Diary of A Mental Patient
Aparthied, that struck me as funny, awkward, strange, ugly, and then there was that which I had read about that really bothered me, something about the black race being inferior. I closed the newspaper and sipped my coffee. Lyndra was going off again, her big black hands were busy pushing at the table, while she kept on screaming: "Don't touch me! Don't touch me!!!" The CNAS began to gather around her, something was going down because everybody moved backwards, and the CNAS Looked Like they were going to take her down. Next thing I knew there was a toppling of ashtrays that ended up on the floor and she was down on the ground. They had her arms behind her back, she screamed obscenities to the neon Lights. They had her, now what would they do to her. She was big, and it would be hard to get her to her room. As I watched I found myself guessing what they would do next. Two of the nurses were directing us into the courtyard, they blocked off the entrance to the smoking Lounge. She began screaming so loud that we could hear her all the way out in the court- yard. I knew what was happening, she was up, they were walking her to her room where they would give her a shot and put her in restraints. The light was dim, twilight had already folded. ALL the residents were sitting outside smoking cigarettes and talking. I wished I hadn't of tossed those that newspaper, I was reading about Nelson Mandela, my favorite person. I smoked my Marlboro and went to my room. My roommate was not there, he must be outside smoking a cigarette. I was glad because he had a really weird Laugh, and Laughed all the time. I put on a tape: it was Cats Stevens, and as I listened to it and it mellowed me out. Moon Shadow was playing softly, "And if I ever loose my hands, my plough and all my Lands, I won't have to work, no! I won't have to work no more, no more." I closed my eyes, the music ran into my brain, soft like water, smooth and cool in the shadows of my room. * * * Today would be hot and humid. I woke up at seven and couldn't get back to sleep. I felt dreams Last night, strange ones, I was in a friend's building, I had a tape recorder it wouldn't Play, I tried to fix the tape but it was a radar screen and I was working the radar. The planes, I knew they would come. The building was actually a museum, and there were statues and beds everywhere. Then black Joan was in it singing and smiling, there was an outside, but you couldn't get there, I hovered over the radar screen seeing the blips of the planes. My friend had a joint and we began to smoke it, we must have of smoked a thousand joints. The planes were outside waiting for me, before I left I disconnected the radar screen. Blue Lights surround me, then there was the Long roar of a motor, the plans had come... After awhile I stood up out of bed and went and brushed my teeth. It was almost time for breakfast and I went out and lit a cigarette. The dinning room was full of people drinking coffee with trays in front of them; there was a Long Line of people ahead of me. I sat down at one of the round tables, It was hard to talk to people here, most of them didn't make sense, or else they just wouldn't stop talking, talking about secret plots against them, about babble shear fantasy, or to the other imaginary voices. The smell of the pulp mill Lingered in my nostrils. And as I sipped my hot coffee in a brown plastic mug, I wondered what the hell I was doing here, and why was it taking them so Long to release me. I had nothing but music to calm me down, thank God for my tape player!!! Latter that day I snuck in my room and went back to bed. I missed group all together and I dreamed some more, this time it was about Cedar, the Little girl I had fallen in Love with at the Montessori School. She was swinging in a swing, and the sky was bright blue, I had pair of headphones on and was Listening to music. There were white daisies in her hair and she smiled at me. She spoke; "Hi Eric, how are you doing?" I turned off the music and answered her. "What a blue sky" I said. She repeated this. Then a dog came up and started barking. The Sun went between the clouds, and I no longer could see her. I felt my teeth chatter, it was cold. * * * Later that day I went to recreation groups with Edwina. Edwina was my favorite counselor, we had been together before my hospitalization, she use to pick me up after my group and we'd go to Arcata and drink iced coffee together. In the hospital we'd used to talk, and I read her my poems. That day it was hot and overcast, and the patients were bubbling over with bad energy. We sat in the activity room with a bunch of residents and Listened to music and read the newspaper. The war was over, and vaguely we remembered when it started, the strange broadcasts in the T.V. room, everybody talking and upset, as they showed the white tracers of bombs going off. It was a Lazy day for me, and Edwina could see I was being a sleepy head. After group, I went into my room and played some music. Then I sat down at my typewriter and began composing short stories. That Lasted four months, until I finished my book and had it copied. Hell's Children was to be my first try at fiction, and I was proud of it. Sometimes on Lazy days when I wasn't being a sleepy head, I would read them to Edwina. She sat in my room across from me with the door opened, and