difficult and simultaneously most important part of a successful abolition strategy.

From the handbook:

Abolitionists advocate maximum amounts of caring for all people (including the victims of crime) and minimum intervention in the lives of all people, including lawbreakers. In the minds of some, this may pose a paradox, but not for us, because we examine the underlying causes of crime and seek new responses to build a safer community. The abolitionist ideology is based on economic and social justice for all, concern for all victims, and reconciliation within a caring community.

How do we begin to create a caring community? Is such a utopia possible?

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An Unlikely Pairing | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

Scalzi’s post on a feral kitten made me think of my kitty, Missy.  I am allergic to said cat. More than a few have inquired into the origins of such an unlikely pairing.

I’m not sure exactly when I got Missy. Perhaps around 2004, not long after my mother died.  I had inherited and moved into my childhood home.  An only child living alone before she died, I didn’t feel particularly lonely in this new arrangement. This was irrelevant to my well-meaning coworkers, who seemed to think I needed something to love on.  Plants, pets, a boyfriend. Something.  Plants were not an option.  I wasn’t really a pet girl. I dated off and on, but nothing serious.

But I shared an office with three women with husbands and pets. Three friendly, yet persistent women.  They were determined I’d have one or the other before long. Two of the three had cats, the other, a yip dog, and we all decided that if, for some strange reason, I should desire a pet, a cat would be the way to go.

Cats are self-sufficient, yet entertaining to watch.  They like to mind their own business but they enjoy gossiping and cuddling from time to time, too. On top of everything, they’re self-cleaning!  A cat could provide company without being too consuming.

Michelle, The Cat Broker, was the most determined. Emails about cats needing a new home always found their way to me. There were slide shows of available cats. I was mildly interested, but remained unconvinced.

One day The Cat Broker announced she had found the perfect kitty.  Missy was shy, and often hid in her house of three children and two large dogs.  The family was moving and decided it would be best if they and Missy parted ways. She arranged a trial period.

Test the waters. See how it goes. Turn her back over if catastrophe ensues.

I’ll spare you the long story of us getting to know each other. But I will say I never knew cats could throw punches.

Early swipes aside, we bonded.  Shortly thereafter, my breathing became noticeably labored. A trip to the allergist was in order once I became scared to fall asleep at night. A skin test revealed the news: I was allergic to dust, dogs, and of course, cats.

The thought of giving up my cat made me sad, so I didn’t. And although I did try to about a year later (that’s another story), it’s completely out of the question now.

So there you have it. And here you have us:

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Every Tiny Bit | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

I’m proud of myself.

I have written daily, without fail, during the 30in30 and WriteLikeCrazy challenge. Today, I don’t have much to say, yet I remain committed. So here I am, showing up, even though I’m sleepy and am not up to writing any of the brilliant ideas germinating.

I have no harsh words for myself. Only love and congratulations for continuing to forge ahead, one word at a time.

I wish the same for you.

Never for an instant forget the effort to renew your life, to build yourself anew. Creativity means to push open the heavy, groaning doorway of life itself. This is not an easy task. Indeed, it may be the most severely challenging struggle there is. For opening the door to your own life is in the end more difficult than opening the door to all the mysteries of the universe.
                                                          Daisaku Ikeda

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The Writer’s Garden | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

I wake up in the morning with writing on the brain. Prone in bed, stretching various limbs, I pepper myself with silent questions. What do you want to post today? Are you going to write that bit about civics? You’re going to the beach later, so how about starting your “Lessons from the Ocean” series? Oh! What about that interesting article? The one you favorited last night?

Grasping for ideas, one invariably jumps up and shouts, “Me! Pick me!”

“Ah-ha!” I think. “I’ve found you!” And so the game begins.

I start my day, usually with some sort of exercise. If I’m lucky, it’s a running day, and I mentally compose my post during the four-mile trek around my neighborhood.

More often than not, I am unable to write immediately after this exercise-induced mind-composing, but I keep those words in a death grip. Sometimes I jot down key ideas. Other times I whip out my phone and record a memo. Every now and then I leave it up to chance, because how could I ever forget this brilliant idea? {Insert knowing groan here}. Hours pass. Locations change. Energy levels rise and fall. But I maintain hopeful excitement. Today’s post will be easy! I’ve already composed it. I’ve just got to get it down.

Finally, writing time arrives. There I sit, fingers gently resting on the home row. I cue up the feeling I had when the idea demanded to be chosen. I pull up the post on my mental screen. And out comes…

Nothing.

I remind myself that this is no big deal, and where are the words you’ve already put together? Just type them! After staring at the screen, perusing whatever documents are handy, playing on social media, looking at my phone, etc., words pour out.

