Snap Studios. I've avoided it for a long time for years but finally one chilly Saturday Hoody clutched tight over my head I take the ferry.

Over the water to this fortress-like building set against the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Prison,

commanding its own island,

once the flagship prison of the federal incarceration system now decommissioned, empty.

And stepping off the boat, my guide Mary, she leaves me past the plaque, past the three foot thick concrete walls into shadow.

Up this metal staircase, through the imagined screams of thousands of angry men passed one tear then to another until finally

return.

Turn again.

Walk past lines of iron bars where she directs me into this tiny, tiny cell that I do not wish to enter.

Five feet by 9 feet tiny.

Just a metal bed, a sink in a toilet.

Not enough room for the two of us.

No window, you can't see the bay that is just outside, but somehow you can feel the wind whipping over the winter waters we sit in this gloom, cold. Cold from the walls, cold from the bars, from the floor.

And Mary tells me that in the not too distant past, when this was an active men's prison

because of some peculiar trick of sound and acoustics,

a person caged right here at night can hear across the water, can hear voices from very different circumstances.

Men chatting up the beautiful daughters of high society,

cocktail parties, music, the tinkling of wine glasses. And when Mary Leagues here,

leaves me alone when her footsteps finally vanish.

And listen for the creek, for the

rattle of this rotting building. I imagine the happy, cheery voices,

the sensuous whispers whispers, just over there.

...