Listened as I read to her from my book. I Loved her very much and cherished our friendship together. That night rumor had it we were having Lasagna, and that made me happy. The food was so bad there that it felt like I was starving: Mash-potatoes and gravy, chicken fried steak, turkey tetrazzini, meat-loaf, hot dogs and beans, beef stew, pea soup and corn-bread, and of course hamburgers and relish. I did not Like what they were feeding us and I was very upset about it. After all you Lock eighty-five people in a Locked ward, feed them starch and sugar, and watch them as they climb the walls. That was not all, there was the caffeine problem, everybody seemed to want it, and there was a black market in getting it. I stood in Line for over fifteen minutes that night just to wait for dinner . In my opinion Lasagna was the best meal they had. We had water-melon for desert and garlic bread with the Lasagna. Of course there were no seconds, and you ate what they gave you, if you ate at all. After dinner I stood in the canteen Line and bought a cup of coffee, and a candy bar. My cigarette tasted good with my coffee, and the candy-bar was pure chocolate, the kind with almonds, the kind I Liked. The fog had cleared and the Sun was out, I vowed to watch it go down, Like a murky ball of golden water, slip back into the sea and be silent. * * * The buzzer buzzed us out, it was almost high pitched, and it made a dull electronic noise; we grabbed the door and pushed it open. I had waited in Line this time, signing my name first on the List, and waiting for them to Let us go. Everyday now I had an hour pass. As soon as the door opened I walked out, walking down the steps into the parking-Lot and onto the side-walk. I walked fast just for the hell of it. The others were behind me, smoking cigarettes, walking in bunches and herds, as elephants mostly do. The Sun shined down on us, and as I walked to the café I felt in my pocket for my book. Security was in having a good book to read. I was reading Wilhelm Reich's Murder of Christ, and I was intensified by the feelings he had that I share with the author, a Love and admiration for great minds. The day kind of made me sweat, as I entered the Café I first saw Crystal running the counter. I ordered a café Latte, I had been saving up for this for over a week. I looked forward to my passes there were the only real freedom I had, and to get outside, to be myself, to forget the cage I was in, was important. She served me the Latte and we talked for a bit. "Nice day, it's really quite hot for June." "Yeah, and I'm stuck in here all day." She smiled. "How about going to the beach right now?" I said temptingly, with a big smile on my face. She smiled too. "Yeah, Right." She turned to the counter. "Well enjoy yourself." She smiled, her blondish brown hair waved. The counter had formed a Line again, mostly people from the hospital. I knew I couldn't be alone here, but I liked the atmosphere, and I liked talking to Crystal, she was nice, nineteen and had a good disposition, she smiled a lot. I sat down to read my book and drink my Latte. I tasted it. I filled it with sugar till the steamsteamed milk almost overflowed. This was my treat and I enjoyed it. I read the March to Jerusalem, which was my favorite chapter so far. What was the "Emotional Plague" and who had it. I observed around me, a hard bellied man with his sexual hang-ups, it was even in the women from the hospital, but they had other problems as well. Where is the seed for the Plague, and how did it spread? Jesus had shown us that we could be as God's, but the broken filament of faith always fought us, and in the end defeated us. It was an organic cycle, and a coldness is in one's Limbs and hands, as they suffered out of default and were fed medication. Gradually the numbness slipped over the body, and the hard belly became even harden, as the cold fine tipped itself with an icy breath, and there was no more warmth, no more sexual awakening to the organs of Selfdom. Crystal was busy pouring coffee, her Long hair streamed down to her shoulders, she smiled a lot. I read about the marches, the tanks, and the cold shuddering of babies that were victims of the Plague. What was transvaluation , once I had read about that, and now I didn't even know how to spell it. I jotted some notes down in my notebook for latter, and I felt the pulse of Wilhelm Reich's words enter me in the darkness of my Lateral forehead, and break into a kind of Light. Who was this man who spoke what I considered to be the Truth? I was surrounded by the emotional plague and I must be careful. I stepped out to smoke a cigarette. I had bought camels with my allowance, and as the coffee flowed in my being, the camel woke me with taste of fire burning in my lungs. I surrendered, I would make the Emotional Plague disappear, I would push it away from me, I would write my poems and stand aloof from it as Long as possible, I would keep my belly soft. As I entered the hospital, I pushed the buzzer and it began to buzz, it kept on buzzing till someone Let me in. I gave them back my matches, and they felt my pockets for contraband, and gave me back my token book. I must be careful the Emotional Plaque would suck me in, I must keep my belly soft... * * * The hospital was like usual. There were two people outside screaming at each other, I did not know why, but the