There is something about being locked in a six by eight foot room and watching men scurry about because they cannot find the correct key that threatens to induce panic even when one knows one is safe. Having that room be an attorney visiting room deep in the bowels of Wisconsin�s Supermax prison tends to increase the panic. Never mind that one�s client is no longer in the room and one is alone. If the men gave up, would one ever be located and released?

No matter how many times I�ve entered prisons, I�ve never grown accustomed to waiting for each door to open and to the clanking of doors behind me. At some prisons, such as the Supermax, the guards are friendly, at least to outside visitors. Still, the very procedures seem designed to make clear to all who enter that they are no longer in charge of their own destiny, even if they are just visitors. Benevolent jailors are jailors nonetheless.

While some people whistle in the dark, I chat at any apparently receptive guard. I�ll even talk foreign languages like football and baseball to make my connections. The connections, however tenuous and temporary, seem small rebellions that keep me a person in sterile surroundings that seem determined to render me a small cog in a very big wheel.

But locked in a room with no outside window, flourescent lights, only a slit of a window to the hallway, and only the sound of sudden loud clanging of doors, chat is an unavailable defense. All you have is what is in your own head and your own ability to keep the monsters there in check. Your knowledge, your files, the street clothes that mark you as �not of this world� mean nothing. You are trapped and only the acts of others can get you out. Nothing you think really matters then.

A watch, normally an item one does not think about, suddenly takes on new significance. There is no clock on the wall and one wonders what those without clocks and watches do to orient themselves. A minute passes, then two, then three. The watch assures you that it really has not been as long as it feels. Emotional time and real time often diverge but rarely so radically.

If I so dislike the solitary confinement and the feeling of total powerlessness, even for so brief a time, what must it be like for those really imprisoned?

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