Chapter 22 The Evil Dr. Chin

I am an evil snarky bitch.  That being so, let me clear the air just a little.  Despite my snarky comments about, well most everyone, most of the people working in the MHRF are very good people.   They are doing a hard job with little support, no clear mandate, no  clear objective, trying to care for people most people would just as soon never see at all.  In short they care about the people in their care.

And then there is the evil Dr. Chin.

About three months after joining Nutters U, it was time for my check up.  A nurse checks my blood pressure uses that ear-o-scope thing on me, due to the fact that I had stolen some throat swabs for q-tips, I still didn’t have any ear wax.  Then I step on the scale.

BLINK, BLINK

I had gained fifty pounds in three months.

What The FUCK??!

Sure I knew I had been getting a bit fluffier but fifty pounds?  In three months?

I had never in my life had to even think about my weight.  I know, I know, really annoying of me but there you go.  No wonder they don’t have any full length mirrors in the place.

“Oh dear.” Says the Nurse.  “You’ve gained some weight.  You should go on a diet.”

(Ok let me get this straight, you all feed me, have a locked gym, give me the meds that have me packing on the pounds like a gerbil facing the ice age. And Now I have to go on a diet? Like this is my fucking fault?)

Well that didn’t put me in the best of moods.

Time for my meeting with Dr. Chin.  She is the Dr. in charge. Or so I gather.  Ohh I’ve seen her around walking the halls from one office to another.  She is a small ( I am in munchkin land, I am even taller than some of the male nurses from the Philippines) Chinese woman, the kind of woman who is thin because it makes her elbows sharper.     I have never seen her stop to talk to a patient, never in the three months I’ve been there seen her smile.  I saw her flash her teeth at someone once but I don’t think it was a smile.

I’ve seen the effect meeting with Dr. Chin has had on the other patients.  They line up in front of her office, head down eyes lowered, hunched shoulder, looking for all the world as though there were a sign above her door “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.’.  And danged if they don’t come out of her office looking for all the world as if that is exactly what they have done.  Strange sort of therapy, where the patients leave thinking about suicide. 

I sit facing her, the evil Dr. Chin, I am already not in the best of moods. She has the look of one who very much resents having to use her degree to be a cockroach wrangler.  She glances at me then turns her attention to the far more interesting forms on the table in front of her.

She asks me the questions the form requires.  In this we are perfectly matched in total lack of interest.  I don’t care about the questions; She doesn’t care about the answers.

“If there is nothing else.”

I have been dismissed Dr. Chin has a few more people to ignore on her busy schedule

“Just this.”  I hand her a few sheets of typed paper.  “Please include this with my medical records.”

“What is this?”  She reaches for the papers with nose wrinkling irritation, as though I had just tossed her my very snotty hankie.

“It’s the nice and accurate account of my delusion.  The truth the whole truth and nothing but as they say.”

“I don’t care if it’s the truth or not.  It doesn’t need to be in your medical records.”

“I see.” I say and I lean back in my chair smiling pleasantly.

I believe that it is pretty clear by now that I don’t believe that I am delusional. ( Which is of course not proof that I am not delusional as it is the very definition of delusional to believe that one is sane.)  That’s not to say that I don’t have my charming little quirks.

One of those quirks is in the matter of violence.  Violent action is something most people really have to work themselves up to.  Blood pressure goes up respiration increases, they get all red in the face and inevitably there is yelling involved. Me?  I can go from smiling pleasantly to ass kicking faster than my face can change expression.  If I’m going to kick someone’s ass I don’t want them to know about it, till their picking their ass up off the floor.  Or in this case Jaw.

The thought process goes something like this:

(There is a motion before the board, break this cunts jaw, yes or no?

We will now hear a report from the morality and ethics board.  Is such an action warranted?

Bullies are to me what cobras are to the mongoose.  All bullies offend my sense of right and proper, but not all bullies are equally offensive.  Boccie was one type of bully and I know this will seem off to you but I considered him one of the lest personally offensive sort.  A bad guy yes,  a pointless annoying bug on the backside of humanities ass, but at least he never took an oath to be one of the good guys.  A crooked cop is far more morally offensive then the Boccie type.  They took an oath to uphold the law, to be one of the good guys.   Lower in my estimation than the crooked cop is the bent Doctor.  

A doctor swore an oath to put their patients first in their care. Not the law, which doesn’t bleed, not the insurance companies that do not suffer, not to the hospital administrators or board of directors that do not need.  

Imagine a Doctor telling you ‘I don’t care if you have cancer or not I’m putting you on chemo.”  Or “I don’t care if your gall bladder is working just fine I’m ripping that puppy out.”  

“I don’t care.”  Three words a Doctor has no right to speak to a patient.

It’s one thing to say that in your best professional opinion a particular diagnoses is correct and a certain course of treatment is called for.  I may disagree with your conclusion, you may be wrong, but that’s not offensive.  Heck everyone makes mistakes.  But to not care if what your doing is hurting someone or not,  yeh, your waaaay over the line on that one.

I have seen the effect this woman has had on her patients.  She is hurting people.  She is hurting the most vulnerable the most helpless people I can imagine.  Hurting those she is supposed to be helping, and doing so from behind the safety of her medical degree.

Conclusion from the morality and ethics committee’; Breaking the cunt’s jaw is fully warranted.  At least if she is sipping ensure through a straw for the next few weeks she will have fewer chances to hurt people.

Report from the feasibility study:  I sit there smiling pleasantly, my mind busy measuring it all out like a complicated pool shot, the chairs we are sitting on, the table between us, the precise spot on her jaw to strike for best effect.  Conclusion from the feasibility study.  Doable to a high degree of certainty.

Finally we have the report from the long range goals committee.  The long range goals committee reluctantly and with much regret comes to the conclusion that breaking the cunts jaw would be detrimental to long range goals and create too many possible undesirable complications.  I would most defiantly end up with heavier meds under more watchful supervision

Sometimes you just have to pick your battles.

The account of my delusion was put in with my records as arguing with me was more trouble than stuffing a few pieces of paper into a file.

  My attitude toward the drugs I was being given was the same as my attitude toward any other drug I’ve run across, curiosity.  “Well now let’s see what this one does?”

Sometimes drugs do bad things.

The drugs they were giving me had turned me into a lard ass.   Not only had I gained fifty pounds but I was always tired and I couldn’t sleep and I was constipated, (Which since I had gained fifty pounds lead my mind into uncomfortable areas of thought. ‘just how full of shit was I?)

When drugs do bad things stop taking them.

Up to now I’ve been taking my medications like a good girl.  A history of easy compliance builds expectations of continued compliance.  After my meeting with the evil Dr. Chin, I lined up for my meds like always and I spit them out in the toilet, though as a rule I don’t approve of spitting.

I had a major headache for a few days, cold turkey is never fun.  But I after that I could sleep again and the weight began coming off.  (fifty pounds it don’t come off as easy as it piled on)

A couple of days after my meeting with the evil Dr. Chin I was heading to the library.  On the first floor there is a lovely inner courtyard, the best feature of the hospital in my opinion.  It’s a nice little place to sit on the grass and listen to the breeze dance in the silvered leaves of a semi circle of young birch trees.

This morning I notice Merideth sitting on one of the benches in the courtyard.  She looked a perfect picture of hunched shouldered misery.  Merideth, is a retired school teacher origonaly from Norway and boy howdy does she look like she stepped directly out of some ole’ Viking legend, steel  gray hair cut off sharp and practival at her jaw line a face handsome in its unforgiving planes.  She has been crying.