CNAS would soon come. It smelled different than the outside, here it was sterile, filled with body odor and a slight whiff of coffee. Cigarette smoke everywhere, I slipped into my room, my roommate was there and he was laughing to himself again. The laughter carried and I grew tired of it. I put on a tape: Pink Floyd's The Wall, I listened to it allot in here, it relaxed me, and it was good to fight the Emotional Plague with. I sat on my white plastic chair and turned it up, so I could hear the Lyrics. I felt my belly it was soft, I stretched my body, and tipped my chair back with my Legs on the bed. As it started I began to relax, the laughter faded away, and the singularity of what I was listening to, brought me into an almost visionary state of mind. As my roommate left the room I shouted to him to close the door, he did this, and I felt more comfortable. This was the Emotional Plaque, and I had to survive it. Jesus knew of the Plague, for he healed the sick. Sometimes I wished I could heal them, but no! The ungrateful ones would get sick all over again, and to spite me, they would slander and rob me. No! No more miracles, just keep by belly soft and breathe... Breath, deep and soft; no one taught me how to Listen to music, I Listened when I was a kid, and the tonality of if hypnotized it. It was always one thing, a song, a symphony, an epic! I related to The Wall for many reasons, because of the tonality, it matched my feelings, my hate, my fear, my longing to be set free, to climb behind the wall and to be myself... Strange airplanes, noises of helicopters, and screeching's of soldiers. I breathed in, what was this but a weapon against the Emotional Plague, or a testimony? Roar of bricks falling, exploding. And the screams of children in the background. "We don't need no Education, we don't need no Thought Control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom,... Hey teacher Leave those kids alone, teacher Leave us kids alone!!!" I felt different often Listening to it, as though the war was an emotional one and had to be fought with my whole being, other-wise I was sure to be defeated... keep belly soft, keep thoughts clear, try to have a good orgasm every day, think of Cedar, Love God! * * * Sitting in the T.V. Lounge, watching MTV with the residents, I wondered how deep does the armor go. Like a broken toys they Lined up in tall backed yellow chairs to watch MTV. Black Joe was talking to himself again, he started getting Louder and as the music increased. I wished I could see Patti Smith, or someone I recognized on MTV. R.E.M. was the closest they came to having an artist on that I respected. Black Joe was yelling obscenities now, no one took notice, still it was annoying. I left the Lounge and went into my room. After the war things had become settled, some of the patients who were showing emotional instability had almost stabilized on there meds. But there were more coming, more crazy derelicts, with indecisive gestures and bad breath, more incapacitated individuals who suffered from the Emotional Plaque. I Lay down on my bed and put on the B side of the Wall. I lay there and listened to it. This Emotional Plague was real, I could see it in the eyes of my fellow inmates, especially the women, some who more promiscuous, others who had dull stares, even the pregnant ones. And the males always wanted to fight, stuttered behind cigarettes, and bared their fists to the walls. It was hard bellied men, sexually out of order, unable to perform even the basic functions. They were either withdrawn or quite gregarious, but there unhappiness showed, and they cowered, even before the wind. I washed my hands, and prepared for dinner, not looking forward to it, I even contemplated not eating. "...I want to go home, take off this uniform and Leave the show, I've been waiting in this cell because I have to know..." The Wall continued. They put Reich in prison, that startled him, they called him crazy, they tore down his boxes, the reviled his books. What was it but disturbance in the social psyche of the World, why else did we have war, where were the mentally ill coming from, but the poorly manufactured defective socially armored and diseased stratagem of the Emotional Plaque. We were all refuse floating in a psychic sea. But I could feel the waves beneath me, and was in touch with the Unconscious which was my Mother. I looked down the hallway, dinner was beginning. I felt like going to sleep. The sentience of the Wall and its epic proportions, the sentence of Love shackled to loneliness, and this loveless place that I had been sentenced to made me feel wanton, almost sexual. I decided to skip dinner. I turned my bed into a ship and steered into sleep. I slept for two hours, having some dreams... I was naked, walking along a path to a castle, when I got there was a Line. I had to wait in it for hours to get in. Inside the castle there was a naked women, plenty of them, my soul burned as I saw them. Then I saw that they were dead, quietly lying on their mats decomposing. Then I left alone in the castle with these women, I felt ashamed, discomfort, and frightened... The CNA woke me for medication. I got up, washed my face and went outside to smoke a cigarette, the air had cooled off. * * * We walked beneath fluorescent lights, neon gods made by weird drugs of walking zombies. It was the Emotional