Contentment

I often wake up, as I did this morning, and for several seconds, maybe ten or fifteen, I have no clue where I am. But, instead of panicking, I feel just mild curiosity that seems to arise from a deep calmness.

This morning when I awoke my cell was fairly dark (one of the nice things about life here on Federal death row, i.e. no annoying lights shining into the cells all night) and I was lying on my side facing the wall. So opening my eyes didn't clarify my situation as it usually does. But, I still felt no panic. Instead I actually enjoyed the puzzle; was I in a bedroom? A cell? A hotel?

Where I was wasn't nearly as interesting to me as the mere fact that I had no idea about where I was.

I knew that this curious type of innocence wouldn't last long. And, sure enough, as soon as I turned onto my back I suddenly knew exactly where I was. The memory came all at once, not gradually or piecemeal. But, it took a small clue, like a speck of dust in a snowflake, for my memories to crystalize around. I was in a prison cell on death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Along with the "where" also came the "who, what, when, and why". (Most interesting perhaps was the "who", because before the memory came I honestly didn't know who I was and didn't seem to care any more than I did about where I was!) I was a convicted serial child rapist/murderer with three Federal death sentences and a good chance I could be killed within a few years.

Now, you might think this sudden realization would hit me hard, the way it does for people like me in the movies and on TV crime fantasy shows. But it didn't strike me at all. Instead I just felt satisfied that I had remembered where I was; and an underlying contentment with the entire situation.

I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I want to say that, "I felt like everything was going according to plan." But, that only works if I emphasize that it's not MY plan, at least not as an individual named Joseph E. Duncan III and called "Jet" by friends and family.

And the mere fact that I can't remember what the "plan" is matters no more to me than when I couldn't remember where I was.

Somehow I know, on a level clearly beyond all thought and memory, that everything is going to be okay, no matter wjat I can, or can't, remember!