When I handed the book to him I remember two things. Justin reminded me of the ancient warrior Arjuna, dismayed and lost on the battlefield, where he engages in conversation with Lord Krishna about the nature of life. To this end I took the chance of offering him a copy of The Bhagavad Gita. In his struggle one could sense that he was becoming a spiritual warrior. He was a warrior well established in the Art of War. He was determined to put the battered bricks together in a new way. What I didn’t know at that time was the level of commitment he showed up with, to forge a new life.
#Sea of solitude cheats full
When he began to quote Dostoyevsky, Carl Jung and William Butler Yeats amongst others he had my full attention. He had served serious time including years in solitary. In his thirties, he was from the Old Colony Projects of South Boston and raised in the Whitey Bulger era. He was not the average MaineWorks recruit, in that he was not a twenty something just out of rehab or detox for profound substance abuse disorder. To stand before him felt like standing before a bed of white hot coals.
Or, ‘he’s gonna kill all of us.’ Simultaneously, there was a great sense of light emitting from him. My first thought was ‘He’s gonna’ kill himself. Justin’s intensity was immediately obvious and embodied. My role at MaineWorks was as witness and photographer to their morning circle process. I met Justin 3 years ago in a little parking lot in Portland, Maine when he arrived for the 6 AM meetup for Maineworks, a B Corp employing only felons and drug addicts in recovery.
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