Transcript
Echoes from Golgotha Golgotha is said to be a place or occasion of many suffering. Some knew it as the Calvary. I am one of many. We are a legion of people labeled as ruffians, hoodlums, hooligans and such…outlaws. Some well deserve such monikers. Others not so much. And others yet, not at all. We come from all walks of life, being a consequence of some feckless fault resulting of some equivocated choice. I can not tell for the sake of others, but only of my own…Many are the regrets which brought me to this predicament. And here I am, past two decades and change. It was 19[redacted] and fate made it to be my own birthday, [redacted], the date I went onto my way to Golgotha, the place of many sorrows, a place for the confinement of persons in lawful detention. Call it a prison or a keep… it is the place that immures you into a state of living death. One defines justice as the state, action or principle of treating all persons equally in accordance with the law, on which law is the formal product of a legislative or judicial body. Laws should be created to serve justice and, perhaps, in a perfect world they would do that. But we all know that we do not leave in a perfect world. Far from it, as a matter of fact. The world is flawed as we all are. We are only human, afterall. So, should I blame the laws, the flawed justice, or whatever it might be, to avoid blaming myself for taken the road that brought me to Golgotha? I made a choice as wrong, naïve, innocent, or guilty it had been, it does not change the fact that it was my own, and only my own the consequences of a choice (or many of them) that I have taken on my acknowledging choice. Once established my stance on my grounds on being a subject of Golgotha, let me be your willing guide to show you how peculiar and flawed picturesque it actually can be. One associates prison with loss of freedom, but usually forgets all things that come associated with such instance of losing some things that we always took for granted. The absence of so many simple things that became not so simple anymore. Regret…to feel or express sorrow of (or for) something. Along with deplore, repent, rue, remorse, and penitence, all these words fail to express the longing for the opportunity of a past action that cannot be changed. Here in Golgotha we are all the same in our diversity. We are all like open books each one printed in a foreign language each other cannot understand. We are inscrutable in our ordinary ways. Most cope with such radical changes of existence. But others are so maladaptive to become vectors of a pattern of behavioral destruction to themselves and others. One must to make up one’s own mind and following a path leading to one’s own betterment, or give up hope entirely to be in the wake of recidivism and relapse into criminal behavior again. It is the path of easy taking. Again, another choice to make in an universe of them. To take the easy way is the way if the foolish that only ends on leading to so many dead-end alleys of despair. Somethings awful things can be disguised as new opportunities that could bring us to shinier times and better outcomes. Hardship, sometimes, can be the agent of chance leading us to superior and preferable achievements of greater excellence than over old ones. Of all things Golgotha imposes upon us, the hardest part of confinement is the waiting. It becomes a constant part of our existence. One memory that hurts is to remember that time was usually in our side. Here in Golgotha time is your fierce enemy. It refuses to yield under the flawed perception of our station as prisoners. It enervatingly crawls here, compared as it used to flow so fast in the free world. Time became a harsh master that punishes one by the illusion of mere minute becoming an entire hour and so far. But that is also a choice for that. One embraces one’s new reality and adapts, or forcefully rejects it choosing unbalance and go on turmoil. Peace is a choice your mind can abide to, or unwillingly abhor. A peaceable state of mind can be achieved when one welcomes the inevitable. Because, in the end, all that is that bothers us over indeed consequences of a cause chosen by us, in own way or another. Personally I think that loss of dignity is even worse than the loss of freedom. Dignity is the quality or state of being worthy, honorable, and noble. It is innate of one and never can be taken away from one. A person can decide to part ways with dignity. Yet, another choice that one can make, regardless of whatever upbringing one might have had. In Golgotha, it is a sadly viewing of how people worth the dignity of one still manage to keep are how easy it can be lost. Dignity in the end is akin of roots of a tree. They are strong and unyielding, or sapped away by the saprophytic path of unknowing fools. I am writing all this to describe the faulty environment that the incarcerated live but also about the choice one can make because when one refers to Golgotha one must to think on one’s own terms even when they seemed to be a sour blend of intoxicating fact mixed with the muddy waters of uncertainty. It is always a question of