Said a small voice, easily ignored.  I should get the timer, set it for ten minutes, since I can’t let myself slip into this tap tap tap right now, must somehow, you know, leap into action, as though I mean it.    I enter a kind of focused hypnotic state here, outside of time, not thinking of what needs to be done, thinking of other things.

I’m thinking about an art exhibit I saw the other day, beautifully mounted in a nice space on the fifth floor of an inconspicuous office building on West 21st Street.   The artwork was created by men and women of all ages locked on an overpopulated prison island, the stuff of nightmares.  10,000 people waiting, sometimes for more than a year, for their speedy trial, or to accept a plea deal that will spring them, with “time served”, from what can only be described as hell.   A tiny proportion, perhaps a few hundred, participate in art therapy sessions, sessions most of them love.   A much smaller group wind up dead, like the teenager from one of the art therapy groups, not long ago found hanging by some kind of noose.

Overcrowded with people arrested in NYC who can’t afford bail, this island is a fortress with a long history of brutality toward the possibly guilty.   Anyone who has the money to post bail is spared the purgatory these poor souls are jammed into.  I recall from law school that a person able to post bail is something like 95% more likely than one who stays locked up to avoid prison time in the end. There is institutional injustice in our broken Criminal Justice System, we all know that, and cities like NYC have long, sorry histories, we finally have a mayor who seems intent on addressing this injustice and blah blah blah.

In the meantime, people like this good woman struggle to bring a bit of light into that dark world in ‘the belly of the beast’, as one man with a talent for words, many years in that darkness and an unquenchable need to be violent once styled it.

The woman who arranged the exhibit, spent hours meticulously typing out the professional descriptions of each work, spray-mounting paper works onto mats so they could be hung for viewing, taking care of all the publicity and other details, is someone I’ve known since we were young teenagers.   I walk in and join three others viewing the art on the walls of the large, airy gallery.  I give her a tired smile and she returns this smile with one so exhausted-looking it is almost heartbreaking.  We hug and she offers me a tour, once I’ve had a chance to look at the work.

The theme of the show is Hope.  Hope is written on many of the collages, the elements of which must either be torn out and glued or given to an art therapist, who, at some other time, will neatly cut out the indicated elements for later collaging.  The prisoners are not allowed to have even the scissors kindergarten kids use.  Too dangerous.  While a marker can be jammed into a fellow inmate’s eye socket, they seem to be allowed to use markers, these mostly non-violent prisoners assumed innocent until their speedy, if long-delayed, trials.

I point out one drawing I love, among many that reflect only the game attempt to cling to hope in a hopeless place.  There was something about the drawing that drew me to it, the lightness of touch, the colors, the joy in the childishly rendered woman who stands with her arms open at the center of the frame, the lovingly rendered foliage and prayer beads forming a frame.  My friend briefly lights up, this was done by a sixty year-old woman in one of her art therapy groups.  She’d be thrilled for a note from me.  

I write to her, tell her the drawing was beautiful, gave me great joy to see, as it must have given her joy to create.  I tell her I hope she will continue to draw.  I felt good expressing this appreciation.  

I forget to tell her something very obvious to me now.  “I hope you get out of prison soon.”   I don’t realize that omission until just now.  I nod to think I’d done something nice in writing the note, can’t really get too worked up that I missed a chance to write the thing that would have meant the most:  I hope the tumor is benign and they get it out with no pain and that you have a fast recovery and are reunited with the children whose names you lovingly inscribed inside the heart-shaped frame of the prayer beads.

After a beautiful memorial service for a cousin of mine who died at 40, after apparently sucking every moment of joy and meaning out of her short life, I shook her father’s hand.  “It was a beautiful memorial,” I told him.  

“Yes, if only we didn’t have to have it.”

The art therapist cannot bring anything that can be used as a weapon into the prison.  This means no umbrella when it’s raining.  She drives over the guarded bridge to the island, parks her car and walks to a checkpoint and if it’s raining, so be it.  A small price to pay to do blessed work.