My lovely,
It’s time to start doing something, Lorri. You can start with that building class. It’s time to start growing. You are withering up. All those things in you that are so magickal and that make my heart explode are drying up. Everything is going out and nothing is coming in. It’s scaring me, Lorri. Very much so. Every day it becomes harder and harder to write these letters because there’s not even anything to write about. I can’t bring new life in, Lorri. It’s impossible for me, I’m helpless. It’s up to you. You’ve got your drawing supplies, and you can sign up for that building class. Then you can sign up for one of those martial arts classes you’ve talked about off and on. This is one more thing closing in, suffocating, making life harder. This is one thing that you can actually do something about. And I already know that we will fight over this. It’s going to cause a great deal of stress, because you’ve become so used to doing nothing that you want to continue to do it. And, if you do, you will kill us both. You’ve dug yourself into a rut, and it’s hard to get you to move. I’m scared and I’m angry and I’m stressed out. I can’t give one more fucking inch or I’m going to snap. My fucking spine is breaking, so please don’t make this any harder than it already is. You have to move, Lorri. Please.
You need art classes, too. Drawing, painting, art history, art appreciation. You’re not doing either of us any favors by allowing every trace of ambition to die.
This is the trap that all married people fall into. They stop changing, stop growing, stop learning, and stop doing anything.
I have to write some letters and get the economy flowing again. My head is pounding and I’m tired.
I love you,
D.
January 20, 2005
Dearest baby contraption,
I love the idea of something happening in NY with Dennis. It could be a really good fund-raiser.
I just learned we lost in state court.
It’s time to fight. I’ve had it.
Your wife,
Lorri
February 26, 2005
My dearest:
I want so much to tell you how much I love you. Sometimes, I watch movies or read stories and they make me realize how lucky and how magickal my life is because I have you. You know me so well, and my love for you can never be shaken. I think of every aspect of you and my heart goes weak. That feeling of falling.
You said this morning that there are no longer any 15-page letters—Damien, don’t you realize that there is a constant? Every hour, every minute is spent thinking of you, or doing something that has to do with you, or longing for you, or talking to you, or writing to you.
My life is you, and my heart will forever belong to you. You’ve taught me so much about love. You are gallant and brave and I marvel at how you continue to intrigue and inspire me. How did I ever deserve you?!
I will forever and ever find you and love you. You are mine.
I love you more than I could ever say.
Your wife,
Lorri
May 11, 2005
Munkus dearest,
Something has been happening to me lately. I couldn’t begin to describe it, other than to say it’s magick. It reminds me of what happened when I was sitting, only this is ten times more overwhelming. I close my eyes and see things. You know those blue and red circles on the Wonder Bread wrapper? I saw myself made of tens of thousands of those, like molecules. They would separate from me one at a time and spread out like dandelion puffs, until they combined with something else. I was literally becoming part of everything. I love telling you about all of this stuff, because I know you’re the only creature on earth who is capable of understanding. Lorri, you are not a person. You really are an angel. No person could ever be all the things that you are. You are absolutely amazing.
I love you,
Damien
June 21, 2005
Lovely munkus,
Lorri, you can’t ever leave me alone. I can’t live without you. Everything would be so empty and pointless. Don’t you dare ever get sick or die on me. I mean it, Lorri. Something in me starts to die if I even think about having to make it through a day without you. You are the fun, you are the magick, you are my life.
I am yours forever,
D.
postscript, 2014
You may have noticed that Lorri’s letters and mine are becoming fewer and far between; the dates are sporadic, our moods are mercurial. By the time we reached the last few years of my incarceration, we had almost completely stopped writing to each other. Our communication had switched almost entirely to phone calls, and Lorri was visiting much more often. By the time I got out, she was living in Arkansas, so we saw each other weekly. We could talk in person about everything, and we also had the burden of casework to talk about all the time—it was Lorri’s full-time job, and on some rare days, it actually felt to me like freedom was a possibility. However, more often it felt as though time had stopped; I lived in the vacuum of my cell, where days went by but nothing changed.
One of the most powerful tools within the magician’s arsenal is the tarot deck. Lorri and I have used it for many years, going back to when I was in prison. It has helped us through some of the hardest times in our lives. When most people think of tarot, they think of things seen in bad horror movies and dramatic (and incorrect) television shows. They think of things like gypsy fortune-tellers whispering dramatically about crossing paths with a tall, dark stranger. In reality, nothing and no one can tell you what the future will certainly be, because we have the ability to change it at any time.
What the tarot actually does is act like a mirror that reflects our lives back to us, so that we can see things that may otherwise go unnoticed. Things such as patterns. Most of us follow patterns that we may not even be aware of. Patterns in our thinking, patterns in the way we handle our relationships, even patterns in the way we spend money. Often we can become so immersed in these patterns and routines that they become invisible to us. That’s one of the many ways in which the tarot is useful. It allows us to see things with greater clarity.
