by Kunlyna Tauch
They’ll enter my “house,” cuff me, escort me to another part of the prison and toss everything everywhere. You know the way someone treats things that do not belong to them.
I’m at my sink doing laundry when I hear, “Program slam!” A porter comes to my cell and informs me of the latest news and walks off in disgust. The statement insinuates that there will be no movement, no more phone calls, possibly no showers and worst of all, no yard.
“This is bullshit!” I hear him yell off in the distance, probably mad because what program slam also means is everyone’s cell will be searched.
I go back to washing my laundry in the sink. What’s new? I think to myself. This is Pelican Bay after all. This is a level 4 maximum security prison after all. This is... I scrub some visible stain off my clothes. Apply soap provided by the state, then scrub a little harder. Or am I just institutionalized? This is a question I ponder often. To the incarcerated it means one has been so far removed from freedom that one loses touch with reality. The word itself is as stigmatized as it is long. Institutionalized. Have I become so conditioned that the thought of being trapped in my cell for two weeks barely fazes me? Should I be hysterical?
Soap is overflowing down my sink and toilet. For a second it takes me back to Long Beach, reminding me of the froth when the wave from the ocean hits the sand. Still 9:00 a.m. and everyone is rushed home in a frenzy. Cell doors close in succession, the bangs all too familiar over the years. Then everything is quiet, dead. I don’t like it. I turn on my TV/CD player hoping to escape to the frequencies of music. After laundry, I clean up the soap scum and face my 8-inch fan towards the wet clothes while they hang dry.
...Missing metal (allegedly). I wonder when they’ll come up with a better excuse. I mean I should take it more seriously. Hypothetically speaking, missing metal infers someone has made a knife—a nice one too—and intends to use it. You kinda have to if you’re brazen enough to do that. But as someone who has done more than ten years, I have doubts about whether there really is someone hiding a knife. I speculate that missing metal is always the go-to excuse for searches that were going to happen anyway. At this point they are an inconvenience more than anything else.
I know the administration is only doing their jobs, choosing to protect our “little gated community,” but it would be nice if they didn’t leave my cell such a mess afterward. I start to arrange my things and prepare for the ensuing raid. They’ll enter my “house,” cuff me, escort me to another part of the prison and toss everything everywhere. You know the way someone treats things that do not belong to them. One time I found all of my court transcripts (thousands of pages) shuffled like a deck of playing cards. Another time I discovered my cell “totaled,” as if a hurricane had just left. At a loss for words and feeling defeated, I sat down and didn’t know where to start or how I would ever put my home back together.
My peers do not like that I refer to their cells as their house/home. I guess they fear that they’ll become accustomed to this style of life, this oppressive state of being, I get it. But I’ve been a ward of the state since I was 12, and as sad as it is to say, my current living arrangement has been my most stable, the place I’ve lived the longest without having to move my whole 32 years of existence. Plus, my roommate is someone I’ve known since I was 14, never mind the fact that we were gang members then.
So, although a random stranger will come and ransack my home, I’ve long since accepted it is an occupational hazard of this lifestyle. I mean, these COs have a job to do—so do we. Most of them don’t want to do it just as much as we do not want them to do it. Which is probably why I’ve also come to accept that some random individual will impulsively steal metal from some place that they’re not supposed to (allegedly) and because of it, we’ll go on lockdown.
I pour myself a cup of water from the hot pot, spoon a mountain of dry freeze Folgers into the cup and sip in satisfaction. I do another quick assessment for the oncoming invasion. I move some things around, hoping that it’ll help the lucky correctional officer navigate and quickly conclude that I have nothing out of the ordinary. In my younger years, it was a game of cat and mouse. Now in my old age, I don’t have time for that. Now, I operate with the ease of a Zen monk at a tea ceremony. Sip. Inhale, exhale. I am one with the force and the force is with me.
Am I institutionalized? Have I conformed into this drudgery of existence, awaiting the inevitable while lacking motion? Or have I transcended prison itself and the very idea of it, becoming present with my version of life, my version of beauty, and my version of peace? I’ll let you decide.
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Kunlyna Tauch is a Cambodian-American from Long Beach California. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 and is serving 50 years to life at Pelican Bay State Prison. During his incarceration, Tauch has earned his associate’s degree from the College of the Redwoods’ Pelican Bay Scholars Program. He participates in the Pelican Bay UNLOCKED podcast, Anti-Recidivism Coalition classes, Dell’Arte’s Prison Arts Program and Hustle 2.0, an entrepreneurship program. He also volunteers as a peer Buddhist member at the Arcata Zen Group.