A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden by Stephen Reid

Author:Stephen Reid
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LCO10000, SOC030000, BIO024000
Publisher: Thistledown Press
Published: 2012-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

The only real serenity I have ever experienced in life, paradoxically and tellingly, has been without the assistance of drugs. It arose from a long period of abstinence, late in life, encouraged by the love of my wife and my daughters, nurtured by my friends, and witnessed by a God of my understanding — in whom, ultimately, I could not extinguish my addiction.

But even after a lifetime, I was not done with my crimes, nor were they done with me. In 1999 I returned to a full-blown heroin and cocaine habit. I had tried to keep a foot in each world, to hold onto the weight of love and family, but was pulled into the underworld of drugs. I chose to destroy both lives — not in a calculated way, more by default, but I chose nonetheless. I committed the worst bank robbery of my life, an unprofessional, unprovoked act of violence. It cost me an eighteen-year sentence, and nearly cost some people their lives.

Now, at fifty pieces, I find myself stripped bare, beaten back from hope, all out of illusions, in yet another prison cell. Having fallen through the crust of this earth so many times, it seems only on this small and familiar pad of concrete, where I can make seven steps in one direction, then take seven back, do my feet touch down with any certainty.

A year before my arrest, when Sophie was nine, we went out sliding after a freak snowfall. Hurtling down the hill on a red plastic saucer, we whirled faster and faster until the edge caught and we spilled. We tumbled through the snow, Sophie’s pearly whites shining to the heavens, her laughter like small golden bells.

Now Sophie is twelve. When she accompanies her mother on their weekly visits to the prison, I hold her on my lap, and those wide brown eyes fix onto mine. Sophie needs to see me rise up again, return to her life. Though we are connected in unbreakable ways, I worry about her memories of a drug-addicted dad.

So I pace, seven steps one way, seven steps back. And I write. The days pass. I sit on my concrete pad, cross my legs and begin to breathe. The darkness of my world melts away, and as I move towards the mystery I can almost hear those faint golden bells. Slowly I enter the heart of unknowing, without expectation, without heroin.

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