Plague and I had to do something, be careful, or my belly would get hard and I'd suffer from the loathsome fear and hate of lovers sadly forgotten, caged animals drunk with hate, and the wholesale killing of humanity between crossed legs. Everyday the American flag waved, and I felt good about this, I stand at the desk for maybe fifteen minutes just watching it move freely in the morning wind, saying a secret pledge of allegiance to myself. Loveless heartless, broken and serialized, these people were institutionalized, and the hospitals overflowed with victims of the Emotional Plaque. It was a twisted paraphernalia of loose change and spare cigarettes. Through the Void you could find love, but it is that your mind was damaged, this love would be damaged also. It came through your dreams, I had many girlfriends in my dreams, and a wife also. There was the sour feeling in the morning when they woke us at six o'clock in the morning for meds. That was my best dreaming, and to leave my lovers in that internal darkness was a sad explosions of empty thoughts. I too was sick. I too had the emotional plague. * * * Broken eyes stared down the hallway. It was almost group time, I checked my pockets to see if I had my token book. The token economy was a prevalent cause for people going to groups. If you went to group you got thirty tokens for about an hour and a half of group time. Then you could spend your tokens in the canteen, on a movie, or going out on a pass. It was one hundred tokens everyday for a hour pass. I had to bare through this until I got my P-card. The most tokens I got was for showering every night and just getting out of bed every morning. Group consisted of about ten to twelve residents and one counselor. We did some creative things in group like drawing and ant therapy. Every Monday afternoon and Friday morning we had coffee. Coffee was really a big thing, and everybody had to get their fix. Coffee was served in the morning at breakfast, and twice a week during group, and at the canteen for thirty-five cents. Today group was boring, people talked about their problems about drugs, and nonsense. Some people made no sense whatsoever, like my roommate who was in the same group I was in. I mostly sat and read my book. I was still reading Reich, and quite absorbed in him. The March to Jerusalem as those around Christ revoked him in their hearts, while he lay latter at Gethsemane, Christ turned in a sleepless night, wondering why those he loved had betrayed him. Reich sees Emotional Plague on so many levels. A giver is going to meet a "Sucker", who knows only how to suck love from others without giving anything in return. Christ saw this at the last moment and forgave them. It was himself he had trouble forgiving, the natural God inside him did not want to die. But by giving, he had brought notice to himself, and he know of the Emotional Plague that would eat him alive. Latter, much later, his Word would be twisted with lies, and the suckers would continue to suck, while the sexually free would be put in prison camps, and hospitals. My soft belly rumbled during group, I was hungry, I had missed breakfast. I took a deep breath, group was over and I handed the counselor my token boo. Jack was a nice person, he had a history of drug and adolescent crime, his father used to kick the shit out of him when he was twelve. He learned to fight back, and the abused child had to be placed in a series of welfare foster homes, juvenile halls, and finally the state Penitentiary. Finally, much latter, after the fighting, the tattoos, the drinking, the IV use, he had settled down in Eureka and became a counselor at Crestwood Manor. His silver tooth glistened as he smiled; that was his trademark. I left the smoking lounge where our group was held every morning and afternoon, and went into my room, which was a ways down the hall. I thought of calling somebody collect, but I didn't know who. Time passed slowly in captivity. * * * The hypocrisy of the system never ceases to surprise; they are filled with human errors that are erased by hubris. To label somebody mentally ill, is to put a stigma on them that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Their evaluations are quick, and stupid, they ask hardly any questions, though the medical and mental history follows the patient for the rest of their lives. Their charts are confidential, so confidential that the patient cannot even read his or her own chart, though they can and are used against them in court. This was no Disneyland (though the similarities were amazing) this was a matter of fact rigor moral, this was the test of the Emotional Plague in full swing, a sterile hospital atmosphere, of life broken down in participles, of the sham of living with the zombies of mother incest, the rocking of boats in a small harbor, the filling of beds, injections, medicating, the falsehood of people broken at the core of natural loving life, the split personality of love, and the awkward sexual artifice of being in love. Sometimes the great United States of America had gone wrong in treating its sick ones in the mind. The Reagan years had squeezed all of us to the bone, and the third World War had just cost us an extra trillion , a trillion dollars indebt to ourselves, and the artifice of locked doors, prisons of the psychological kind, dim mirrors of existence... I