My heart breaks for you, Michael. When I look at this picture of you, my eyes try to play tricks on me, half brother. 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 self loathing and regret, 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. Inside the many penitentaries, I've witnessed the joy of prisoners as they discuss their "free world" antiics and emerge histrionic and ostensibly happy, while coughing out loud and remembering their women and children. 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.