I sit on the bench next to her.

“Hey you want some coffee?  I just got this from the store, cream and sugar I hope you don’t mind.”

I hand her the warm cup of coffee.  We sit in silence for a couple of minutes while the coffee does its work of calming the tide of tears.

“I just had a meeting with Dr.Chin.”  She says.

“Ahh.”  I say.  

“She wouldn’t listen to me.  She wouldn’t even look at this.” She holds up a file folder stuffed with paperwork and forms that she has been clutching like a drowning victim would clutch at a rope.  I don’t know what all the forms and what not are but Merideth is a former school teacher so I know that what ever paperwork she has there it has all been filled out correctly with all the right signatures on all the right lines.  As a former school teacher she has spent her life playing by the rules, people listened to her.  That now none of that matters and no one will even look at her homework, is a huge blow to her sense of self.

“try not to take it personal.  It’s not you, Dr, Chin doesn’t listen to anybody.”

(I hate Dr. Chin)

She takes a sip from her coffee and sighs.

“I like coming here, the birch trees remind me of home.  I’m from Norway originally, there are lots of birch trees in Norway”

“Yeh I know.  I’m from Maine, once upon a time.  We have birch trees there too.”  I pause for a moment.

“You know, the birch trees remind me of a funny story.  Would you like to hear it?”

She gives me the suspicious squint eye but decides she might not mind listening to a little story.

“Well as I said I’m from Maine.  In fact my people have been Maine before there was a Maine.  They had been digging the rocky ground and planting potatoes back when Maine was still part of Mass.  

Way back in the misty dims of past times a branch of the family broke off from it’s Maine roots and transplanted themselves in Kansas.

You know about Kansas?” I ask her.

“No trees there.”  She says.

“Yes, exactly, no trees, all flat.  How anyone could want to settle in a place so monotonous and dull I have no clue.”  Merideth chuckles, we two women from the ice bound north lands have a shared sense of proper aesthetics.

“Anyway, one day around the time of the depression, a Kansas cousin decided to pay a visit to her Maine relatives.

My grandmother, much pleased by  the visit went all out to show her long lost cousin all the best of the place.    Day after day my grandmother took her cousin out, showing her one beautiful spot after another.  But despite my grandmothers best efforts, day after day her cousin looked more and more unhappy.  In fact she got this look pretty much permanently attaced to her face like she had been doing nothing the whole trip but sucking on sour pickles.

The last day of her visit came and my grandmother took her to the most beautiful spot she knew of for a picnic.  It was a lovely rolling valley with the mountains blue shadows in the distance, a spring fed lake and at the end of the lak a stand of birch trees silver leaves shimmering in the breeze.

The cousin was not impressed.  Finally she could take it no longer and she screwed up her face into her most sour pickle expression and points an accusing finger toward the birch trees and says.

‘What’s the matter with you people?  Don’t you all have anything better to do then to go around painting your trees white?’

I concluded my little story and Merideth sat there with a stunned look on her face and than her face broke apart like ice calving off from a glacier and she laughed as only a Viking can, with thigh slapping joy.  She goes wandering off sipping her coffee, she passes a birch tree and chuckles as she runs her hands over its white bark.

“Hey there Darla, good to see you.  Haven’t seen you in a while and I was beginning to wonder if you had gone rabbit and jumped the fence.”  I greet Darla with a merry smile as she shuffles into the Library.  Darla used to work in city hall, a speech writer.  She always looks like she is off on her way to the office, hair always perfectly primed, make up carefully applied (office neutral in rose tones), dressed in lady like office fashion with a string of pearls.  Ok no pearls but she is the sort who should always be wearing a string of pearls.

Today she is in her pink bathrobe and hospital slippers and, she hasn’t brushed her hair.

“I’ve been in a coma.”

(Dear Abby?  No.  Emily Post?  No.  The MadHatters guide to hosting a tea party, index, ahh yes comma, you’re in a comma: no, that’s not it, The dormouse is in a comma: no, Guest, recovering from a comma: ahh yes there we go, Proper response, offer seat and refreshments.  Tea and cucumber sandwiches are well thought of.)

“Would you like a doughnut?”

Darla takes the doughnut and settles down on the couch with a tired sigh.

“I thought we’re not supposed to have food in the library? “  She says in a dispirited voice without volume.

Rules are very important to Darla.  She is a Good Girl.  She always sits in the front row, raising her hand to every question.  Her dog never once ate her homework.  I had an Irish Wolfhound with a prodigious appetite.

“Ohh today is doughnut day.  Everyone who takes a book has to have a doughnut today  So you will have to take a book.  Now coffee, your quite right we’re not supposed to have coffee at all.”  I take a sip from my coffee and prop my feet up on the desk.

Darla’s arrival at the MHRF had been a very well ordered affair.  She had very systematically liquidated her life.  She had given away everything she owned, from furniture to pots and pans, then did the same to bank accounts.  Then she had gone to the beach, stripped down and swam out for the sunset.   The water was colder than she had expected.  The whole process of drowning became a far more uncomfortable a process than she could whole heartedly embrace so she swam back to shore.

When she had told me her story I responded as only someone with a deeply compassionate soul could respond.

“Ok, OK, let me see if I got this right.  You gave away all your stuff to your friends, your furniture, your antiques, jewelry, pots pans and down comforters then you start handing out checks to all your friends like your Ed McMahon on a bender.   Not one of your friends ask you why?  And after your swim for the sunset and your arrival here not one of those friends that you’ve given all this good shit too has dropped by to see how you’re doing? 

No wonder you tried to commit suicide, your friends suck.”

She sits on the couch a lump of misery.  She’s not even interested in the doughnut and it’s the good kind with powdered sugar.

“So.”  I prompted, “You were in a comma?”

“Dr. Chin.”

“Ahh.”

“She changed my medication.  I told her it was making me feel bad.  I couldn’t wake up.  She didn’t care.  I woke up in the hospital.  Why did they have to wake me up?  I just want to be dead.”

(I should have broken that cunts jaw)

“I tried drowning, but the water was too cold and I got scared.”

“Probably the best thing really.  Drowning isn’t a particularly pleasant death.”  I tell her.  “Freezing to death I’ve heard is not too bad a way to go.  Sure the process of getting that cold isn’t all that great but once you actually start freezing I understand you get all warm feeling and just drop off to sleep.  Course freezing to death in San Francisco is a bit of a challenge.”

“I could never do that, I don’t like the cold.”  Darla gives a lady like shudder.

“Personally I like the roman way of suicide.  You invite your friends over for a big dinner party and you sit in a big tub of warm water slit your wrists and sit there bleeding to death, drinking wine and talking politics and philosophy with your friends.”

“I couldn’t do that.  Cut myself, I’m afraid of knives and I don’t like blood.  I just want to sleep and not wake up.  If I could just take some pills and die in my sleep.”

“Unfortunately, most of the shit you take that can kill you upsets your stomach so much you end up drowning  in a pool of your own vomit.”  Darla shudders at the thought of such an unlady like ending.

“I’ve thought about jumping off a building.” She says.

“Sounds good.  Splat,,, lights out.  Unfortunately, falling isn’t as sure a death as one would think.  You get one guy the trips over a crack in the sidewalk and in falling snaps his neck, another guy jumps out of an airplane his chute fails but he lands in a mud puddle in the middle of a corn field and just breaks a few ribs.  Just imagine if you don’t die but just end up paralyzed, than there you are still alive and you can’t even move your arms. Talk about sucks to be you.