sat in the bathtub for some time until somebody told me to turn the water off. It was clean smelling and warm. The shower room was always noisy, they had maybe ten ten showers, they tried to keep them full all at once. Some people were really freaked out about taking a shower. The warm water sunk into my spine, and I remembered that my mother had sent me a new tape that day, and I really had not listened to all of it. As I tried to feel better, the whole day had been like a rash on my body, and somehow left me with an unclean feeling. I got my token book signed (30 tokens) and went to my room bare-foot and wet-haired. I sat down on my bed immediately, I was alone, my roommate must have gone and smoked a cigarette. The tape was Tracy Chapman newest on one side, and The Best of Simon and Garfunkel on the other. I started with Tracy Chapman, voice of apartheid. "Save yourself, save your soul... All you folks that run my life, I should be willing to compromise..." I had pictures of falling flowers in my head, burning in the wicked fire, a fire so potent that they not only wilted, but they turned black... Black night, no stars, only a hot cigarette burning from the tip. Ash falls, I ignore the hysteric laughter, I learn to be silent... Broken manners, somebody always asking for a cigarette, or money, or coffee... I stayed celibate, my dreams of women were getting more intense. The love in my heart was melting to ash... Dreams... Faraway feelings of d'eja'vu, wreck less suffering, Oh God! The pain of not having the love that washes the spine, gives warmth to coldness.. Cold and numb, I walked the area of the courtyard,... distance from the other patients... Wavy trees, broken night,... Configurations of dark stars bleeding...Blue Love and a "Loose obedience to an animal Law..." Eternal flame, pointed Like a sword of dark ink... * * * The phantoms, there were always the phantoms, you ran into them in the hallway, no teeth, shiny nose, talking to the Thorezen god, picking up butts in the courtyard, grimy cigarette stained fingers, the nicotine suckers of a dry reality, the false Profits of Hope, and the dull and weary crumbling psyches of a post-Holocaust. They were the phantoms and the Bleary-eyed angels of mental institution. They were the troubled, and the illicit, the razor-edge had driven them underground, into cells with pajamas and blue ceilings, drugged out of their minds. The victims of SSI (The Free Money brigade) were causations in a complicated equation of dollars-cents-and-drugs formula, including hospitalization and the conservatorship. They are not free to do what they wanted, but were rather disabled victims who were shuffled from one hospital to another. It was a serious process that brought them back to the hospital, one that involved non-compliance with meds, suicidal behavior, basic social behavior, and a wreck less sense of destruction, like the driving of fist into a brick wall. Their Lives were fixated on causes that had not solutions. They stuttered, they talked to themselves, they peed in the middle of the courtyard, that smoked strange plants, they had often been sexually abused. One friend of mine named Sandy had twenty-six different personalities. She had been raped by her foster-father excessively, she had been beaten, thrown down the stairs, had her arm broken... She had served in Vietnam and had come from the Vet. Hospital. She was a poet and writer as well. We hit it of immediately. We talked a lot about books, she was a Stephen King addict. She had written a novel, and she belonged to MENSA. She was very literary, and was a true book junkie. I lent her some of my books. We discussed her other personalities; riding with them was turbulent, some lived deep inside her, and only came out as a fragment of her true spirit. The thing that I found funny was that she did not have a drug problem, at least alcohol problem. She was discontent, troubled, her other personalities kept her sheltered. We did a poetry reading together in front of all of Crestwood. She read very well that night. I kept thinking how we had exposed ourselves so deeply to the Plague. I worried after that, I had given my best performance in a long time. Two weeks after that she swallowed six batteries. They took her to the hospital. I never saw her again... "With every blow that cuffs him until he cries out in shame, I am leaving, I am leaving, but the fighter still remains..." The cold pain of cancer of the mind, the ether of broken thoughts, the atom bomb of internal explosion..." The force that drives the flower..." Uprooted, causeless, malcontent! A man cannot be Free until he can be silent!!! The shit-faced mumbling of a dog-eared prophet with his chimeras, his magic weapons, his fantasy... We are moving away from the age of Aquarius into the age of Orion... Orion is the hunter, the predator, who fastens his belt around three stars. Betelgeuse shined in the night-time sky, it was a bewilderment to see it through Tina's telescope. She was small, and a good portion of her hands, arms and chest had been scarred when she poured gasoline over herself and lit the fire. She used to talk a million miles a minute. Tonight she was quiet, looking through her telescope, showing off her expertise. "That's Jupiter". It appeared bloodshot, a mix of blue, red and yellow. I lay down on the grass thinking about gravity, looking