Prison is the best place to train your self-control. Here, they are constantly trying to get under your skin and provoke you, using methods that are sometimes sophisticated and sometimes so blunt and stupid that it is very hard not to lose your temper.  I told you before that I have been trying for a year and a half to get taken to a dentist. At the latest court hearing, I said to both the judge and the prison staff: “Come on, let’s resolve this like human beings already. Stop dragging this out — I just need to see a doctor.” To my surprise, the representatives of the penal colony said right there in court: “You have already collected so many documents. You just need to write one more application, and everything will be fine.”  Well, okay. I tell my lawyers: “Please write the application for me, and I’ll submit it.” (It is a long application, with attachments — not something you can just write yourself)  The lawyer writes the application and sends it to me through the administration. I wait and wait, wait and wait — nothing. I ask the prison guards: - Where is my application for transfer to a doctor?  - Confiscated by censorship as containing signs of a crime.  And you know, they look at you with those attentive, gleaming little eyes, like a meerkat in a wildlife documentary: so, how will he react? Will he start shouting? Fall into despair? Run off filing complaints? Submit and start showing obedience?  And every single day they come up with some similar piece of bullshit to get under the skin of a defiant prisoner and test how much he can take. By the way, now 100% of letters coming from lawyers are being confiscated by censorship as “criminal,” and I cannot receive a single legal document.  For three years now I have been cultivating Zen in myself so that, in response to all this, I can just shrug. Overall, you could say I have made decent progress along this Zen path, but I am still, of course, far from perfection — otherwise they would not be periodically dragging me around the prison camp with my arms twisted behind my back.  But in the end, a person has to have some psychological release, right? 😉