Jumping to your death now that reminds me of a funny story I read in the paper a while back.  There was the homeless guy.  He used to hang out near the tennis courts of nob hill reading poetry.  He kept hearing voices, these voices kept telling him that he was chosen to deliver to the world a very important message from God.  The Voices kept on telling him this but as to the exact message he was to deliver it was all ‘please stand by.’  The entire situation was becoming annoying so one day the man goes to the bridge.

And he tells his voices’ ‘ok here’s the deal.  I’m going to jump off this bridge and if I live I will believe you, that I’m God’s messenger and I’ll just have to wait for the message.   If I die, well I guess you all can just shut the hell up.

And with that he jumped off the bridge.

What happened? Did he live?”  It’s amazing the power of a story to bring a person out of apathy.

“Yep.  Just broke his ankle.  I’ve always wanted to meet that guy.  See if God has gotten around to giving him a message to deliver yet.’

“You think he really is God’s messenger?”  Darla asks.

“Well as to that I cant say.  I can say he certainly has better proof of God’s grace than Jerry Fallwell.  Which gave me a wizzy cool idea.  We take all the self proclaimed voices for the almighty and one by one we check them off the bridge.  The ones that live we let them go on TV and talk about God till their blue in the face.”

Darla laughs, the heavy weight of misery lifts just a little. I give her a book to read as she heads off.  A cool little story about an English guy who went on holiday paddling his dingy from the canals of Oxford to the Blue Danube in Budapest.

Chapter 21 A discourse on the absence of barking dogs

I am sitting at a table in the day room just doodling.  Using my water color pens just doodling.  Filling one piece of paper after another with pointless chaos of colors.  Andrew comes up and stands behind me watching me doodle.  

Andrew is a nurse from England and very English in the manly man kind of way.  I could totally see him leading a Sherpa up the side of a mountain with a cup of Earl Gray tea in one hand.

The paper I’ve been doodling is full so I crumple it up and toss it in the trash.

“Why did you do that?”  He frowns at me.

(people do seem to ask me that question a lot these days)

“Do what?” I ask, This once I really don’t know what I’ve done to raise the question.

“Throw that away?”  He pointed to the crumpled doodle paper in the trash.

“Hmm, because the paper is full.”  I already have a new blank page in front of me and have begun filling it with randomness.

“You spent so much time on it.”

“So?” I shrug and continue doodling.

“You spent so much time on it, but you treat it like its nothing and has no value.”

“It is nothing and has no value.”

“But.”

“But what Andrew?  Really its nothing, just doodling, nothing.  If the word doodling offends ones puritanical need to always be involved in profitable labor you can say I am completing work sheets on a self directed course on color theory.”

“I can’t believe you would put so much time into something you don’t value.”

“Oh for heavens sake Andrew its just doodling.  And as far as time. Well I have nothing but right now.  Doodling seems as fine a way to spend my time as anything right now.”

“if it’s important to you your welcome to it.”  I hand him a page of my time wasting doodles.

“That’s not the point.”  Andrew snaps.

(well what is the point?  How hath doodles offended thee?)

“You have no values at all.”  He says with a very English frown of disapproval.

This seemed a bit of a stretch to me.  From throwing away a page of random doodles to a total lack of moral values.  I wasn’t even littering.

“Ohh no I certainly do.  I have a very firm set of values, thank you very much.   Now granted, my values are perhaps a bit outside my cultural norms.”

“To say the least.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.  Genocide, rape, murder, slavery, skinning people alive and eating their hearts, all these have been accepted, even promoted as moral even righteous action by one human culture or another throughout history.  Having a certain amount of skepticism towards ones own cultural paradigms is I think healthy.”

“When you set that fire did you even think about the other people in the building?”

(Jeeze you set one little fire and that’s all anyone can talk about)

“I did.  The fire I set was just large enough to look bad without actually being all that dangerous.  I knew the fire department would be called as soon as I set foot outside the apartment/  After all they had my apartment wired with cameras and mics so it’s not like the fire was in anyway a surprise.”

“People could have been hurt. There is no excuse for that.”

Now I can’t help but feel pleased by his accusations and amused.  After all you don’t go around calling mad people immoral and irresponsible.  He is judging me by the measures of sanity, something he doesn’t do with any other patient here.

“I was fighting for my life after all, and the only people in the building at the time were those directly involved in the attempts to kill me.  So I can’t say I wasted much time worrying about their health.  But even so as I said they were warned, they watched me set the fire, they had access to the fire escape and the fire department had been called.  So the danger even to them was minimal.”

“You put people’s lives at risk, there is no excuse for that.”  

(Ohh dear someone is channeling Mrs. Bucket.)

“You ever had to fight for your life Andrew?”

“Well no, but even so I would never do that.”

“Thank you Monday morning quarterback, your opinion is duly noted.”

That tweaked his manhood a bit.

“You could have ended up in prison.  You didn’t even stop to think of that.”

“Now that is an interesting question.  Why is it do you suppose that I’m not in prison?”

A mirror held up to his assumptions left him a little stunned at the view. 

“Arson is after all against the law and due to San Francisco’s rather incendiary history a crime that is normally treated with some degree of seriousness.  I certainly left no doubt as to the nature of the fire.  Hell I did everything but sign my name in lighter fluid.  Nor can there be any doubt as to my guilt.  I set the fire, I said I set the fire with the clear intent to cause damage to the place.  Yet for all that I’m not in prison am I?  I haven’t even been charged.  Not arrested, not questioned, phhffft nothing.  Odd don’t you think?

Ohh and don’t think for a minute that as a person of dubious mental balance I am immune from prosecution.  Jeffery Dhalmer couldn’t get off on an insanity defense, and he ate people.  And being a crazy person won’t keep you from being charged with a crime.  

“Why am I here?”  I committed arson and no charges? None?  Not even a single cop dropping by with a question?”

“Now let’s take a look at what else I have said I have done.  Prior to setting the fire I vandalized two apartments.  Boccie had to have locks replaced on two doors.  I dumped a couple a thousand gallons of water down on the apartment below me.  Ohh and I don’t know the exact legal term for using caustic chemicals to gas your neighbors but I’m pretty sure it’s assault of some sort.

Either I did all those other things or I didn’t.

If I didn’t do those things that I claim to have done what then are you to believe?  That basically for three months I was so lost in delusional psychosis that I sat in my closet completely unaware of my own actions?

The three months when I thought I was fighting for my life I was really doing nothing but having a long very bad dream?  Yet so insensate of my actual actions I somehow still managed to rouse myself enough from this dream to keep myself feed and bathed?  After all if I had not eaten or bathed in three months I would have been in far worse physical shape upon my arrival at the hospital then I was, would I not?  So a person locked in a near catatonic delusional psychosis for three months, wakes one morning fixes a cup of tea, neatly packs a couple of suite cases then sets fire to her apartment.

If you believe that then you are certainly giving me credit for possessing a most singular madness.

Another possibility is that I set the fire, I said I set the fire but I am lying about everything else I claim to have done.  If that were so what would be my motivation for it?  There are people in the world who confess to crimes they haven’t done but it is usual practice for such people to confess to crimes that have actually been done.  People who invent their own guilt seldom go to all the trouble of inventing the crime.

On the other hand lets say I actually did all those other things.  Ok Andrew imagine you own a building and a tennet in that building quite suddenly and without reason or warning starts vandalizing your building.  You have to have locks replaced, carpets replaced, a few thousand dollars worth of water damage.  Yet for all of that, you never call the police?  Not about any of that?

