Jack Abbott
Jack Abbott
age age-and-aging began detention eighteen industrial juvenile nine released school sent serving state twelve utah
At age nine I began serving long stints in juvenile detention quarters. At age twelve I was sent to the Utah State Industrial School For Boys... at age eighteen I was released as an adult.
aged free half moment nine since sum total twelve
I am at this moment thirty-seven years old. Since aged twelve I have been free the sum total of nine and a half months.
bank committed crime free robbery serious society time
The only serious crime I have ever committed in free society was bank robbery during the time I was a fugitive.
morning forgotten psychological
One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.
long ghost i-can
As long as I am nothing but a ghost of the civil dead, I can do nothing.
prison feels ifs
I feel that if I ever did adjust to prison, I could by that alone never adjust to society.
anger moments imagine
Imagine a thousand more such daily intrusions in your life, every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the source of this paranoia, this anger that could consume me at any moment if I lost control.
suffering way innocence
Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent - something like an infant - deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer.
school causes reform
Paranoia is an illness I contracted in institutions. It is not the reason for my sentences to reform school and prison. It is the effect, not the cause.
hurt prison it-hurts
That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life.
eye umpires brain
My eyes, my brain seek out escape routes wherever I am sent.
night subjectivity ghost
When they talk of ghosts of the dead who wander in the night with things still undone in life, they approximate my subjective experience of this life.
mirrors looks painful
I find it painful and angering to look in a mirror.
moving passion mind
The part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world as a horrible nightmare.