You might ask: If publishing my work has become a threat to my wellbeing and the potential of my being released from prison at some point, why keep doing that? The answer is simple: Because I must. I made a promise, and the result of keeping that promise has, so far, literally been my saving Grace. Expressing in the creative arts is a form of worship. Sharing it with you and with everyone who may find something to appreciate in it is also a form of worship. It would seem that the wisest course is to keep the faith and see it through.
Way back in 1972 I was given a second chance to make something good of myself when the death sentence I had been given by the jury that convicted me was commuted to life imprisonment with possibility of parole after seven years. You don’t have to look very far to see that I have made every effort to demonstrate that I was worthy of the generous opportunity I had been granted.
While my dedication to expressing in the arts has been a valuable tool in my personal transformative process, restoring myself to integrity out of the scattered wreckage of my past, artifacts that have come out of that are not the measure of who I am. The most these things may serve to indicate is that I have not allowed prison to define me, nor a crime, or a past affiliation with someone notorious, or a list of accomplishments achieved in spite of one's handicaps or weaknesses; not the failings nor even the successes. What defines a man, it seems to me, is how he plays all the cards he is dealt. This is the true service. In the end it is transcendence that matters.
Bobby BeauSoleil
November 13th, 2016
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