And they are wholly unrelated to the morning’s ah-ha! Not even distant cousins. Strangers.

But here’s the revelation: The words are not strangers to me. They are acquaintances. They are the ah-ha idea from a few days prior.

It’s almost as if the initial thinking is akin to my planting a seed. Just like any other seed, it isn’t ready to sprout right away. It requires nourishment and time. And when the proper conditions exist, the plant grows and blossoms.

This has made me realize a couple of things:

  1. I really do need to keep a steady stream of ideas flowing. If they each take their own sweet time to bloom, I’ve got to sow a full crop! Planting a new seed each day means I’ll have more to tend to and grow in the future.
  2. I must embrace my process. Rather than feeling frustrated that the words I intended are not yet ready to sprout, I should just feed them. That can mean more reading on the topic. Freewrites. Dreams. Talking about it with friends, and so on. Either way, the ideas of today are the essays of tomorrow. But only to the degree I nurture them.

I know what you’re thinking. Writers don’t always have the luxury of coming back to an idea when it’s ready. If you’re on a deadline, you must write anyway! Having written on deadlines, I know this is true. But I also know I usually have an assignment long before the deadline. I start thinking about it right away. I may start the mind-composing immediately, even jot down a few things. But a serious attempt at a draft? Nope.

Key parts of the story go underground. They need time to mature. Fortunately, most of the time, they are ready to bloom just when I’m ready write.

To my fellow writers – it’s just as Tayari and others say. We may not be able to writelikecrazy everyday, but we can trylikecrazy, and honor our process. Let’s keep planting seeds and tending our gardens. I’m confident our efforts will bear fruit.

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Decarceration and Excarceration. | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

Well, I would like to see, as Fay Honey Knopp, who was an abolitionist during the ’70s and the ’80s and one of the co-authors of a wonderful book called Instead of Prisons: An Abolitionist Handbook, you know, I would like to see an emphasis on decarceration, an emphasis on excarceration.
             Angela Davis on Democracy Now, October, 2010

I’m back in school. Quite honestly, as a lifelong learner, I’ve never left. As soon as I graduated, I created a syllabus of resources on black feminist thought, narrative inquiry and transformative learning and began reading. Studying these topics was nurturing and in many ways, freeing.

Love and curiosity have led me to study mass incarceration and abolition. My new syllabus is growing. A recurring name on it? Angela Davis. I’ve been listening to her speeches, taking notes on terms, people, events I should add to my resource list.

Decarceration and excarceration are each one point of a five-point model of attrition, elaborated in Instead of Prisons (1976). The attrition model is part of a long-range strategy for abolition. The overarching goal: to dismantle the prison system. Attrition, employed as a purposeful, intentional strategy, would “diminish the function and power of prisons in our society.”

The Attrition Model

  • Moratorium on new prison construction
  • Decarcerate
  • Excarcerate
  • Restraint of the few, via the “least restrictive and most humane option for the shortest period of time.”
  • Build a caring community in which support services are privileged over punitive options

Incarcerate means to confine or imprison. In contrast, decarcerate means to release. How can we begin to free some of the 2.3 million people behind bars? The authors suggest a realistic approach to the decarceration of inmates, including reduction in sentences, expanded opportunities for parole, creative restitution to victims, and decriminalization of some behaviors (applied retroactively).

Excarceration simply means avoid incarceration. In other words, what if prison ceased to be the first/ only/ mandatory response to certain behaviors? After all, what gets labeled crime is fluid. And the placement of various criminal behaviors along a continuum is somewhat arbitrary (more on that to come). What, other than jail, might be a response to undesirable behavior?

Thought Experiment
Are you open to decarceration? Would you be okay with nonviolent criminals being released before the end of their sentences? Why or why not?  If you say maybe, under what circumstances might you agree?

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Forever Changed | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

What is one thing that left you forever changed?

I stumbled across this question while sitting, browsing and mulling – the trio known collectively as my process. Even when I have an idea in mind (I did) I often have to go through this period of germination. I embraced it in grad school, but I kinda want things to move a little faster.

But this is me stalling.

As soon as I read that question, an answer came to mind. I was inspired to respond, completely disregarding my initial plans to write about student ingenuity and punishment. Though as I began to type, I wondered how much I should or would share.

I’m still deciding. I’ll ease into it and see what comes out.

I experienced the first love of my life in high school. I went in with an open heart and came away damaged. Not just bruised. Way beyond heartbroken. Soul shattered perhaps, and I’m not sure that even captures it. For years, literally two decades, I was unwilling to consider the trauma I underwent. I hid it from everyone. Even me.