Why isn’t the dog barking my dear Watson?”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t ask for help.” He says with a school marms prim disapproval.

“Yess, well, I have to say that the police were not all that helpful.”

“No I mean a doctor.”

“A doctor? What did I need a doctor for?  other than people trying to kill me I was perfectly healthy..”

He gives me the ‘you know perfectly well what I mean’ look.

“Ohh, you ment a shrink.”

“Well yes.”

“So he could give me some of those lovely pills?”

“Yes of course.”

I give myself the ‘I coulda hada v-8’ head slap.

“Of course why didn’t I think of that?  Ohh yes I could see it now.  I throw open my window and call out to the gang banger and crack heads all screaming death up to me and I yell out”

“Hey ya all cant shoot me today….I took a pill.”

I crack up.  Just huge barrels of monkey laughter rolling over me.  The absurdity of it all hitting me hard.  Tears in my eyes I lower my head to the table and pound on it with my fist.

“I took a pill.”  Ohh my ohh dear. 

Andrew stiffens and walks away outraged English pride in every step.

Ohh dear he is upset with me.  Then I think I really must stop this laughing or soon a kindly nurse , will, will, oh my god, give me a a pill.) And sure enough a small phillipina nurse clutching a clip board walks up and asks me if I’m alright.

I sit up straight hands in my lap, biting my tongue cause I must not laugh, I must not laugh. Cause if I laugh they will, will, ohh dear give me a pill.

Chapter 20 The politics of Q tips

So at the appointed time I arrived in the activity room at take my place at the council table.

Rose is more or less in charge, something between a moderator and secretary.  Diane is there, she is a very quiet Asian woman who drools, one of the side effects of her medication.  Seems terrible unfair, there she is a nice polite woman drooling all over the place.  It is considered a minor side effect.

Carl is a thin scruffy man who has the distinction of having the most annoying human voice I have ever heard, a high buzz saw nasal whine that just cuts right through your skull.  First time I saw him was shortly after arriving in the mad house.  He was in the day room trying to learn Spanish by memorizing the dictionary.   Fork cucheria, fork, cucheria,.  As it seems that people with truly annoying voices are attracted to politics he is there.

Bob is there playing with his dolls.  Bob is exactly what one would imagine a mad house patient to look like, a fifty year old man who looks like a toothless beardless bald garden gnome with a four year olds dress sense.  Today pink tights, purple tutte and star spangled sneakers.  He thinks he is the Lindbergh baby.

Other then that the event is atteneded by people who were just hanging out in the activity room so were drafted.

And let the games begin.  First the reading of the notes of last week.  Which is of no interest to me.  Then the floor opens to new business.

Carl takes the floor.

It is a well known political tactic to allow the biggest blow hard in the room to go first, let him suck all the air out of the room so when you finally get there with your proposal people are so tired and ready to leave that they will happily agree to just about anything.

Carl is perfect, he has a file folder stuffed with charts legal paperwork forms and all.  He wants the MHRF to become a patient run co op with an open door policy were they could come and go as they like, get jobs, have control of their medications ect ect ect.  His buzz saw whine goes on and on.  Till finally Rose steps in with the time nearly up.  She says she will take all this down and send it on to the hospital administers,, or ,, somebody.

“Is there anything else?”  She looks around the table.

"Well, yes.” I speak up.  “I would like soy sauce and Tabasco sauce added to the table condiments. The meals are, to say the least, bland and the soy sauce and Tabasco would be a help.  Also salads, I must say that six ounces of salad divided up between an averages of six to ten residents, can’t really be called salad.  It barley qualifies as garnish. So more salad please.” 

She says she will speak to the dietitian as she is in control of the kitchen menus.

This is of course code, for ‘I will forget this and hope you do to.”

So next week a repeat of the first.  Carl goes on and on till the time is nearly done. Then I ask Rose has spoken with the dietitian yet.

She hasn’t gotten a chance to see her yet but will this week.

Next week.  “Have you spoken with the dietitian yet?”

The next stall will be the pick some small part of the over all proposal as a reason to reject the entire thing.

“Yes, well, the dietitian feels that soy sauce will be too high in salt for the sodium restrictedpatients.”

I smile, (wonderful if the objection had been money that would have taken months of work to get around. This was easy.

“Soy sauce while high in sodium is certainly no higher in sodium then the table salt already provided, and Tobasco is a low sodium product that is often recommended to people with sodium restricted diets.  Now as to the salad.  Due to the medications you all hand out, most of your residents have constipation not to mention weight gain, so I would expect that you would be encouraging the consumption of salads as much as possible.

Now is the time to add something to the proposal that the powers that be can reject so they feel they have some control over it all.  It makes them feel good.

“I would also like to see more than just lettuce and shredded carrots in the salad, tomatoes would be nice, the occasional cucumber, some sprouts.”

“Ohh  and one more thing about the soy sauce.  You know over half the residents of the MHRF are Asian.  It would seem to me that not providing soy sauce is pretty culturally  insensitive.”

This was San Francisco after all, I figured I had them with that one.  Then Diane, who has never said a word for weeks, peeps up.

“I’m Asian and I don’t care if we have soy sauce or not.”

(Ohh lord there is always one)

Diane is one who just cant handle any sort of confrontation.  I guess she felt that I was putting her in the middle of an argument.  Knowing her fear of confrontation I knew exactly what to do.

I kicked her under the table.  Then I leaned over and hissed into her ear.

“Hush up you. You may not care if we have soy sauce or not but I do.. and I’m just a white girl from the backwoods of Maine I can’t exactly claim soy sauce as part of my cultural heritage now can I?  So don’t screw this up for me.”

She ducked her head and slunk down in her seat.

The motion passed and next week I sat down and put Tabasco sauce on my omelet at breakfast and for lunch I put soy sauce on some chicken mess And crunched into a nice pile of salad, no tomatoes, but hell I never thought I would get that.

Having achieved my goals I promptly retired from politics.

After a couple of weeks without my attendance at the council meetings Burt pops into the library.  He is wearing his ‘I’m concerned for you and reaching out face.’ 

“I notice you haven’t been to  the consul meetings.”

“Nope.”  I prop my feet up on the desk leaning back comfortable in my chair.  “I achieved what I set out to do so I have now retired from politics.” 

 Brave words too soon spoken as it turned out.

“I’m sure you have other issues you could address.”

I thought briefly of q-tips.  It is an odd thing to me that one can get a razor but not a q-tip.  When you take a shower you can get a plastic safety razor from the staff nurse.  You have to sign for it and turn it back in when done with your shower.  I can understand wanting some controls when handing mad people razors.  What confuses me is that while one may have a razor one may not have a q-tip.  Why is a mad person trusted with a razor but not a q-tip?  I run the mental calculations in my head.  Mad person + razor+ a half hour alone in the shower= potential trouble factor X.  Then I run the calculation Mad person + q-tip. I just couldn’t see a q-tip resulting in a higher potential trouble factor than a razor.

Not having a q-tip, it’s a small irritation.  You don’t notice not having a q-tip at first.  Maybe it was just my obsession with clean ears, but it was really starting to bug me.  So one day when the nurses back was turned I swiped a bunch of throat swabs, thus solving my q-tip dilemma.

