Life in furlough, for me, has been about finding a routine and sticking to it. My days are predictable, and everything is in its right place. When I get on the bus, I'm always on the side of aisle whose window faces the exit ramps, not the center median. Earlier this week, though, something struck me as different. I'm still in my usual spot, 3rd seat down, when the bus zoomed up a cloverleaf and then on an overpass over the 101. On most days, I'd look out my side, and I would see a string of reds as cars zip off into Los Angeles. The horizon would be met by these mechanized rubies, heralding the beginning of just another day. It's no different from yesterday.

This day, though, I peaked at the window on the other side of the bus. Across the aisle, and out the other window, I saw cars coming up the grade. It struck me as odd that, despite the obvious bidirectional nature of the 101, all I seemed to notice was the string of white headlights. These are the same cars that, on my side, sped by and failed to signal when they changed lanes. The mechanized diamonds were different, as if evoking an idea that people leave Camarillo all the time. They're doing it today. One day I will, too.

Nick came in with a police report on his brother, who is serving three life sentences. The report spoke of an incident where his brother stabbed someone with a 5-inch blade, three times in the head, four times in the back, twice in the neck, three times in the chest, and various other instances on his arms and shoulders. For this, he was sentenced 5 months to a year in solitary. How do you punish someone with nothing to lose?

Me, I've got plenty to lose, and I've recently thought that if I had been sentenced to work release, I would have been more rehabilitated than the county would care to admit. Throughout the time of my residence here, I've come in contact with more crooks, felons, thieves, and addicts than I would have at any other point in my life. I'm now friends with all of them. But if, instead, I was forced to wear a jumpsuit and cleanup the side of the road, I would be stuck with the ignominy and embarassment of my actions, and somewhere along the way, maybe I really would be "corrected", and not simply sentenced in a mechanism that serves to placate the voting masses.

Instead of regret I have embitterment, bolstered by my ability to endure. Regret only comes when your strength fails you, forcing you to relent. My strength never allowed that to happen. I never became blind to the mistakes of my past, but neither did I ever attribute my past to be anything more than a precursor to my present. My central mode of thinking relies on cause and effect, and more fundamentally, the embracing of consequences as a set of reactions that are strictly my own. I created this world for myself; why should I regret it? Furlough allowed me to keep, perhaps even foster, cultivate, and build, my detachment to the events of my life, tragic or otherwise.

I met a guy at the bus stop this morning who lost his license because of stroke-related loss of vision. Nice guy, an older gentleman in a goofy blue fishing hat. I always do a quick teleportation of myself to another universe where roles are reversed, and it wasn't too long ago when I had a goofy brown fishing hat and I drove a banged up Honda. In this universe, there exists the Me that would have done it all over again; all of it, even if gave me a stroke and took away some of my eyesight and I was forced to ride a bus for many many different reasons. Circumstances never interested me. Maybe I'm the type of guy that, in my older age, would don that blue hat and walked to the bus stop only to meet some kid on a bike. Maybe I'm the type of guy that would do a quick teleportation, and in all our collective reverie, I find it circuitously amusing that we end up right back to who already are.

I gotta go; the bus is here. It's no different from yesterday.