It left me secretly distrustful. Occasionally dizzy in torrents of “what if.” Subject to mini-meltdowns in intimate spaces.

Last year around this time, I began peeling back the layers, exposing the truth. To myself, at least. During that process I truly began to understand the transformative nature of narrative – the dramatic shifts in understanding that can occur in studying episodes of your own life history.

I was forever changed by the relationship. I was forever changed yet again, in the telling.

I hope my path of facilitating transformation through narrative can help others; but that’s a story for another day.

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On Behalf of Justice. | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

Reading in preparation for a lecture on Buddhist writings, I came across this quote:

What is the noblest way of life? My unhesitating answer to that question is: a life dedicated to truth and justice.

Only in a world where truth and justice flourish can people freely bring forth their innate goodness. If, in contrast, philosophies or belief systems that deny the possibility of infinite human improvement prevail, misery and suffering will abound.

~Daisaku Ikeda, Lecture on Nichiren’s Letter from Teradomari

This resonated today. As some of you know, I’m becoming an activist and advocate for modern abolition – the end of mass incarceration. These days I’m mulling a series of essays. I want to help us imagine a world in which imprisonment is no longer the strategy of first resort. My premise begins with the innate potential, dare I say, the innate goodness, present in all people, and the options we can design when this potential, or goodness, is foregrounded rather than summarily discounted.

I’m thinking about our continued reliance on the mantra of personal responsibility in the face of structural inequities; the fallibility of lawmakers; the dynamic way we criminalize behaviors; the hierarchy of crime.

And if we study the fallout from mass incarceration on the incarcerated, on their families, and on society at large, I believe we’ll find we’re not “better off” with a swelling population of bodies in cages. There are too many minds in cages already, and we certainly aren’t any better off for that.

I digress.

This quote encourages me because speaking up against mass incarceration is a matter of justice. In 2010, 1 out of every 137 people was behind bars. (How many friends have you on social media?) Now, over 2.3 million people are jailed and imprisoned, and the number continues to grow. Mandatory sentencing guidelines cage people for decades with no consideration of their individual circumstances. While inside, prisoners are routinely denied reading materials that could be a pathway to growth and transformation. Where is the justice in that?

Corporations profit from an increasing prison population. Who might be criminalized next to feed the bottom line? And once you’re freed, good luck. In many places, ex felons are summarily barred from reentry into society. No money. No housing. No opportunity for work. No voice.

No justice.

Each of these things is but a strand in the knotty mess that is mass incarceration. This mess strangles the very possibility of individual human improvement, and by extension, societal improvement as well. Our disposal and disregard of people we view as “other” or “less than” does not move us forward. Fighting on behalf of justice? Maybe that does.

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Workout Freewrite | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

In January 2012, I hung up my running shoes and started exercising indoors.

One month into a 12-week fitness program, I placed a full-length mirror in the living room. I spent six mornings a week engaging in high intensity cardio, and seeing the results from day to day – chiseling, bloating, and stops between – proved motivating.

April 1, I went for my first run of the year. I ran a personal best. It burned, though.

Shortly thereafter, I began another 12-week program. This one was weight lifting (Pump). Normally I dislike lifting. Go to a gym and lift free weights or get on those machines? It ain’t happening, son. In grad school I discovered BodyPump, a full body barbell class choreographed to the latest hits. I loved it. When I recently discovered a home-based version of the same class, it was a done deal.

The first day was glorious. I’m probably the only person who smiled during deadlifts and clean-and-presses. It felt good to know a strong body was in the works.

It takes significantly more mental energy for me to go lift weights than for me to do cardio. This, despite the fact I know a strong body is in the works.

Pump has 10 tracks: warm up, squats, chest, bis, tris, back, lunges, shoulders, abs, and cool down. The lunge track remains the most difficult. The last couple of times I finally managed to finish the whole set. Barely.

I resumed running during the designated cardio days. My July goal was 25 miles. I was up to 50 miles a month when I quit for TurboFire. I can’t believe I waited so long. I missed being outside. And who knew how much thinking and processing I do while running!

July 21 was the last day of Pump. I took a couple of weeks off to give my body a rest from the weights, but I focused on getting in some miles. I surpassed my goal of 25, hitting 36 by the last day of the month.

My August goal is 50 miles. I’m in it to win it.

I’ve been sleepy the past two days. I’m realizing it’s likely I’m just not eating enough now that I’ve returned to a serious workout schedule! I’ll fix that beginning tomorrow. Earlier this year I figured out that even if I don’t feel hungry, midday sleepiness usually means I’ve run out of calories. Totally forgot that. Here I was thinking I needed to search WebMD for unexplained fatigue.