up at the nighttime sky, while Tina positioned her telescope... * * * The Supreme window of Time became an ever-searching compromise. Real things took on weird overtones, and the silent government machine became a branding of diagnoses. I crept beneath the carpet, waiting for the herd to crush me. I left little else than my poetry to convict me. I knew I did not care in the end, what happened to me, but my body was brave and loved life. The misery presented here, was actual life misery, as though they had been wounded by life and were gradually recovering. And I became a sleepy head, slipping more and more into my dreams. Nicotine in my bloodstream, eyes swearing at the early morning, throwing curses at the staff. Broken mumblings of life's fragile dreams. I was a dreamer, and I ran from my nightmare, until the time came to face them. * * * Cleat Weller was the hospital administrator, he was a big broadcasting sought of figure with a shiny bald head winged with white hair on the sides, a red faced giant of legal codes, an authority figure for the Emotional Plague. Sometimes I saw him walking down the hall, I'd say hello, but he never said anything back. When the State arrived for inspection, boy was he uptight, I've never seen a man wound up like he was right before their arrival. He liked to give orders, and push people into position. This reminded me of a fat porcelain sucker, that sucked the psychic blood out of his staff, the patients, the bloodless servants to the Institution, the brave and narrow counselors were bribed by a poor pay-check, and a conscience, while the ones waiting in line for dinner were equally deprived of their freedom, their ownership, their soul being sold to the Devil. This was the fanfare of sterile whips, and white pills, the secret devotion to the tranquilizing mechanism of a selfish and dishonest plague. Mr. Weller could afford to be friendly, though he hardly ever was. What it amounted to was the insidious dollar machine calculating figures in red and blue ink, with the decrepit middle man smoking his favorite brand of cigars with a hot toddy, and a beer to belch before his VCR, with the wide T.V. screen flashing family entertainment. We are all somehow bought and sold, with the insignia of mental illness placed upon our heads like the mark of the Beast. Power ruled, and money cast its lots, like a mask of broken machinery, with redemption only a sorrowful blind spot in the eye of Religion; what mockery, what hideous and unfelt weapons they had aimed against us, and our class. The humiliation of going through Mental Health was bad enough, to admit pain, "Where does is hurt?" in my broken balls, in my phantom self, in my blood being sucked by hatred... * * * These days seemed long, tiresome, all I wanted to do was slip back in bed. What great bureaucracy that was uniformed in the chanting of patients, in the methods of Behavioral Modification, that was manifest in every element of the hospital. We were all pawns, and Mr. Weller was the King, the Queen was Capitalism itself, how agile did it move across the playing board, seen in the halls weeping on the telephone, or screaming bloody murder, or the bumming of a cigarette in blue jeans twice to big, It was the idea of being Crazy verses the reality of craziness itself. Locked in a ward like Crestwood Manor, meant that you had been abandoned by society, sucked into the legal system, broken by the psychotic machinery, and coldly treated for an illness that cannot be seen under a microscope. you were legally nude, brought to the Public Eye as an obscenity that must be kept behind fences taller than three six foot giants. The revolving door always opened to the inside, and their were many repeat patients. They came back again and again, like Tina with her telescope and her life-sized burns, smoking a cigarette and rocking her back next to the door, pounding it and banging so hard that I wondered if she would bruise her backbone. Or crazy Tony who asked the weirdest questions, always blowing his nose on his hand, with a constant nasal drip, talking twenty miles a minute in a head rush that never stopped. The window-breakers were the quickest to get out, and the reserved a place for them in Napa. I had a friend who went AWOL every chance he got. Once he was gone for three days before he called them to come and pick him up. He just saved up his money, rented a hotel room and got drunk. There were eight-five of us all in the same facility, and there were two to a room, except for the wards, which were six people and four people. We all waited for nine-o-clock meds., in a line that went all around the front desk and across the hall. I could see Elvis outside, waiting to be fed; he was our big gray fuzzy ball of a cat, who lingered outside by the benches, or in the visiting hall, which you could see through plastic unbreakable windows, where the door buzzed patients in and out of the facility. Clinton, red haired with glasses, a tall giant of a man who was good at wrestling down patients, was the nurse in charge of passing out meds at night. He seemed gentle to me, and we often joked around together, he even wrote short stories, and once in awhile I'd show him some of my poems. The line went fast, almost everybody got nines, and the line was through by nine-thirty. They called it on the intercom, as they called everything