So when Burt mentioned other issues and I naturally thought of q-tips.  Who would I have to take on in order to get q-tips?  That would be the nursing staff and possibly housekeeping.  I did a quick cost benefit analyses, the amount of effort I would have to expand in order to get the q-tip reward.

“No, sorry Burt, there isn’t anything else I can think of that the consul can address.”

“But I’m certain you have other issues you could address, you have some ideas about the way the hospital is run.”  Poor Burt is confused and a bit worried, to find me suddenly a woman without issues.

“Issues?  Ideas? “  I let out a tea pot hiss and roll my eyes.  “Where do I begin?  Ok the two biggest issues for the patients is they all want more input and more control over their medications.  A pretty sane thing to want in my opinion.  They also want more freedom, more passes to the outside.  Again a very sane thing to want and one I think should be encouraged with added guided field trips to encourage and facilitate interaction with the outside world.

One of the mission statements of the MHRF is ‘to help the patients acquire independent living skill sets.’  What you have is supervised patients running the cash register at your little playtime convenience store and a once a month ‘how to cook spaghetti’ class.

The activity room. Rose is a sweet person but has no ability to organize activity.  On the other hand that she is given only ten bucks a month to buy art supplies with could be a reason she is so loath to do anything.  That just boggles me, I mean really? Ten bucks a month?  Here we are in San Francisco and buying crayons for mad people is something you can only get ten bucks a month for?”

Your patients need physical activity.  You have a gym that is locked and completely empty of any equipment and there is no physical therapist on staff.

Other than the anti drug and alcohol group meeting sing alongs, there is no attempt at therapy of any other sort.  Having mad people chant just say no while you hand them their daily meds is the sort of heavy hand irony that would be considered over the top in a student movie.

So yes Burt I have issues and ideas, but none of them that the patient council would have any power to address.”

“You don’t know that, after all you got soy sauce and more salad.”

“I got Tabasco sauce too Burt.”

"Exactly, then why not come back to the council and put your ideas forward.?”

I sigh and do the eye roll.

“Because Burt trying to dig the Holland tunnel with a tooth pick is not my idea of a good time.”

“I don’t understand.”  

“Yes you do.  Look the council is set us to give the patients the feeling that they have impute into their treatment.  Some illusion of control over their lives. And to ‘ facilitate their integration into the larger society by giving them the experience of working together’.  It however has exactly no actual power and is in no way set up to be an instrument of change.”

“But you effected changes through the council.”

“Yes Burt, I got what I wanted.  I chose a small and inconsequential issue that would only be an inconvenience to the food service workers.    And lab rats have more political pull then the food service workers union.  It was perfect, an issue you could give on and then say in  your annual reports how the council actually has some impute in the running of the hospital.  Win, win, everybody is happy and I get to put Tabasco sauce on my omelet.”

“Think of how much more you could accomplish.”

“It is believed that Archimedes once said, something along the lines of “give me a fulcrum and lever large enough and I can move the world”   Well without leverage your not Archimedes your sis aphis. “

Burt gets that slightly embarrassed, slightly bemused look on his face that he gets when I make some classical reference he totally doesn’t get.  To be honest it bugs me.  How can one go all the way through all those years of advanced education and not brush shoulders with at least one illustrated classic comic book?

“Burt, everything I just mentioned involves movement of money, changes in regulations in rules in procedures even in laws.  To believe that a bunch of mad people sitting around a table playing with dolls would have any power to accomplish anything I just spoke about is, delusional”

Burt finally gives up and leaves looking a bit crest fallen.  Reality is always such an unpleasant surprise for Burt.

chapter 19 Who is this God person anyway?

If the people in my high school had been told I would end up as a mad house Librarian, no one would have been a bit surprised.  I felt pretty pleased stuck in a mad house and I manage to get my own office and I didn’t have to bite anyone for it.

I had a nice trickle of people coming in to check out the new library.  I’m pretty good at picking out the right book for the right person so everyone left with a book and a smile.  By the second week people began asking if they could volunteer to work in the library.

“Why sure.”  I say and soon had my little library staffed with four assistants.  It wasn’t long at all before I had the library running exactly as I wanted.  That is my assistants did all the actual work, scheduling everyone setting the library hours keeping track of who had what book.  I popped in and sat at my desk and read books and broke the no coffee in the library rule whenever the mood struck me. 

“Mind if I come in?” Burt looks in the library door way waiting for me to invite him in.  

From the moment I unlocked the library door this has been a staff free zone.  It’s not like I ever told them they weren’t invited.  They just don’t come in.  I mean ever.  Some boxes of used books were donated.  The boxes were left for me in the activity room.  I had never thought about it till seeing Burt standing there in the door way asking my permission to come in.    In the midst of the MHRF it would seem I had created a small fiefdom of smurfs, and somehow entrance to the kingdom required my permission

“Why sure, come on  in.”  (Open borders here no visa required)

“I had some time and thought we could talk.”

“Why sure. Grab a seat.”

And so me at seated at my desk and the therapist on one of the library’s small couches we begin a conversation.

We get the ordinary pleasantries out of the way, how are you doing? Nice day, that sort of thing.  Then the ritual of friendly greeting talk out of the way he dives in.

“Do you know what fixated delusions are?

“Ohh that’s a tricky one.  After all there have been whole huge long books written about the subject.  But I guess I would say, very broadly speaking, that a delusion is any internalized system of subjective belief that is inconsistent with external objective observable reality

Delusions would be called pathological when the internalized subjective reality is so divergent from external observable, objective, reality that it is harmful to the individual holding that belief and potentially harmful to others around them.

A delusion would be called fixated when that internalized subjective belief is held completely apart from any contravening external reality.

Does that about cover it?”  I give him my very best innocent eye lash batting cute little girl expression.

He blinks at me, twice.

“Is that something you’ve read somewhere?”

“Ho, do you mean have I been nicking down to you office to take crib notes from the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders; just so I could impress you with a level of erudition that I do not in fact posses?”

I think he decided to grow a beard because he blushes too easily.

“That’s not what I meant.”

It was,  but heck it’s not like he’s the first to assume that I read books just for the pictures.

“You've seen the DSM?”

(Just the pop up version)

“Yes there was a copy of it in my high school library.  I spent a few very amusing study periods diagnosing my class mates and teachers.  Not a sane one in the bunch if the book is to be believed.  Course as I recall, sanity was the first word I tried to look up and was surprised to find it wasn’t in there.  Odd isn’t it?  Every other medical text book will define what a healthy organ looks like and how it functions before listing all the things that can go wrong.

I guess for you psychiatrics sanity is like pornography.”

“Pornography?”  He replies in scandalized tones.

“Yes.  You may not be able to define it. But you know it when you see it.”

He laughs, a little nervously.  A person unteathered from their expectations are never made comfortable by the experience.

“So Burt, would you like to hear about the time I met God?”

I smile with a merry little glimmer in my eyes, which of course Burt completely misinterprets as the manic glint of madness.  He leans back in his chair and crosses his legs, tilting his clipboard up a bit shield like.

“Hmm yes that would be fine.”

Yeh he’s been expecting this.  I’ve been luring him in with all seeming rationality then the mask slips and the madness peaks through.

I take a sip from my coffee and begin the tale.

“I was at a party.  Now as a rule I don’t enjoy parties.  I find that the more people you stuff into a room the lower the overall IQ becomes.  People seem to gather together to play loud horrible music just so they can join together in celebration of mutual stupidity.  But I was bored so I went to a party.