When people come to me for tarot readings, I explain to them that the deck is basically divided into two kinds of cards: the major arcana and the minor arcana. Arcana is from an old Latin word meaning “secret”—so that tarot contains “big secrets” and “little secrets.”
The major arcana, or “big secrets,” are the cards people think of when they think of the tarot—cards like the Fool and the Magician. These cards point to moments in our lives that are more monumental in nature. They are road signs that mark our place on the map of spiritual evolution and growth. Not only do they point to where we are, but they also give us advice and warn us of certain pitfalls that lie at that particular fork in the road.
The minor arcana—the “little secrets”—are more about the day-to-day aspects of our lives. In the minor arcana there are four suits. There are cups, swords, wands, and pentacles. Each of these suits corresponds to a different area of our existence. The swords are all about our intellect—our ability or lack thereof to use logic and reason in different situations. The cups represent the watery aspect of ourselves—our emotions. They are about our relationships with ourselves and others, and the way we approach them. The wands represent our fiery aspect—our desire, our ambition, our creativity, and our sex drive. The pentacles represent the densest aspect of ourselves, which is the physical world—our bodies, our finances, our cars and houses and bank accounts.
There are many stories and bits of wisdom connected to each and every card. It would take an entire book to cover them all, so I’ll only give a couple of examples. The first is the Hanged Man.
When I was in prison, I used to call home and talk to Lorri every single morning. One of the things we would do on that call is draw a card. We’d draw the card, and then discuss the various meanings associated with it. Once, for nearly two straight week
s, Lorri drew the Hanged Man.
The card shows a young man hanging upside down, suspended by one foot. However, despite this precarious position, he doesn’t seem to be in any obvious pain or discomfort. His face is calm and serene, and there even appears to be light shining from around his head, like a halo. The Hanged Man is associated with all the old myths and stories of gods who have sacrificed themselves. Like the Christ, hanging from the cross. Or in the old Viking stories, it was Odin the All-Father, who hung from the World Tree for nine days. What all of these old stories have in common is that the central figure had to make a tremendous sacrifice, which was horrifyingly painful, but in return they gained something even more valuable. Odin gained the gifts of prophecy and magick. The Christ gained eternal life.
The moral of the Hanged Man? Nothing is free. You can have anything you want to have—but you have to pay the price. And the price is never fun. Lorri didn’t enjoy seeing that card come up day after day. But we both knew that sometimes the only way out of Hell is to keep walking until you reach the other side.
For me, the Hanged Man was a reminder of my childhood wish—the wish to be the greatest mage or magician who had ever lived. I saw my time in prison—eighteen years and seventy-six days—as the price I had to pay for that. The only way you become good at magick is with practice. So the universe gave me plenty of time and opportunity to practice, by putting me in a prison cell. It also gave me incentive—I would be murdered by the state for something I had not done unless I became good enough to shape a different reality.
The thing I always remember most about the Hanged Man is this: After you’ve paid the price, no matter how painful, you realize it was more than worth it.
Damien
August 4, 2005
Lovely minimus,
A man was proven innocent today after spending thirty years in prison. He went in at the age of 37. Now he’s 67.
I love you, spectabalis,
D.
November 2, 2005
My lovely,
When I look inside myself now all I see is bright light. There’s not even anything that people call “soul.” I’ve gone past that. A soul is made out of mud. This light in me is pure fire. Remember when Ogden Nash said, “Where there’s a monster, there’s a miracle”? I know what that miracle is. It’s an angel. The monster is the caterpillar, the angel is the butterfly. I would say that you are the spark that caused the big bang within me, but you are not a spark. You are the nuclear warhead. I’ve become a constant state of evolution. The light grows brighter and brighter. I saw this today. You have to know darkness before you can know light. Nothing else is possible. People aren’t capable of understanding these things, Lorri. Their minds aren’t capable of grasping it. It’s no wonder they thought I was crazy.
I love you,
Damien
December 29, 2005
My dearest,
I’ve had so much on my mind—very, very good things. Damien, I know you willed this job for me. It’s going to change my life in so many ways. I know you work hard on your book so you can help me and you have, greatly.
All the things I’ve been crying about over the last year, you have fixed—well, except for the one thing, and I promise I’ll do that with what you are doing for me.
I am driven, now, in every way. I want so much, and I’ll get it. I spent about 2 minutes today being sad because of your sad-sack letter. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I’m not going to give you any reason to be sad anymore. I love you, Damien. More than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. I know I’ve made you sad over the last year (well, maybe the last ten years), but I’m going to live to make you happy. Even when you tell me annoying George Carlin jokes. You are, after all, still a boy sometimes.
But you are also one of the—no, the most amazing and wonderful man I know of.
