IT has happened.
The it. The event.
I am a changed person.
While in the long run it may appear as just another
accomplishment or defeat—depending upon your perception—on the Big Print-Out of
My Life (sort of like a line of verse from Auden’s Unknown Citizen, a cold hard fact, a nameless reality), at the
moment that I describe it now, it almost approaches epiphany.
I have been arrested.
Accosted. Handcuffed. Miranded. Booked. Detained. Convicted.
Sentenced. Imprisoned. (I know that a lot of you are licking your lips,
thinking that all justice should move so swiftly, so “justly”. Only nine words
separating real criminals from real time; and
without even the least mention of attorneys! Paradisio.)
And it all began so innocently. (Oh, we’ve heard that one
before!) The sun was obliging, the breezes faint and, well, breezy, the air was
full of possibilities. One of which was a languorous stroll through the Dallas
Arboretum—just one in the long, long list of cultural refinements and
enhancement that have swept through the Metroplex like a Herculean broom
recently. The Arboretum beckoned, and I complied. From the mansion, I could see
the sailboats moving with imaginary gusts across White Rock Lake. It was a
scene from a painting—all of it: the lake, the boats, the mansion, the
Arboretum, the flowers—it was a
painting.
It was Art.
It was Life.
It was a pity that someone should step in a commit
sacrilege. Oh! There were clouds like cotton candy, and a murderer on the premises.
My hands were in my pocket, my step was light, my eyes
feasted on the colors. I had what must have been a Sixties flashback, for I
found myself communing with Nature—be it only inwardly at first.
There are no words that can adequately describe the state of
delirium that overcame me (in fact, I used this as my defense). All of my
previously blunted senses were screaming in ecstasy before tulips and irises
and mums and even dads pushing Aprica strollers while swaying Canons bumped
against their trim hips. There was no concrete, no glass-mirrored towers, and
yet I was increasingly and uncontrollably in awe of my environment. There was
only Nature—arrayed in Joseph’s coat—softly singing that song that will never
be Top Forty, but always a classic.
The increments of joy are certainly impossible to measure,
but as I stood and swayed, transfixed before this scene, I now recall that tall
old trees were sighing; children were laughing, shouting, playing; bees were
buzzing; the sunlight—already brilliant—seemed to grow even more brilliantly,
more intensely (Mersault!) Like a champagne cork, my self-control gave way. I
was no longer in control…
The officers who arrested me, considering the situation,
were professional, restrained. In fact, as I look back on it, they were almost
courteous. Except for broken glasses (a little tape does the trick!) and some
mulch up my nose, I came away from the scene of my crime almost completely
unscathed. A part of me forgives the officers for doing what they were told
to—and hence, believed to be their appointed task; another part of me condemns
them for being willing agents of control in a disturbed society. But I am the
one in jail.
My crime? My vicious act? Did you miss it in the papers?
I kissed a tiger lily. Honestly. Kissed it—full on the
petals. (I still awaken in a cold sweat as my nightmares recall those
blood-curdling screams.)
From that point on, I was no longer in control of my life.
Come to think of it, that moment when lips met lips, I’m not too sure I was in
control either. Interesting.
But it was from that point on that I began to ride the swift
sword of justice (at first, just a police cruiser to jail) through our
benevolent criminal justice system.
Imagine for yourself (you’ve seen it a million times on TV)
the booking process: the fingerprinting, surrendering my pocket comb—watching
it be cataloged and stuffed into a big brown envelope, the mug shots. Like
every other dangerous criminal, while my picture was taken, I held up in front
of my face a number. My number. It could have been my Social Security number;
it could have been my telephone number; it could have been the number of
kilowatt hours of electricity I used during the month of August. But it wasn’t;
it was just my number. A new number to add to my collection. You have one, too.
A collection, that is.
Imagine that photo session and ask yourself, “Did he smile?
Did he pout? Did they have to clean away any blood? Or did they leave it there? Did he glare? Did he
clown around, forcing numerous retakes—winking, grinning, rolling his eyes
(sort of like how I imagine Chuck Woolery or Pat Sajak would do it they were
arrested)?” No. They just took them and moved on.
The time awaiting the trial seemed short. Rumors reached me
that the Republican Women’s Caucus or the Junior League or somebody was
picketing in front of the jail, demanding the death penalty.
Mostly, I played
the harmonica.
The trial was equally as fast, though it had the added
dimension of being shrouded in sounds of confusion—mostly emanating from the
attorneys. It wasn’t that they were using words that I didn’t understand, but
it was the way that they used them. (I was threatened with contempt when I
suggested to the judge that both lawyers be arrested for raping the English
language.)
