It was almost 2 months ago that I found myself free for the first time in a long time. I was free for 38 minutes and 29 seconds. To find out how just read below.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I had a recent experience that reminded me of something described by Oscar Wilde – a fellow incarcerate.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cI never saw a man who looked<\/p>\n
With such a wistful eye<\/p>\n
Upon that little tent of blue<\/p>\n
That prisoners call the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was free for 38 minutes and 29 seconds from 9-15am on Saturday 31st<\/sup> August 2019. I hadn\u2019t noticed it at the time – it was only when the bonds of my imprisonment had been re-established, that I realised I had even been free.<\/p>\n It was a sunny morning at the start of a Bank Holiday weekend. Our unit was unlocked, as usual, at 8.30am. I decided to sack off the wing\u2019s gym session at 9.00am and figured I would have a Yoga stretch instead.<\/p>\n Our unit is a \u2018H\u2019 shaped building, the left hand side of the \u2018H\u2019 is almost East facing, which means that the courtyard area at the front of the building gets the morning sun, the rear courtyard gets the sun in the afternoon and evening.<\/p>\n When the sun is out the lads on the wing do pretty much the same thing as everybody on the outside would like to. Some of the lads will walk laps of the exercise yard while the others grab a book, headphones, cold drink, towel or chair in order to stretch out and enjoy the sun.<\/p>\n On this Saturday morning I grabbed my Yoga mat, my headphones and MP3 player and while everybody else was either at the gym, in bed or sunbathing at the front of the unit, I headed for the back. It was shaded and cool with a steady, gentle, tickling breeze.<\/p>\n I laid out my mat and gently limbered up. I stripped to a t-shirt and shorts, kicked off my trainers and socks and rolled myself out onto the mat. I put my headphones in and immediately noticed the echoing underwater sensation of hearing distortion as the outside world was obscured through an aural fog. I tapped \u2018Play\u2019 on one of my favourites folders and I closed my eyes as I drew deep breaths into my lungs – each one stretching my rib-cage a little further. I allowed my feet to fall slightly outwards, my hands a few inches from my hips – palms facing upwards.<\/p>\n The first track that played was \u2018Five Years\u2019. I knew I was on David Bowie – though I wasn\u2019t 100% sure which album. I listened and breathed. It felt like each breath was like a wave, a pulse that rolled from my lungs to my head, fingertips and toes before rolling back up to my lungs again. I opened my eyes and all I could see was sky – big, crisp beautiful fucking sky! I knew that the roof of the unit was on the periphery of my vision, above me and to the left and right. The barbed wire of the fence lay just beyond my feet – but like the phrase goes, \u2018Seeing is believing.\u2019 If I couldn\u2019t see them, then they obviously didn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n I focused on that morning sky while Bowie sang, a moment in time captured from the year 1972: \u201cNews guy wept and told us, Earth is really dying. Cried so much, his face was wet. I knew he wasn\u2019t lying.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n I felt a beautiful melancholy. As the first track ended I knew that there was an acoustic intro to track 2 – I wracked my brains trying to remember the name of the song, but was foiled as soon as it started -\u201cSoul Love\u201d. My toes start tapping out the drum rhythms entirely without my permission, my shoulders are running the bass lines and I don\u2019t know what the fuck my head and neck are doing – but they seem to be having a nice time. I guess my head is the \u2018Dad Dancer\u2019 of this ensemble – what it\u2019s doing ain\u2019t pretty – but it doesn\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n By the time \u2018Moonage Daydream\u2019 starts I am doing all I can to stop my arms kicking into air guitar. I watch my hazy blue sky. The gossamer thin coating is frayed and worn in patches where the blue bleeds through more densely. Between the ozone blue heavens and the dewy scented Earth are layers of clouds, each caste segregated, occupying its own place in a celestial hierarchy.<\/p>\n Closest to me are the Candy Floss clouds that whizz, fizz and spin. Like tumble weeds they meander whimsically with no apparent destination. I lay private wagers on which cloud will reach the other side of my sky window first.<\/p>\n Beyond the Candy Floss lies the \u2018Ice Flow\u2019, where more stately clouds drift, collide and combine. Their languid ballet reminds me of the Arctic ice flows in transition. Large sheets either grinding and melding together as winter bites or splitting and sundering as summer begins to exert its power.<\/p>\n Above all lay the piped meringue ribbons – the icing like shell of our atmosphere. To pierce this protective veil is to reach the oblivion of space. Bowie tells me that \u201cThere\u2019s a Starman, waiting in the sky. He\u2019d like to come and meet us – but he thinks he\u2019d blow our minds.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n What would happen if the sky were to burst? Would the cold, blackness of space creep into our atmosphere? Would it spread across the candy blue sky like the inky limbs of a Spider from Mars? Or like a breach in a pressurised cabin, would a puncture cause the Earth to be stripped – would I be sucked up and torn from this world like Dorothy from Kansas?<\/p>\n I forgot my Yoga. I just lay there. Breathing. Watching. Being. There were none of the marks of mankind. I saw no buildings, no power-lines, no sodium glow of lights, no street lights. There were no tell-tale vapour trails to mark the passage of aeroplanes. I was outside of time with nothing but big, beautiful and eternal sky. I am Crusoe, a castaway on the planet. David Bowie is my Man Friday from beyond the grave.<\/p>\n In the weeks since I have been able to revisit the emotions of that Saturday, unlike those times when I have been woken from a pleasant dream. I simply close my eyes and listen to the 38 minute and 29 second Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.<\/p>\n Boy! Could he play guitar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was almost 2 months ago that I found myself<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[106,126,168,514],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prison","tag-clouds","tag-david-bowie","tag-freedom","tag-yoga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jailhousemoose.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}