Lost at Sea, Adrift

In the darkest of nights, I dream that I have no place to call home.

In the darkest of days, I do not even have to be asleep to awaken gasping and grabbing for this information that so many people take for granted.


In this way, imprisonment would be the greatest punishment I could ever experience. My family's background and tendencies did not, of course, lead me to be familiar with the ways of the convict or social deviants that consider prison to be free room and board. Jail was something that happened to other people, those scum of society who you don't nod to in the street. You just don't mix with them. Whether or not this is a reasonable method of dealing with the judicial system is not what I am going to argue now.


I've visited prisons before: prisons, juvies, correctional facilities, whatever flavor and whatever you care to call it. The holy mecca of jails, of course, is Alcatraz. No other prison is so romantic and so rich with stories, histories and reputation. It is a good day when you have the opportunity to fly across the country, meet up with four other accomplished photographers and sail out there to shoot it. Alcatraz has a huge draw, partially because of the history and unique physical location and partially because it is as close to an abandonment that the general public will ever see.


In truth, as an abandonment it is a bit of a disappointment. As a museum it is pretty cool. The 300 other tourists, the guided tour and the ($22 for a 5x7) snapshots of you in front of the Rock were more than a little hokey. What was much more interesting was the setting sun on the stones, the cries of the seagulls and the stern, private talking-to we got from a park ranger as soon as we stepped off the dock. We would be escorted off the island immediately, they said, if they saw us lagging behind the rest of the crowd. As photographers you have to grow thick skin about such bigotry because you do walk around with a target on your forehead, but for the life of me I could never quite envision the looming, raging threat coming from a few nerdy white guys and two Asian chicks.


Inside and outside, the smell is the same: the mildew and concrete and the cold. That never changes, no matter how clean park rangers scrub the floors of dust and footprints. The chipping plaster and bird guano was lovely, although screaming children detracted quite a ways from the silence I usually enjoy while viewing such sights. It was difficult to focus, difficult to remember that we were not only working against the clock but also the crowd, the birds, the officials dressed in olive drab glaring at us from down the hill and under their brims.


I used to wonder what it was like to sit in these cells and gaze out into the world just beyond reach. Now I think less of that and I wonder about the more mundane issues of the prisoned. Do they have family? What happened to their possessions? Do they have a home to return to? The last point in particular. The human psyche is adaptable and able, surely, to adjust itself to recognize the concrete cell as "home" for the duration of their stay. But what of afterwards? I am soft, weak, and vulnerable. To know that there is no one, stable, solid place to lay my head at night is the most terrifying idea in the world. No place to relax, stop looking over your shoulder, where things stay where you put them and you can retreat when everything else is too overbearing.

In all likelihood I will never have the experience to answer these questions.

With nightfall, life continued as it was on the outside: the sunlight fading from the cooling blue sky and the rising wind of a cold Californian night.

Alcatraz, the Rock