My heart breaks for you, Michael. When I look at this picture of you, my eyes try to play tricks on me. They conspire with my consciousness to create the ostensible lie that whispers to me that you're always sad, constantly depressed, and steeped in continuous loathing, all based upon this almost incomprehensible visage of the countenance that prison has heaped upon you. I have to remind myself that you probably smile, or laugh even, and that this photograph is a spark that was pitifully, sadly captured nanoseconds before you grinned out its proper opposite. I've heard the joy of prisoners as they discuss their retarded anecdotes, while coughing out loud. It's what J.D. Salinger meant when he wrote of the rocking back and forth "between the grief and the high delight." I, too, am intimately familiar with both extremes, one more than the other. So we share that, and a cruel father and that's about it.