personal perspective, of course. Having sheets of paper and a pencil are a blessing in a world without access to Internet. Your own thoughts and ideas are not tainted by outside conceptions. One can keep real and limited to the little one can have. I am in a private contracted federal facility for immigrants. Our worth is measure, unfortunately, not by the actions we committed, but by the ethnicity given us by birth. The expletives vary from spics, chinks, and others that are even worse to write without following into the wrongness of racism. I am a Brazilian national. Not a Hispanic, but a Latino, nonetheless. I am a minority among minorities. My personal challenges are even fierce than the average ones. Most Hispanics dispute my rightfulness on being Latino. I rather become careless of it since I feel, deep inside, more of a human than an ethnical label. I am. And that is just good enough for me. Hence, I walk alone and peerless. And, paradoxically, I am proud to be as I am. The library would be funny with its contents, if the joke was not only a bad one, as also it was on us, as well. I dream of reading Philip K.Dick and Arthur C.Clark. I asked for T.E. Lawrence and begged for Kafka. I got not even a Elmore Leonard or a Louis L’Amour or a James Patterson. Most books are about smut and written in Spanish that I can read very well but not feel compelled at all. I feel like a time traveler lost not only in time, but also in space. Golgotha can be a place of madness if you do not leaven to cope with it, and find the amazing within the most ordinary things. The complexity of the simplicity, I would call it. And blessed be life because of it. I’m writing this, but it’s not like I own my life or this story. I once was a person with a name and a real life. Now I am a simple number living in a pseudo life. I am in the hands of others, my overseers. The keepers. The Watchers. But who watches the Watchers? Here we are all simple inmates, antagonists of each other and most, sadly, enemies of themselves. I stick upon my own self, my own true identity. I am more than a number and I am a being with purpose. I value my mind and all that I can become. I should not ask WHY when I can ask HOW. And, sometimes, people are still not asking the right questions. Because there will be time when the answer is within of the very question. A simple question of proper perspective. I’ll be finishing this first-hand testimony by quoting a passage of a split-spine paperback- ROBINSON CARUSO: “Let no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger which sometimes are given him when he may think there is no possibility of its being real. That such hints and notices are given us I believe a few that have made any observation of things can deny; that they are certain discoveries of an invisible word and a converse of spirits, we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be warn us of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not in the question) and that they are given for our good?” And, on a final note, let me tell you, my personal story is the living proof that reality can be way more fantastic than fiction. I was born as Jefferson de Souza, citizen of Brazil. I was forced upon an identity as [redacted], a citizen of Venezuela. I was convicted of a crime I didn’t committed after two trials, one a mistrial and another a railroading. I done wrongness, but never-EVER-the ones I was accused of. I rejected a 10-years plea agreement (that would freed me within eight years of sentencing, due good time deduction) because I would not agree with iniquity not even for my own freedom. I was given twenty- four years of sentencing with my end sentence for March 2020. I passed the passage into a new millennium from behind bars. The wonder of the Halley comet and the horror of September 11 were known by me way after their eventual passing. The world moved along a decade and I saw it from within these walls. Yet another decade and I saw it from within these walls. Yet another decade is coming to an end and I still remain behind these cold walls guarding Golgotha from real life. But who am I? Just another silenced voice claiming for things I could not even deserve? It is more than meets the eye… Do not take my words alone to sustain my claims, you’ll see. If things haven’t been weird enough I became an author from within Golgotha. I wrote about the things that I used to do when I was in the world of the real living. Things that became very profitable at Amazon.com. Google it or use your own search engine using the keywords: Jefferson Souza, Blue Planet Project, ufe. The surreal will become real when you get thousands of hits back about me. Do that and you, yourself would be the judge of my claims. Opportunities took over my books (all fourteen of them) and keep gaining profits with it all I get nothing in return. Because I am a resident of Golgotha, a virtual living dead. See by yourself and you will see what they’ve done to me. I end this saying “OMNIA MUTANTUR, NOS ET MUTAMUR IN ILLIS” (from Latin: All things are changing, and we are changing with them.). Excelsior! (Latin for: Still Higher)
