These colorful prison walls

The hardest part of writing is choosing the correct environment. The music, the posture, the lighting, the time, the level of silence. Do you write better when it snows out? With tea in one hand? Hemmingway wrote standing up. Capote lying down. Do you let your uncomfortable chair or your droopy eyes stop you from writing? Do you want to be a writer, or to write? To be is imprisoned is to be restrained. Do your whims and fancies restrain your writing? What if, just once, all the variables were perfect. Then could you write?
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The wardens released the prisoners early this year, before the snow had properly melted from the sidewalks. Under orders from the courts, all prisoners in ________ must be given a day of freedom. The intent, according to the city, is to ensure no criminal forgets the pain of his sacrifice. Was that TV or that little girl or that joint worth it? Can a uppercut possibly compensate for 23 hours a day locked in a cage? No, nothing is worth prison. I would know.
The snow was the color of an Oreo milkshake, but it clung tightly to winter. It was the sort of snow that twists knees and breaks ankles: hard on the outside, soft on the inside, like freezer-burned ice cream. The prisoners stood in the street at the end of the prison drive, in a line like expectant school children all sure they'll be picked last.
It was as if the road with its two yellow stripes was the line, and on the other side was the underdog. Do you join his side? Will your risk it out in that world? One crossed. He didn't look both ways. The snow was his insurance. The twenty something convicts and the guards at the gate watched; would he survive? This ritual is repeated every year. One always risks it alone. Freedom is that important to him. The hazard of the road, which is trafficked when the snow melts, doesn't deter him. Neither do the stares from the free people -- perhaps even the stare of the shop owner he robbed. But the village people are kind this one day of the year; the prisoners are to be pitied. They greet the lone adventurer with politeness and condescension. He says little; this year he says nothing. His arms hang limp at his sides and he is hunched like an elderly man who has forgotten why he crossed the street. What does a convict do with his day off? His hair is speckled gray, like the dirty snow. Perhaps he has forgotten. The younger prisoners silently inch their way across the street. One, then another make their way into the pub. They finger the dirty cash in their pockets. They're self-conscious, and everyone watches their hands move about beneath their jeans. The next few make their way to the theatre, and another group goes to the grocery store. The town begins to bustle again, carefully. No one wants to slip on the snow.
I watch from my window. I've drawn the curtains back, and their black forms are stark against the white sidewalks. It is a large window, one I had installed following my accident. I wheel up and down the length of the window, to get a different perspective on the world outside. It is my only view of the world, because the other windows are too high. I am content with it though. I couldn't go outside anyway, even if I had an immune system. The snow would wreak havoc on a wheelchair. Darn near impassable. I'd get stuck and then I'd be cold as well as look the idiot. Like the old man. He stood there, looking at the snow. He held his breath, then hyperventilated for a few seconds. He must have been recently transfered here. If this was his first glimpse of freedom in years, no wonder he gasped. If I could walk again, after these thirty years, I'd probably gasp too. But I don't want to walk. Not if it was only for a day.
At first I got all the therapy I could, to try to walk again. It crushed me every time my noodle legs shriveled up on the shiny hospital floor. Hospital floors are shiny, to trick people into thinking they are clean. It makes people think being in a hospital isn't that bad. It's a lie. Hospitals smell like death. There is no worse place a living man could dwell. When I fell, I would only want to walk all the more, so I could leave that place sooner. I was adamant that I would walk. My failure depressed me. It was only when I gave up on recovery, and accepted my movable prison, that my spirit recovered. It became where I wanted to be.
The old man is comfortable in his prison. It is what he has accepted. To have freedom, to walk away from his prison permanently would please him more. But to walk away, carrying the obligation with him; that is not worth it. It's like putting a vacation on a credit card. If you can't afford it, it's not a vacation. It'd be better to accept reality and learn to love where you are, sans vacation. You wouldn't enjoy the vacation anyway.
He turned, probably with these thoughts on his mind, and shuffled back to the prison side. To my side. The guards heckled him of course. They always bother those who go back early. Those free men take liberty for granted. They can't comprehend how comforting and stable prison is, once you adjust to it. Once you accept it. I'm happy here. It's where I want to be. You see, then, that it's not really a prison. And that man, hunched and heckled, he with his speckled hair is the freest of those convicts, though he never takes his day away from prison. Because he's not in prison, inside those walls. I think if you could ask him, through that smudged glass and tinny voicebox, I think he'd tell you it's better to accept your lot, and live.