C. Chessman: waiting 12 years on death row

[RonPrice]

This is a prose-poetic, a personal, reflection on this man who was waiting on death row. -Ron in Australia

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SAINTSHIP

After ten years you go beyond feeling.

-C. Chessman, BBC, 1993 on ABC Television: 30 November 1995: Great Crimes and Trials of the Twentieth Century. Chessman was a man waiting on death row in California from 1950 to 1962.

After thirty-three years your feelings

learn to protect themselves

with humorous asides, saying ‘no’

and dwelling in some inner landscape

where your Master rides, lightly rides:

in the mountains you reach for Him.

You cloak yourself in a privacy

Which sometimes tastes of dignity

and a hint of spiritual charm

like a herbal remedy, ever so distant,

ever so subtle, dry even.

Sometimes you feel like a delectable,

mysterious sauce, piquant,

puzzlingly attractive, lingers on the tongue,

surprising their taste buds with unexpected

combinations of colourful ingredients.

You meet the human need for delighted

astonishment, but sadly(thankfully?) only

sometimes or you'd be run into the ground.

So much of it is dry paperland with no more

juice than some of those useless lemons,

that is why you admit people to friendship

slowly. You had to after winning all those

popularity contests which you didn’t even

want to enter: So you perfected evasion

into an art form; it kept away the bore,

the pedant, the obtuse, the fake, the loud,

the chatterbox, just about everyone: gave

them the slip when they blundered uninvited

with their chit-chat into your personal space,

with their well-intentioned catechism of things

that would be good for you or so they thought

and sometimes they were and you missed out.

You missed out on much--don't we all? By George

don't we all....yessireebob....yessireebob!!!

For the cosmic patriotism of this Cause

and its enthusiastic temper of espousal

can get a little thin, unless one is what

you might say, constitutionally sanguine

and possess a congenital amnesia, an

incapacity for even transient sadness,

a temperament organically weighted

on the side of cheer, fatally forbidden

to linger, even momentarily, on life's

dark side--everyone has a dark side.

But me, and many of them, have a

different suseptibility to emotional

excitment, to the impulses and

inhibitions that they bring in their

train. This rank-and-file believer,

part of the warp and weft, ordinary

chap, seems to have softened with

the years, has unobtrusively acquired

an incapacity for those sacrificial moods

that once inspired his being; perhaps he

has just learned to inhibit his instinctive

repugnances and has acquired a firece

contempt for his own person which he is

learning to moderate in both his private

and public domains: is this how one

discovers and measures saintship?

Ron Price

30 November 1995

(updated for Unexplained Mysteries

Discussion Forums on: 21/10/'08)

[Hans Dolbrook]

and you do know that he was executed for rape don't you?

i have seen people leave court free after being convicted of rape.

[conspiracybeliever]

That's our legal system for you. Unreal.

[conspiracybeliever]

That's our legal system for you. Unreal.

[conspiracybeliever]

That's our legal system for you. Unreal.

[conspiracybeliever]

That's our legal system for you. Unreal.

I hate it when this forum does this! It acts like it's dead and won't post so you keep clicking on post reply and then you end up with this! Can someone remove all these?

Edited October 23, 2008 by conspiracybeliever

[RonPrice]

Belated apologies for taking 7 years to get back to you folks, but I just saw your responses today for the first time. I've been working on my website at: http://www.ronpriceepoch.com/