My attorney’s defense was simple: after the insanity plea
failed, his new tactic was to assert that I had been coerced into my criminal
activity by a worldly, and obviously quite provocative tiger lily. I was the victim, not the flower; and,
more importantly, not those whose eyes and minds were forever corrupted by my
act. He argued (quite vehemently) that in my precarious mental condition
(Yuppie), I was unquestionably vulnerable to the suggestive, flirtatious nature
of the tiger lily. When he finished, I wanted to applaud. I wanted to cry. I
wanted to sing.
However, the prosecution was prepared. Cognizant of the
widespread affliction in my generation that, as my attorney phrased it, led to
my “precarious mental condition”, they produced a renowned horticulturist—a
balding, bespectacled man with bow tie and pink cheeks—who coldly and
clinically cataloged flowers according to their ability to intoxicate and
overwhelm the sensibilities of even the strongest, most stout-hearted among us.
He was quick to point out that the tiger lily’s allure is negligible; that, in
fact, the one that I accosted had been planted only recently, and he doubted if
it even had been pollinated!
There was an audible gasp in the courtroom. The prosecutor
grinned. My hopes were torpedoed.
I don’t know if this is relevant or not to my case, to my life,
to reality, to anything, but I do recall that, while this renowned
horticulturist (why am I thinking of Dorothy Parker now?) described those
flowers that do possess provocative powers
(whose names I can’t recall, much less pronounce—so exotic and relatively
unknown they are), he repeatedly dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief,
tugged at his shirt collar, and asked forgiveness for his dry mouth which he
quenched repeatedly with gulps of water.
Ironically--dramatically stunning though it might have
been--this was a minor victory for the prosecution, for the criminal justice
system, for America. For the DA’s office classified my act of bussing a flower
as only a minor charge compared with the more heinous charge of—as they
publicly described it, as it burned across the tops of both papers, as it
passed through the tight lips behind closed doors throughout North Dallas and
beyond—“unseemly social behavior”. (It’s a good thing that branding is no longer--and not yet--an acceptable form of punishment!)
The DA realized that the first charge might only result in a
suspended sentence and/or probation, whereas the more serious charge—vigorously
and energetically pursued—would result in “hard time”, in removing a proven
threat to the mental tranquility of society from public view. Needless to
say—as I am writing this from prison—they succeeded.
Word spread quickly, as words will do in prison, as to the
nature of my crime, and I was met with a mixture of open-armed welcome and
apprehension. During the bus ride to the correctional facility (the bluebonnets
waved from the side of the road) I struggled not only with the discomfort of my
prison uniform (polyester), but more importantly with what I felt to be the
supreme injustice of my sentence. The length? No, that was unimportant because
what was important was that I was
remanded with the sole purpose of REHABILITATION! I am to leave here with a new
suit as well as a new suit of armor around my heart.
By the time I had reached the prison gate, I had acquiesced
to my situation, accepted it, and—being a Baby Boomer—began to look for ways to
liberally invoke my social consciousness by improving the appalling conditions
with which I was confronted. (Mind you, I was certainly aware that my motives
might have been tinged with selfishness; but at heart, this depraved flower
smoocher had to best interests of all the inmates--all the inhabitants of this
microcosm, reflective of the entire world.)
My first reform involved correcting what passed for
sustenance. As a realist, I began by suggesting small touches, like working
with roux. A small step, but a sincere one. The next step, logically, was to
procure through the cable television’s system the A&E Channel so that the
inmates (and me) could enjoy the rhapsodic enactments of Othello and Kiss Me, Kate. But
the main thing I wished to accomplish while incarcerated reflected a darker
side, if you will. A heart of darkness, a partial shadow, disappearing down an
alley.
Each morning, as I chant my mantra (Blake’s “The Garden of
Love”), I ruminate not over the error of my ways, but over the errors that had
been made. And a cold, hard (and somewhat pixie-ish) part of my soul has begun
to plot my revenge—my tit for tat. This idea, this plan, this concept did not
come as a result of a man being thrown into the lion’s den, thrown into the
depraved arena of criminals so often seen on the silver screen, thrown on the
carcass heap as the vultures circled. No, this plan came in with me, indeed,
sprang from the same demented imagination that would dare kiss a flower. As
unusual (disgusting?) the nature of my crime (pardon the pun), so would be my
response to my sentence. Of more importance than taste buds, either culinary or
cultural, I realize, is the general education of the inmates; and education
that will inculcate in them another kind of appreciation.
So, I am going to hold a class each day. I will be plotting
at the chalkboard. I will be diagramming a revolution. An upheaval. An assault.
I am going to teach…
BOTANY!
(I imagine admission prices at the Arboretum will
skyrocket.)
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