Inmates and Guards

It was 1994 and I was consulting in an inpatient facility for people who had lost their minds ... kinda literally ... most often to car accidents. Maybe it was the thought of driving a couple of hundred miles, today, that brought the wanderers from that facility to mind. M and I were invited to attend a graduation kinda thing, tonight, for one of our younger grandkids. How can one say "no" to an adorable little kid who plays a saxophone just-about-bigger than her and sings songs from Rogers and Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA with Grandpa while the adults are discussing important shit.

Any case, my mind went back to the folk with Traumatic Brain Injuries ... people with memories significantly shorter than the vast majority of Last Quarter types who, as I've said before, cannot find where they hid their Ginkgo and no longer recall whether they take Lunesta to Keep it Up or Levitra to Go Lay Down and Go To Sleep!

Back to the inpatient place. I remember one morning, I had come to consult with a much distraught Care Worker, K. J, a man in his mid-30's in her care, had just peed out his third floor window. It hadn't been a direct hit on K but spattered she was. I had never thought of it before but I realized that the cone of pee-splatter increases quite a bit from three stories. J may have not known either or maybe he was inclined to direct ... his attention, might we say ... to K. It had just been the previous week that K called me in a panic.

K: I don't know what to do with J.

Me: What's up?

K: I came into his room and he was "y'know" with B.

Me: He was y'knowing?

K: Yeah, you know.

Me: I really don't.

K: Well. He was on his knees in front of B ... Y'know-now?

Me: He was shining his shoes?

K: Not funny. You know exactly what I mean.

Well, I guess I did and I was just being a cheeky bastard. But sometimes I do feel as if I'm back working inpatient with J shpritzing from 30 feet above the fray ... following the elegant principle that: "He who pisses, never misses." Any case, I remembered this ditty from 20+ years ago.

From ditties et lettre du Abe Isaacs (HHC-1994)

GS & JC

Graham, Sylvia and Jesus Christs

Lots of Christs

Have passed this way.

Janet, Charcot and Jung,

They have been here, too.

Nowadays

Most of us keep our doors closed.

I, as well, and yet

as I Stand here,

Not at Salpetriere but Woodmere

(or some such silly-named“Estates”),

My mind turns on its own

Toward a place I could call home

Where I might feel the feelings I feel alone

On my Golgotha

but Separate

From Graham and Sylvia and Christ

And what I,

Just today, did call their fate.

Sylvia,

She wrote about living in an asylum.

I work there.

Really.

That is, I come and go

More or less as I please;

Others remain. I go home.

Today, it was muggy. I had a headache.

Stan was on the jazz.

So were Ferrante and McGreggor,

On the jazz.

They’re doctors. You’d never know.

They think I’m stiff and I am.

At least compared to Stan, Bill and Carl.

Curly, Moe ...

I forgot the name of the other Stooge.

I’m more than fifty and the memory goes.

But today was really not so different:

One man ran out of a group screaming:

“I’m leaving.”

Another stopped me on the road:

“I’m outa here.”

A woman had a fit. I asked

Her for a light.

She gave me a light. I smoked

A cigarette with her. We talked

For just a moment.

She went back to ... I don’t know where.

Ferrante and McGreggor were still on the jazz.

The man, the man and the woman with the light

Were wherever they were and I?

I work in an asylum

And go home at night.

 Alas! Today, I do feel like I live in a crazed world and am going driving in it!