This was a party attended by art students and others similarly afflicted with very high opinions of themselves.  I took my drink and settled into a quiet corner of the room.  A life time as the party’s cranky wall flower I always know where the quiet corner of the room is.  I have an unfailing homing instinct.

I stood in my corner sipping my drink when a young man slid into my corner of solitude.  He was playing with his brand new palm pilot.  He pauses from his busy thumb twiddling and looked over to me with a cocky grin.

“I’m God you know.”  He said with all the seriousness of a first year philosophy major.”

“Ohh really?” I said and smiled.  I have met many men who thought they were God of course but he was the first one to say so.

“Yes,” He said.

He explained to me that he was indeed God the all mighty everlasting the alpha and omega.  He was just pretending to be human and mortal with all mortalities pains and ill’s as a divergence from the shear desperate boredom of it all.   

Apparently omniscient eternity has it’s draw backs’

He further explained to me that he as God the big G hadn’t actually created anything or anyone.  It was all just an amusing dream he was indulging in.

“Hmm so, I am nothing more than a dream your having?  I don’t really exist?”  I said and smiled my Cheser Cat   smile.

“That’s right.”  He said, completely confident in his own cleverness.

I thought about that for a heart beat or two.  Then I slapped his face.

When I reach this point in the tale I leaned forward and slapped the palms of my hands together dramatizing the event.  Burt jerked back in his chair looking startled, as if I had just slapped his face.

“Why did you do that?”  Burt asked me.

“You know, that is exactly what god asked me.

“Why did you do that?”  His hand massaging his offended cheek.

“What did you tell him?” Burt asks

“I said.  Because apparently God, is a masochist.”

Burt blinks twice and leans further back on the couch and try’s to laugh.  Poor dear isn’t sure if I just told a joke or revealed my insanity.

“Umm, I thought you were going to say that the pain proved that he wasn’t God.”

“No Burt, remember he said he was dreaming that he was mortal. So any pain he ‘felt’ was just part of his amusing daydream.”

“Ohh right.”

“You see Burt, if I don’t exist, if I am just a projection of his mind, a part of his dream, then any action ‘I’ take is nothing but his own responsibility.  The dream doesn’t dream the dreamer.”

“So, hmmm, do you think you really met God?”

“Well Burt the existence of God or gods is a matter for which there is no empirical proof.  I would like to think that if God the big G were to appear to me that he would be something a bit more impressive.  On the other hand I rather like the idea that I slapped the face of God.  Jacob wrestled with an angel but I slapped the face of God.  Yeh I like it.”

“We started this discussion with the definition of delusion.  A definition that relies on the idea that an objective view of reality exists.   For there to be an objective view there must be an objective viewer.  The tree cannot have an objective view of the forest.  In order to view the forest one must be standing outside of the forest.  We are each of us an individual subjective consciousness existing within the structures of Einstein’s E=Mc2 space time.  So the very idea that there is such a thing as an objective view of reality presupposes the idea of an observer that has to exist outside of  space/time.  For lack of a better term, God.”

“So you do believe in God?”

“I’m equally comfortable with the scientific view, that all appearances to the contrariety nothing is real.”

“Nothing is real is the scientific view?”

“Ohh yes quite so.  Everything we think of as real is in fact real only if we don’t look too closely.  The closer you look at anything the less real it becomes.

I place the palm of my hand flat down on the table.

“You see my hand on the table, you see the hand and the table as two distinct solid objects.  On the atomic level solid disappears as a useful definition of anything.  Atoms are not solid.  There is so little actual stuff in an atom that if our solar system were an atom it would be considerably denser than an atom of lead.  

On the atomic level separate like solid no longer means anything.   My hand and the table are even now exchanging atoms, I am a little bit more table than I was and the table is a little bit more me.  You cannot on that scale draw a line between any two objects, nothing is separate. 

On the sub atomic scale things get even stranger, with bits of matter becoming real only when you look at them then you look away and poof it’s gone.. Which as a rational man you know is no way for any real thing to behave.

While your trying to get the very teeniest of things to behave properly you are going to have to scold the universe at the macro level for also disregarding all reason.  Black holes are fun and wonderfully dramatic but you really want to start a food fight at a convention of physicists ask them, ‘So what’s this dark matter and where did it go?’  You see in order for our universe to be the shape it is, traveling at the speed it is, at the age it is, our universe needs to be bigger than it is..’Honey our universe is missing’,. Some estimates have gone as high as ninety percent.  Imagine that, ninty percent of our universe isn’t there,, and no one knows where it all went.

So you see most of everything that should be here isn’t and of that little bit that is here, is here only some of the time.  Like a grand joke, everything is playing peek-a-boo with us.

Speaking of reality, Burt, How do I know that you are real?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well as you knowI am perversely convinced that Boccie and his merry band of drug dealing nitwits spent an unreasonable amount of time making a total nuisance of themselves.  I base this belief on information I received from my senses.  That which I see, that which I hear and feel, I didn’t get much in the way of useful information from my sense of smell in this case.  Other than the fact that Boccie uses Polo, which is information though not I think in anyway useful.  

You are ‘real’ to me in the same way that Boccie is ‘real’.  I can see you, I can hear you, I can reach out my hand and touch you.  

You tell me that I have apparently lost my ability to correctly interpret information I receive from my senses.  That being so, logically than I have no way of knowing if you are in fact ‘real’ or not.  If I can dream up Boccie and his merry men than I certainly have imagination enough to dream you up.”

“I assure you that I am real.”  He smiles.

“Yes, well, that’s no proof.  It is the nature of a delusion to insist on it’s own reality is it not?”  Burt is looking a bit punch drunk.  This is not at all the way he imagined things going.

“It is an interesting problem.  How do you prove your own existence?  I think there for I am but does that mean that you are too?  Maybe I just think you do.”

“Don’t look so worried Burt, my current theory of reality includes you as ‘real’.  As real as anything can be in a universe where nothing is real anyway.  If you should take it into your head to rudely poof out of existence I will of course have to re-evaluate my theory.”

“Speaking of re-evaluating theories,” Burt pauses, “ Do you ever consider the idea that you may be wrong about what happened?”

“Ohh all the time.  I think I have most definitely been uncertain about everything up to now.”

“Except that you have said that your are sure Boccie has been trying to kill you.”

“That is definitely my theory.  The definition of a theory is; This is the best explanation we can come up with to fit the facts as we know them.  Now you want to go changing a theory, you don’t do it cause some yogurt tells you to.  Every theory is subject to change, given a new explanation that better fits the facts or new facts.

In this case we have two competing theories.  For simplicity sake we can call theory A the Boccie is an Ass theory; and theory B; The I am a crazy person theory.  Of course there is also the possibility that both theories are true.  Though that would hopelessly complicate everything wouldn’t it?

We both have a problem in that there is no way to either prove nor disprove theory A.  Of course I can’t help but feel I do have more in the way of information for proving theory A then you do for disproving theory A.  after all I actually did live in the apartment building that quite verifiably belongs to Boccie.  You, on the other hand haven’t even driven by the building in question nor ever met boccie.  So for theory A I have some verifiable facts,  I was there you wernt, so my default position here is to go with the theory that I have some evidence for.  However imperfect.

You, on the other hand have no evidence what so ever either for or against theory A. Your default position here is for you to disbelieve any theory you have  no evidence for.

Since theory A can neither be proven nor disproven that leaves us with theory B.  Here I would say we have a bit of a logic problem  The theory that I am a crazy person is largely dependent upon the idea that theory A is not true and that I am  a crazy person because I believe that theory A is true.

