Update: I received yet another letter from my acquaintance, this one apparently written when he was actually INSIDE his jail cell! See below.

Metal,

Well, here I am. I have decided that orange may actually be my color. I am out of the habit of wearing baggy clothes.

There is not much to say. What you notice is what you take for granted. There are no visible clocks, so the passing of time is a blur. There is a nearby clock tower for the county courthouse that chimes through the day, but the sounds are muffled. And while I can hear some of the time, you never know if your counting of the ‘bongs’ is right or not. I feel my senses are a bit dulled.

The starkest, boldest and most damning of going to the jail is the transformation. You lose your freedom of course, but what you wear, what you do and when you do it. The most striking though was the transformation of the world color. The courtroom is painted in warm hues of a mix of peach skin and gentle terra-cotta. It is well lit with thoughtful lighting and bright. The floor is carpeted and the furniture, while designed to be functional, is comfortable. I did talk back at the judge a bit, and that was not appreciated. I soon learned the message.

The coldness of it all occurs when you leave the courtroom. You leave the courtroom and enter the ‘public’ area of the Jail. The warm tones are left behind and you transition into a blend of law-enforcement shades of green and green-grey. The carpet becomes well-aged linoleum, being clean and well swept. The lighting moves to standard fluorescent lighting. Then finally you go through the heavy double steel door into the Jail itself, the floor is now bare concrete, the colors are all very dark, unyielding blue tinged custodial grey. What few lights bulbs that exist are hidden behind very hard plastic fixtures, and likely at most are 50-watt bulbs. The place is dim. The lighting is not strong enough to even see what you are reading.

There have been long periods of quiet tedium. And waiting. And waiting some more. Waiting for something, a something that seems never to come.

I will keep you posted.