on the intercom. Sometimes my name was called three or four times a day. The voice of the intercom bellowed through the halls all hours of the day, until late at night. At six in the morning they used it, they called names for morning meds. During group they used it to page each other for phone-calls. "Such and such has a call on line one" it was an annoyance during group time, especially relaxation. It was impossible to relax with it going off all the time. If their was anything worse than the intercom going off in relaxation, it was the people going off themselves. There were many Code Three's that happened, that was either a fight or somebody breaking a window. When Code Three was called (shouting it over the intercom, or by staff) hundreds of staff members would come out running, faster than even firemen come to a fire, and then there was the confrontation, the CNAS would do their job, which in my opinion was hard and scary. Worse than that there were fire drills at five in the morning, where they'd round us up and make us gather in the court-yard bare-foot and cold. People threw cigarette butts all over the grounds, some still burning. Then there was the aspect of phlegm everywhere. The truth was everybody spit up, some even vomiting in the Courtyard. It was impossible to sleep in, they woke us at six in the morning for meds., and at seven again for breakfast. But I was determined to become a sleepy head. That night I waved goodbye to Edwina, and like so often, we gave each other a hug. ************************************************* The picture I may be painting is black, but it isn't. There were good things about Crestwood. I developed many relationships while I was there, but I was always aware of the Emotional Plague. The weirdness grew as it became more intimate. I was getting well and the medication seemed to be working; I remained stabilized. But I needed a break, the hour passes were not enough. Everyday I went to the café and wrote and read. I talked to Cedar a lot, and felt good in my heart about her. I didn't get much money, but still I had my typewriter, music and books to keep me company. I read Narcissus and Goldmund in about a week, which felt like one setting. I was always reading. I reread Wilhelm Reich many times, hoping to under stand the Emotional Plague better. It was energy transposed upon Society, where the Transvaluations of Life's inner core were disrupted and caused many sicknesses, including cancer, and I believe Schizophrenia. The Split was real, and could not be denied. Curing it was another problem, and I will always disagree with the System's idea of a cure for Mental Illness. I isolated myself a lot, took many walks, as many as I could, and Listened to the radio every night before I went to bed. It was like an open mirror that reflected my face in the nighttime sky. I was the reverse of my face, just a starry flame reflected in the silver glass. I dreamed, and like a child I slept. In the dream I was looking for buried gold beneath an old white house. We had spades out and my friends were helping me. Then there was the ghost that lived in the house, most of the time it was trapped in there, but the eerie night had brought it out. The infective disease was spreading my friends began covering up the windows with blood. We had pails and pails of fresh blood, and it would stop the disease from spreading. The ghost was trapped in there, and now couldn't see out. There were all sorts of animals huddled together by the well. One of my friends looked yellow, he had been infected. Then everybody was running away, everybody had forgot about the gold, and were now scared to death of the disease and the ghost. Flames in the night glittered as the house burned. You could see the windows red and blurred with blood. We watched as the ghost climbed over the flames, and shined like a bright ether, dancing a million miles a minute. Then we were all drinking beer in a parking lot. The cars shined with the night... I got up, stared in the mirror, I was the knave of desire, frozen in the delight of Spring, trapped beneath the calling of night, the bed-ridden and ridiculed circumference of wisdom. I brought that wisdom like a seed of mine, I brought those children of want and grief, into this world. I too was suffering from the Emotional Plague, all my relationships were, I was brought here by two policemen in an ambulance, where I stayed in Semper Virens for three weeks, in Lock-up, a basket case bitter as all reason, suicidal and drunk on fear... To look, to observe, to keep one's thoughts intact, that was my struggle now, though sex kept coming back in the picture, I wanted to have sex with a woman, but not here, not in a hospital bed... The Emotional Plaque first attacked the Nervous System, with fear and a hatred of our bodies. The cold distance of love that cannot be had, I had gone on trial for love and lost. I lost everything, my freedom, my sanity, by and by I walked a straight line, that continued in fear and a loathsome feeling for my body. Weird thoughts that had nothing to do with anything, and strange flash-backs kept haunting me, the love in me was being crushed, and the delicate flower struggled to live stripped of its thorns, My head spun in the darkness, I put on a Cat Stevens tape. The voice shone through the shadows. * * * There is no God that is without the