GenExit - The Beginning of the End

Chapter 3

The inmates running the administration and orientation section of the prison gave him his bed roll, lock and orientation housing unit and bed. He sat in the orientation dorm for thirty days and then he was moved into the drug treatment dorm.
His cellmate introduced himself as Logan and explained the real rules as opposed to the program rules that the administration gave him to read and sign. There were prison rules and government given rules. Breaking the former usually carried a worse penalty than breaking the latter. Logan explained, the prison rules were simple really, which gave rise to the severity of the consequences for violating them...the logic being if you were too stupid to follow the simple rules then you were also too stupid too understand why you should follow them and therefore you were just in the way and fuckin with people's reality by making their time hard....John looked at it like this, it didn't cost him nothing to mind his own business and he didn't gamble or fuck with punks nor get anything he couldn't pay for so his time went pretty smoothly and once he set into a routine the years began to pass quickly. Logan was in his late 40's but he carried himself like he'd been around since the dawn of time. He  just spent most of his time reading, writing and drawing. He'd made a good stream of income for himself by drawing for the other prisoners, doing their homework, drug treatment essays and legal work. He limited his conversation and interactions with the other prisoners to those activities. John liked to read and write as well, so he and Logan talked about books and writing occasionally. Logan could draw anything people could describe with words, his finished work was just as mesmerizing as watching him create it...the speed with which he drew was near blinding at times.  One day John asked Logan what he thought about a certain group of religious fanatics that came to visit them in the program and preach fire, brimstone and judgement at the end of life. Logan said he had no opinion of them except that he was adverse to being forced to participate in their definition of themselves and their reality. Logan had said "Just because people have a right to their opinions doesn't mean they're right nor that they have the right to force those opinions on others."
  John asked Logan if he believed in God, and Logan told him that he did but not on the basis of hope or fear but rather by way of knowledge; knowledge that beliefs, opinions and feelings are just formed by humans perception of their reality. That with which we are presently clothed - these animal skins, these perfect prisons are mortal, finite and fallible. No one gets out of life alive. Yet, attachments to it and all the matter around us, cause us so much suffering. Most of our thoughts,desires and actions are based on the hope of gain or fear of loss. The extent to which one perceives is  proportionate to the extent of their suffering.  As you believe, so you shall be indeed. If you never knew light, darkness would be your reality, had you seen the light and thought that it was good then and only then would you have developed an attachment to your perception of light as being good, and therefore better than darkness. The attachment to your opinion, your fear of losing it, hope of seeing it again or getting more of it somehow then became good and evil, right and wrong. But what if neither were actually true, what if what you saw as light was no more than the beginning of the death of your perception of reality, the death of your current form and frame of reference along with it.
This struck John as very different from the religious doctrines he'd heard spouted over the years. But he never really pressed Logan for much conversation on the subject before nor after that, since it was one of those subjects he'd learned to avoid along with political discussions. In prison, just like anywhere else people have strong feelings about their religious and political opinions, engaging in such dialogue tended to be a clear path to an argument or worse in most cases, and since he had to live with Logan he thought it best to avoid the topics and that seemed fine with Logan. There were literally months that they spoke no more than a full sentence or two.  Then one day Logan sat up in his bed beneath John asked him if he'd like to learn how to ask the court to modify the remainder of his sentence after he completed the drug treatment program so he could get out of prison early. Naturally, John indicated that he would indeed. Logan told him he didn't want anything from John, other than his agreement that he'd follow the instructions he'd give him and that he'd give him neither the credit nor the blame for the outcome. John did everything Logan showed him and filed the motion to modify without a lawyer. Thirty days later the guards told John to pack up that he was being transported back to court. Logan just waved and told him to be well, be blessed, be wise and believe. 
After a 4 hr. ride in the county transport van John appeared in court the next day and the judge told him that he wanted him to go to a work release program to help him transition back into society, and released him to the custody of the work release program. After serving 4 years in prison on a 6 year sentence, the same judge that sent him to prison had just released him.