I’ve had a couple of people tell me my body was “ridiculous.” (Shout out to the well-meaning Brit on Twitter who didn’t realize this was a compliment). If I would seriously commit to clean eating, I’d agree more wholeheartedly. I love my body though, especially my donk. Even my here today, gone tomorrow abs.

Monday, I lifted weights for the first time in nearly 3 weeks. It felt great! It was hard, and I broke a sweat. But the awesome thing about lifting is increasing your weight over time, witnessing yourself get stronger. So powerful!

I feel like a warrior goddess when I work out. I’m getting my body ready to do beautiful and important things in the world.

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On Worthy Writing | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

The 30in30/WriteLikeCrazy challenge has proven a good workout for my writing muscles. It’s early yet – this is my sixth post in as many days – but in addition to getting words on the page, I’ve also engaged in a decent bit of self-reflection.

Prior to this, my daily decision-making was thus: “to write or not to write?” Usually the answer was “not to write.” Never short on reasons, I chose from:

  • No time
  • No topic
  • No audience
  • No confidence
  • No expertise
  • Just no

With this challenge, the game has changed. New decision points are, “what time will I write” and “what shall I say?”

As to what time, I had dreams of creating a daily writing block. 8-9 a.m., for example. But dreams fade upon waking, and reality kicks in. Although I enjoy morning writing, my schedule varies each day. Other must-dos (prayer and exercise) hold the earliest and most stable time slots, and I’m simply not willing to wake before 5 a.m.

Even though I can’t commit to a recurring time block, I can commit to the writing. I review the next day’s schedule and find 25-45 minutes. Sometimes a bit more. This is a big deal. I like to marinate, so I prefer long blocks of time to write (2-4 hours minimum). But since my focus is on volume and regularity, I try not to stress over the seedlings that require more time and attention.

As to the daily topics, well here’s where it gets interesting.

I’ve been a muted writer for years, feeling as though I had nothing to say. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately, and I’d like to enter some of these thoughts into the public discourse.

I embrace the idea of writing-as-thinking. Writing is often presented as a neat assemblage of final thoughts. Your job, in many cases, is to bring the reader along with you to a shared conclusion. But a lot of the thinking happens in the composing. And finished pieces do not necessarily equal finished thoughts. Herein lies my dilemma.

I wish to write my way through the thinking of things. And I need to post something. But I can’t post just anything. So I censor myself. I don’t write about this or that topic because my thinking is too tentative for presentation.

I don’t write the urgent thoughts I chew on all day long. It’ll take too long to make sense of certain topics, and my daily writing time is limited. But again, I have to post something, right? It’s almost as if building the habit of writing is getting in the way of the reason to write in the first place.

I’m grappling with a solution.

I’ve considered, for instance, serializing more complex thinking. I’ve done a bit of that so far, although I have yet to come back and write follow-ups to my opening statements. I’ve considered super short entries for daily posts. This can free most of my allotted time for stealth mode wherein I’d write-think ideas too messy for public consumption.

I dunno.

Is this a challenge for you? If so, how are you handling it? What writing is worthy to post?

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It’s a small world, after all. | #30in30 #WriteLikeCrazy.

Watch globally; connect locally…

My local baristas know me by name and drink. Medium or large iced coffee, depending on the day. Black. Extra pump of classic. I like to think I don’t need the caffeine, it’s just nice to have. Ahem.

“Tom” asks which size I prefer today. Definitely the large. He is immediately curious.

“Busy day today?” he inquires.

“Nah. Well, no busier than usual. But I was up until 2 a.m. watching the rover land on Mars!”

And with that exchange, a middle-aged white man exclaims from his seat across the café. I turn to be sure he is reacting to my announcement, and indeed he is. Hovering over his laptop, he beckons, halfway hiding the grin on his face.

I laugh, strolling over to him, coffee in hand. He tells me about his night – the sleeping kids, the sleeping wife. Reading under covers, so as not to disturb her. Falling asleep in his makeshift tent and jerking awake around 1 wondering why.

Realization dawns! Mars! Of course he powers up his computer and logs on.

He, like I, experienced the entry and landing of Mars Curiosity with the happy pairing of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s live stream  and Twitter. We take turns spreading the good news: science is great! NASA is so cool! Did you see the pictures? I love Twitter! What a great way to experience space adventures, etc.

As I turn to leave, he stops me. “Don’t forget your excuse for today!” I’d seen the post early this morning but had indeed already forgotten it:

From outer space to a local coffee shop in just a matter of hours.

It’s a small world, after all.