human consciousness. There is an electric feeling in our bodies, a warmth that is eclipsing in humanity. As though they had forgotten the Earth the smiles of beautiful woman, the Sunshine and the stars. Tattooed with facts Mankind has trapped his ego in a stainless steel cage of want, greed and desire. There in the prison of the soul, the eyes weep dull darkness, the ether of Time suffocates! "I went through woman's hell over there and am now free to possess Spirit in one body and one soul!!!" Arthur Rimbaud wrote that at the age of nineteen, the famous dead genius of Paris and Brussels, who gave up poetry for good at nineteen and made his way as a sailor and tradesman. Woman's hell, where there were the naked mirrors, the cold feminine moon, the witches in their kitchen with white and black hair. A Season in Hell! A corpse of the hidden Spirit Locked inside us. Freedom! Freedom to walk on a sidewalk and not worry about the time, free to smoke pot, to eat whatever you want to, to possess a car or a bicycle, to smoke cigarettes while you are private in the bathroom, to fuck a girl without interruptions, to play Loud music at the night... The phantom tollbooth kept asking for more sacrifices, till someone crucified Christ, as the ultimate sacrifice, the killing machine as the prime operator of the disease, blood, more blood, till the whole Kingdom is screaming!!! The Plague frightens its victims, it scares the living daylights out of them, then sucks out their emotions till basically they are wax, hollow and shapeless with a dark shadow suffocating their organs. Their lives are like dull axes, good for nothing but cowering and giving thankless thanks. Christ is the Mirror of love that is painted over by black X's for eternity. Their naked bodies are stripped of all dignity, and their eyes have a dull glaze over them. Some have been over medicated, and their metabolism is curt and coldly indifferent, like walking corpses they walk the halls, sadly smoking and drinking coffee in an infirmary of lost thoughts. I kept wondering when they would release me, and if I would be all right, the last thing I wanted was to wind up back in the hospital again. A heart filled with sorrow, wound with drying leaves, thrown into a furnace of melting ash, crying for love beneath the embers of anguish and burning grief. That was them, that must be how some felt, the drying up, the emotional orgasm flamed by indifference. These are the reflections of sanity itself, in a socially diseased maze made to keep people oppressed. They didn't want us to know how the Spirit, or be holy, it frightened them, they'd rather keep us in our place. The innocent bewilderment in their eyes brought me to contemplate the great injustice that had been done to most of them. This is the way the Plague makes you feel, when you are not one of them, when the infected tissue is still fighting the disease. Bad dreams. I kept on having bad dreams, nightmares that would wake me up. I had one about being in Napa, I woke up in a fox-hole while others smoked cigarettes, and drank coffee, I was aware of the most oppressed environment that I had ever been in. I could not explain the fear in me as someone began chocking me, I yelled before I woke up. Last night I cried so hard that I nearly broke the bed, casting my sobs into the pillow, trying to hold on. Latter it felt good, as the tears were still wet on my forehead; eye-brows dazzled with clear light. I went and smoked a cigarette and looked at the trees, they were swaying, and it was cold and windy. It was awkward to feel feelings, my body was numb for so long, but now love burst in me, love for an imaginary friend. You too, lover of the same recollection, the bright future for you is an eagle in the wind. You know who I am talking to, I am talking to you, and I still love you, Birth is in your eyes, and childhood fantasy is not a crime, but it is when you grow up. Take care not to loose your dreams or have them stolen from you, sleep easy tonight, I have finished my period in the Asylum, and now it is time for you to grow in the world, oh future children of life, it is your turn to love and be loved, it is you with the wisest eyes and the most sacred smile, you who are born into a world of ironies that survives with innocence touching outwards, and a givingness of life still unaffected by the Emotional Plague, still unfearful of your guts and what they stand for, this is my diary, my mad refuge, from which I revoke the dark insanity of people bending to Power's cold pilings. Oh Children of the Future, rise and be the innocence that stops the Plague for good. So many crooked trees have grown now is the time for the strong-hearted and worthy to take command, bright and stalwart with virtue as a warm-hearted feeling, I take my love from those child's eyes, I disappear in the emotions of the Universe, and sleep warm and heavy with an innocent heart. This Is the way to kill the Plague. And these are my journal entries that come in the way of a story of the future. Children of Earth, these pages are for you as a strength and a warning, that you may overcome the sad greed of men and women, that break the Golden Rule. Crestwood Manor 1991 All Rights Reserved by Eric Walker © 1991
Reprinted by kind permission of the Regents of the University of California,
Bancroft Library, Berkeley. Gift of Diane Walker Murray