You ever hear of this guy David Ickk?”  I ask him.

“No.”

“Oh man I love this guy.  He was an English sports tv and radio talking head.  Then one day he wakes up and has a revelation.  

The world is secretly being controlled by shape shifting lizards from another dimension.  Apparently we are a sort of cattle ranch for the lizards, and they have a taste for veal.  Prominent member of this carnivorous shape shifting community include the Queen of England and all her big eared progeny, George Bush and all the little shrubs and Ross Perot.  (Now me I always imagined Ross Perot as the Amazing chicken man.)

I would call his beliefs delusional.  His books have sold in the millions world wide.  Go figure.  I don’t like George Bush but I’m almost one hundred percent sure he isn’t a lizard.

While it isn’t possible to either prove or disprove that George Bush is a shape shifting lizard, we can say that in order for George Bush to be an   interdimensional carnivorous shape shifting lizard just about everything we think we know about the way things are is pretty much completely wrong.

Call this the  not all theories are created equal theory.  A theory is that which is unproved, but not all unproved things are equally improbable.  Some things are more improbable than others.”

“How probable than is it that all these people were trying to kill you?  Why you?”  He asks me.

“Why me?  Well now isn’t that just about the most common and most useless question a therapist is ever asked.”  I laugh.

“What do you mean?”

“Why me?  Everytime someone stubbes their toe it’s all, why me?  Why me?  I’m a nice person, I treat people good, I don’t cheat steal or break any of the major commandments/  Why me?  Like we made some kind of deal with God.  I’ll be a good person and God will be nice to me, or at least not really really crappy.  How anyone could read the bible and come to that conclusion is beyond me.

“Why hast thou forsaken me?”  The dyeing words of his own son, nailed to a cross in a bone yard.  Why hast thou forsaken me?  Which is just fancy bible talk for ‘Why me God?”

You know I think the only one in the entire bible who didn’t whine why me was Job.  And boy did that guy have reason to bitch.

Job is a good and righteous man.  He is a pillar of the community, business leader, rich, devoted family man with several wives and ten kids and he is devoted to God.

One day God and the Devil are out shooting the breeze when God decides to do a bit of bragging on his boy Job.  So he goes on and on extolling the virtues of his boy Job, Kind, thrifty, generous reverent, blah, blah, blah.

The Devil has about had it with the endless recitation of a boring man’s virtues, yawns and says.

“Yeh well it’s no wonder he is such a good guy and loves the shit out of you. You give the guy everything his heart desires don’t you?  Six years old and he is the only kid in the village who actually got a pony for his birthday.  I tell you what, the first time things don’t go his way he’ll turn on you so fast it will make your head spin.

Your on says God.

The first thing they did was destroy the guys businesses.  His crops withered in the fields, his herds die, his cargo ships sink, his caravans get swallowed by the desert.  From the richest guy in town to the guy begging the beggars for a place to sit, overnight..

Did he curse God?  Did he whine why me?  No he did not.

God has given me the blessings of my family what man could want more.  He told any who wanted to hear.

Yeh so you know what came next.  Big family gathering around the dinner table and while Job is out back praising God for the blessings of his family, down came this big ol’ tornado and thwack all his family gone at one blow.

 Did he curse God?  Did he whine why me?

Nor sir he did not.

‘What God has given is his right to take away.  It is not mine to question the mind or will of God.’

By this time of course his friends and neighbors leapt to his aid, with a never ending stream of neighborly advice.

‘You must have done something to really piss off God.’ Someone said and they all exchanged speculative glances.  And rite put out they were too when Job refused to flatter their speculations with some terrible confession.  

I always got the idea that Job’s neighbors had always thought of him something of a smug git and were not all that unhappy to see him brought so low.

No matter how bad it gets it can always get worse.  Job is affected with boils.  Puss filled stinking painful itching boils.  

‘Well its not all bad’ says Job. ‘ I stink so bad now my friends have stopped dropping by with advice.’

The Devil finally concedes defeat.

Job the man who frustrated the Devil by never asking why me.

“So umm, you think God did this to you?” Burt asks.

“No, I think I rented an apartment from a complete Dick.  A not entirely unique occurrence in the world.”

“Having your landlord trying to kill you is unusual.” He says.

“Excessive, I would say.  Look I do see where your coming from here.  I mean really, drug dealers, hired killers, microphones, carmeras, booby traps ohhh my.  And all of them all these people focusing all that time and attention on me, ,me, me, me, mememememe. It does seem more then just a tad self aggrandizing.

Why did all those people so completely lose their sense of perspective in regards to me?  Honestly, I don’t know.  I guess they take it badly when a woman tells them to fuck off.  

I almost got myself killed because I just couldn’t believe thatt hese people were serious.  I mean come on guys, I’m a flibertegibbit a clown a fool, for anyone to take me as any kind of threat.. Well the world just reversed course and the sun is rising in the west.

A better question in my opinion would be : Why not me?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why not me?  It’s a perfectly simple question.  Why is it impossible for the things I have talked about in theory A, Boccie is an Ass., to have happened to me?”

“There is a woman in England who went out for a walk one day and had her toe looped off by a small meteorite.  Now go ahead and figure the odds of that.  Losing ones toe to a bit of falling space rock is pretty statistically unlikely.  But just because that something is improbable does not make it impossible.

Christopher Columbus did’t think the world was round while everyone else though it flat.  Christopher Columbus thought the world was considerably smaller than it is.  Till the end of his days he was convinced that he had landed on some obstructing island or chain of islands between Europe and his goal of India.  Believing a thing to be true that turns out to be false, does not necessarily mean your delusional.  You could just be really bad at geometry.

Ok, lets say that you are talking on the phone to a woman in England who claims that her toe was lopped off by a meteorite.  There is no way for you to confirm that the woman is telling the truth.  What we can say is that in the world we know, humans females most often do have toes, women with toes do go out for walks, we can also say that meteorites do fall out of the sky.  As unlikely as it is for a bit of space rock to lop off someone’s toe  it is possible for such a thing to have happened without doing any damage to our view of the way things are.

Now lets look at the theory that George Bush is a shape changing lizard.  First off, shape changing, there has so far been no evidence that such a thing is possible, and that whole conservation of mass and energy thing would have to be completely rethought.  Intelligent lizards from an alternate dimension, we have no evidence for so much as an extraterrestrial protozoa, heck at this point scientists would be thrilled to find so much as a gleam in a complex chain of sugars and proteins eye.  As to alternate dimensions where intelligent where intelligent life exists and have the desire and ablility to travel, there is not a single shred of evidence for.  

Therefor the theory that George Bush is a shape shifting lizard is a theory completely unsupported by any evidence.  If the theory were true then much of our understanding of the world that we as a species have built up over the past few thousand years of thought and testing is false or at least so wildly inaccurate that I would have a hard time believing that people so disconnected from the way things actually are could survive much longer than a week or two.  

So while the theory that George Bush is a lizard can neither be proved nor disproved one can say that the theory is so dependant on so many improbabilities, so much unending of our understanding of the world and how it works, I feel quite safe discounting that particular theory as delusional.

Now looking at my Theory that Boccie is an Ass.  

In the world we know do mobsters and organized crime exist?  Well I would have to say yes.  Or every newspaper in the country has been making up shit for years just to sell papers.  Hmm maybe that’s a bad example.”

Burt laughs, but agrees to the premise that the mafia does indeed exist.

