What can I say? I’m going to miss it here. It is said you never know what you’ve got till it’s gone. No truer words were ever spoken.
I have been here nearly a decade, stood before a live audience of fellow prisoners and free people year after year performing Shakespeare, been published in three books due to my creative writing class. I have learned about myself on levels I would have never gotten to until a ripe old age; the list goes on and on. All here in San Quentin state prison.
I will miss the people here more than anything else. The programs are great, but it has ever been the people who bring them that I truly believe make them work. You may think I speak only of volunteers, I do not. I speak of my brothers in blue as well.
People from the outside do come in and show wisdom and compassion for a few hours here and there that is true, but I am talking about the men here, the ones in the ditches every day, and every day they represent the very programs they teach.
It is these men I will miss. And here’s the most amazing part of all, the names are too numerous to fit in the word count of this article! That is why I will miss San Quentin.
Some have died since I arrived, some have finally been freed, but there are dozens of truly amazing souls here in the Quentin. Those of you who don’t know? Just look around you, they aren’t handing out soups, or shots of coffee, they’re talking, calming, teaching, being examples in every step they take.
They are Buddhist, Christian, Hebrew, Islamic, Odinist, etc. They come from every faith and every nationality. and they are all seeking the truth and all teaching truth.
People who have only known me here in the last few years have no idea the hard core convict who walked in here. Have no idea who and what I was once.
They only see the results, the outcome of the wisdom imparted, the tolerance given, the friendship offered, the solid foundations taught by these men in blue.
Yes, I am going to seriously miss San Quentin and I am going to try and bring all it has imparted with me to the new place they send me. May even start something old in a place that to me is new.
Our programs were not started by the free people in here, they were begun by people in blue, men who strived to be better and make better all that there is around them.
I won’t pretend to believe for a second I can move and shake like those I have come to know here. Such amazing minds, powerful souls and gentle spirits.
I have met so many leaders who choose to serve, so many who help their fellow man through legal advice, addiction counseling, spiritual advisement, common sense, tutoring, and on and on, that I am in awe and always will be.
Prison sucks, that’s a fact, but in here an animal learned to not just be a man, but to be a true person, an earnest soul, a real honest to God human being. That is why I will miss it here.
Peace
Martin “Ronin” Holmes