I love you,
Lorri
postscript, 2014
After all of these letters here, it is astonishing—no, unbelievable—to remember that we still had three years ahead of us until Damien’s release. This period of six or seven years, when we both dug in with the help of friends and supporters to really fight Damien’s case, was interminable. The challenges felt insurmountable. The stress of working on the case, the permanent, never-realized physical intimacy that we both so needed—that any two people who love each other must have—took a terrible toll on both of us.
And yet, we made it through the years to this point, and then we made it through many more years before Damien was free. The highs and lows were extreme—one great event, like a TV show, might happen and bring attention to our cause, sparking enormous excitement and adrenaline-fueled hope. Then a year would pass: nothing. We were like soldiers coming to the end of a war; battle-scarred, fighting blindly to get through one day at a time, unaware that the end is even near. Emotionally, we were ripped to shreds.
Probably the most intense week of my life came after our lawyer Steve Braga’s call in 2011, when he told me Damien could be released in a few days’ time. I went into shock, as did Damien. We were told not to tell anyone, so preparing for our next step was next to impossible. Damien started going downhill fast, and I was trying to hold him up, while working with his legal team in trying to convince Jason Baldwin to take the crazy deal the state had offered. I was allowed to tell the people closest to me, so I sought counsel from Nicole Vandenberg, Eddie Vedder, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, and Henry Rollins—they all gave me advice and the means to plan at least for the first year of our lives, but even then it felt like free-falling for months.
That first afternoon of freedom with Damien was the hardest. We went from the courtroom to a hotel in Memphis where everyone was having a daylong-into-evening party. Damien and I took some time in our room. For all those years of constant surveillance, here we were at last alone, and I was a little scared. Not of Damien, but of the huge responsibility I had. I had no idea how damaged he was from the trauma he had endured—and I wouldn’t make a dent into that insight for six months. Looking back, I wonder how we made it at all. It felt like sleepwalking.
But we did, and it’s just another chapter in our lives, and one from which I have once again learned how extraordinary Damien is. He has come so far in the last two years; and all I can do is look forward to what he—and we—will do next.
The last two years haven’t been easy. Damien suffered from extreme PTSD, and I was lost for much of the time, trying to figure out what the next step would be, but mostly I was trying to take care of him. I was afraid he was broken, and that I would never be able to put him together again, but my Damien is extraordinary—as I have always known, as these letters attest to. He has come so far, and he is getting better every day, as am I.
I wake up sometimes wondering if we’re doing the right thing for us, putting these letters, putting our lives out there for everyone to see. I had horrible fantasies that we would be taken apart for being weirdos, but after reading them, I realize it’s the only thing I want to do right now. We lived this, and we won. We are now living the very things we wrote about; we wrote them into being, and if that doesn’t speak to true, absolute magick, I don’t know what else does.
I wouldn’t wish this life for anyone. I would never suggest to a young woman to find a man in prison to write to, to fall in love with and to marry him. It’s a brutal life for everyone involved. It breaks hearts over and over again. It is a life of deprivation that cannot be sated. I’ve had women write to me or ask me for advice who have found themselves in my situation—but I don’t respond, because I know nothing I say will deter them. All I know, at the risk of sounding astoundingly vain, is that there will never be another situation like mine and Damien’s. It was the perfect storm, so to speak—we had resources and supporters from around the world, we had actual innocence, and we somehow had the strength and love to hold on.
Looking back at the first letter
s and reliving everything after, I am struck with our naiveté—perhaps mine more than Damien’s. He worked so hard at trying to convince me that he was all right. I was so dramatic in those first years, flying so close to the sun, not caring how far out I would venture, though in reality, it was all very close. There was just Damien and me, living in our heads and hearts, but to us it was a huge, scarily crazy adventure, because we dared to be honest with each other, and to follow whatever path our love would take us on.
I think that’s the part I find hardest to read, or maybe it’s comforting: We grew up. We came to a realization that in order to survive, we would have to go through searing pain. I don’t even know if we realized that it was imperative to take us to the place where we would form a spiritual connection and that it would be the foundation of our relationship. Without that, the jealousies, the insecurities, and the pain we inflicted upon each other because of the insane circumstances would’ve eventually killed who we were. No love can survive such degradation without eventually finding a spiritual foundation, and that is what we believe and live today.
This book is our only way of showing others what it can take to keep love alive, even in the direst of circumstances. There are many people who face horrific and daunting situations. War, illness, crime—these are just some of the human conditions that cause unbelievably difficult scenarios for love. But somehow we keep finding it in all these places, and somehow we find humor and grace and humility, and even sex. Thank goodness for sex.
We will never, ever be able to fully describe what happened to us, why we found each other, and the love and perseverance it took to stay together. I just knew that once I got to know Damien, he would be my life. We still believe we will create our world, and we have many, many dreams. It’s going to be a wonderful life.
Yours for Eternity: A Love Story on Death Row Page 23