“Do people involved in organized crime indulge in violently antisocial behavior?  Do they actually kill people?  I would have to say that the evidence is that they do.  The other things I spoke about, hidden mics, cameras, even the idiotic bobby trap under my floor, all of it entirely possible.  We know that such things do exist.”

“People are killed with remote controlled guns under floors?” He asks me.

“There are robots that seek out and defuse landmines, there is even a new sport for tech geeks.  Battle ‘bots.  The geeks gettogether and build combate robots then fight them together in the gladiatorial ring.  It is no great feat of techno legerdemain to rig a gun to a remote controlled ATV.  As to planting the fool thing under my floor to kill me in bed, well the Mossad once killed a guy by blowing up his bed.  The CIA tried to poison  Castros cigars.  I should be happy they didn’t try to poison my everyday cigarettes.  Now that would have been half way smart.  I bought my ciggs in the same place and there are poisons one can use that would appear like a heart attack and lets face it, my death in anything other than circumstances of head line grabbing uniqueness would not have occasioned enough interest for a full autopsy. 

It isn’t possible to prove what did happen, but we can say that no part of the Boccie is an ass theory violates our understanding of the world and the things in it.  Add to that the fact that the building I lived in, specifically the empire massage business that occupied the entire second floor, was featured in a lengthy article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian regarding the connection between drugs, street gangs, organized crime and massage parlors.  While not in any way proof that anything I say happened there actually happened I would say that it certainly pushes the entire theory out of the completely improbable category and into the merely unlikely.  People are not often bitten by sharks but it does happen.  Such a thing is more likely to happen to someone scuba diving off the great barrier reef then to someone panning for gold in death valley.”

Before Burt headed off to fill out forms and paperwork he asked if I would like to attend the weekly patient’s council.

“It’s where the patients can bring up issues and discuss things that would make the hospital better for them.”

“Ohh lord,” I sigh and roll my eyes.   Politics.”

And then I reconsider.

“Well now that I think of it, I do have a thing or two to bring up.  Fine I’ll be there.”

(How politics could be viewed as a therapeutically beneficial activity for the mentally ill I really can’t say.)

chapter 18 The Librarian is in

Bored, bored, bored.

Opportunities for amusement are few and far between.

The activities room, I mostly avoided.  I did drop in once a day or so to smile and exchange pleasantries.  I thought if Rose got used to seeing me around in a friendly sort of way she might not flutter about so.

One day when I popped in the say hi she was grousing that she could never find anything she was looking for.  This was just the opening I was looking for.  

“You know, I could organize things for you.”  I offered, trying to be ohh so casual.

“Organize?”  She said, never had the word seemed so threatening.

“Yes, just you know straighten out your closets, not throw out anything I know I know you don’t get much to buy art supplies with.”  (Only 10 bucks a month)  “Wouldn’t it be nice to know what you have on hand and to be able to find what you want?  I promise I wont throw anything out or make a mess.  I just want to help you do your job.  You’re expected to fill out so much paperwork there’s hardly anytime for you to do such housekeeping as straightening out your closets.”

She fluttered and twittered nervously.

I comforted and cajoled

Finally she relented.

(How desperate for amusement am I?  Reduced to begging to clean someone’s closets that’s how desperate)

I set to work with a will.  The first day was the toughest.

“Look I know it’s looks bad, but in order to organize your supplies I have to take them out of the closets.”

She fluttered, she twittered, but with everything dumped out of the closets like a tornado had ripped through them, she couldn’t very well stop me at that point.  

The day I had it all done I did the ceremonial revel.  Even spoke the magic words “TA DA” As I opened the closet doors. ( The closet lined one wall, in three main sections so a goodly amount of space.

“Ok now over here in this section you have all your soft supplies, scrap material, sewing supplies that sort of thing. Here in the middle section are your ‘hard’ supplies, blocks of wood, dolls (lots and lots of dolls, a  large bin overflowing with dolls, I imagine Roses home stuffed with Barbie dolls, and teddy bears.  I think of all those beady little eyes staring soullessly at me and I shudder)  The used cd,’s  (Used cd’s. so many crafty people trying so hard to find some interesting use for those fucking things and they all come up with the same ugly ass mobile.  If you can’t find anything useful to do with something, hang it on a string. ) your bits and bobs and thingamajigs and whatnots.  This section here,” I throw open the last door. “Is for your basic art supplies, paints, glues, brushes scissors and such like.  “

To cap it all off, she had some mini plastic baskets, I created little collage kits out of them, a selection of glue paint scraps of paper and cloth, glitter, feathers and such other little things. 

“See you can sit a patient down with this and some paper and just let them play with things.”

She seemed very happy with it all.

I came in the next morning.  I can only assume she stayed the entire night disorganizing.  Everything was back where it was before I had done anything.  Down to the last broken gi joe laying like some battlefield casualty on one cluttered table.  It was one of those reality stuttering events as I stood in the door way wondering if the past couple of days had actually happened or if I just dreamed of organizing closets.  I really didn’t want to think that I was wasting good dreaming time with closet organizing. 

The computer room is next to activities room.  There are about a dozen computers with internet access in the small room.

The computers are wildly popular among the mad.  From the moment the room opens every computer is occupied.  There is a time limit on how long you can use the computer and due to demand a waiting list.  I never bother to put my name on the list.  It seemed unfair to take computer time from someone who really needed it.  These people so removed from the outside world, so removed from normal human contact the computer gives them a chance to connect to people without them shrinking away.  On line you don’t know you’re talking to a mad person.

Down the hall from the computer room is the gym.  It has so far been opened only once.  A couple of yogi teachers dropped by to teach a class.  I must say it wasn’t a rousing success. I and two other patients showed up for the class.   The others had some trouble with their balance, a not uncommon side effect of many of the medications mental patients are given.  The poor lost yogi’s finally resorted to resting stone position.    Lay down on the mat flat on your back palms down on the matt and breath, just breath.  Two minutes later loud snoring filled the gym as the other patients fell sound asleep.

 (Jeeze,I wonder if they would come and teach a class at night?)

The yogis didn’t come back the gym stayed locked.

Between the computer room and the gym was a door that held promise for me.  It had a sign on the door, LIBRARY.  Frustratingly the door was never open.

Nancy Drew and the mystery of the locked door.

First I interviewed Charles, the gentleman in charge of the computer room.  As the Locked Door was right next to the computer room, it was a natural place to start.

Charles looks like George Foreman gone to fat, has a high girly voice and the mincing manner of a lullaby league munchkin.    I seem to annoy the guy as he always shoots me the hairy eyeball whenever I pass him in the hall.  Like I once kicked his puppy or something.

“I was wondering why the library is never open.” I ask him.

“Library? I didn’t know we had a library?”

I went to Rose and asked her the same question.

And got exactly the same answer.

“Library? I didn’t know we had a library.”

(A door that only I can see.  How enticing) 

It took me the better part of the morning to find someone who knew the hospital had a library.  Anna a little Asian American nurse who runs the little store and other occupational therapies for the patients.

“Why is the library never open?” I ask her.

“Well we don’t have any volunteers to run it.” She tells me.

It was nice to have one problem in my life so easily solved

I got the key from her and entered the library.  A little 12 by 15 foot closet with shelves linning two walls, two small couches and a desk and chair.

For two days I unpacked boxes of paperbacks and got everything set up.  Westerns, mysteries, romance novels, horror, (there were quite a number of Ann Rice books) I set them all in order, dusted down the furniture then pulled out the chair and sat down at the desk.  The Librarian is in.