Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I know it has been way too long. I have been waiting for some divine inspiration to hit and in the meantime been ignoring the outside world since it has pretty much written me (or not written me as the case may be) off. I want to make it perfectly clear that while I eagerly await your next letter, I am not faulting you in the least. It is unfair to place any burden on you to write to me, knowing full well that you are dealing with a whole bunch of stuff that life is currently throwing your way.

The mail service of late has been really backlogged. Your Christmas card mailed on December 16 did not arrive till January 3! The last NY Times I received was January 2, a week ago. And that was the last of five papers I received last Wednesday! I sort of keep hoping a letter will arrive in tomorrow's mail, but alas... I still have not heard from anyone who recently offered to write to me. So realistically the only possible letters I could receive are from you and my parents. And I am not holding up my letters to you due to no letters of late from you. So ergo, no good excuse for not writing.

We have had a couple days of rain here, I wonder if they got snow at Killington.

Things in the dorm seem to be fairly stable at the moment, but I still sleep with a lock in the sock, and the inmate that hit me is still here. They say keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The one inmate that I occasionaly cook two-man meals with (he gets this great pepperoni stick from home) is also friends with the guy that hit me. They are around the same age I think. Mid twenties. I ended up cooking for six on Christmas and New Years, and the hitter is also part of that group.

I am apprehensive of the moment when the wrong mix of inmates, staff (or lack of) and location finds me at the receiving end of a physical assault. But what options do I have? Transfer to another location? I could find myself doing time in the special housing area. Two man cells, locked in all day and night, until I willingly signed out and went to another location. Then I would lose the few perks I have here: my carpenter job, church services and programs, and access to my keyboard. Unless the rules have changed, musical instruments were put in storage at my last place.

If this all seems sort of confusing, that is good. That is why I have not been writing much, I'm not sure how to put this all on paper. Instead I have been ignoring the world, reading and playing my keyboard!

After some confusion as to if I would be able to play for both the Protestants on Saturday and the Catholics on Sunday, I am currently doing both. This means I am up at the chapel from 11:30 AM to 4:00 PM Saturday and Sunday. Put in a couple hours a day of practice time, the six hours a day for my job, and where is the rest of my time needed to write?

As far as that goes that certainly was one good thing in the past, lots of time to type. I still have time to type, but I have to be more efficient and disciplined. I have less time to divvy up, so a few hours reading, and oops there goes another day. Meanwhile, the writing is the only true outlet, and source of emotional connections? Make sense? More to come.  ¶ 11:13 PM