certainly not fixing on sharing it all here,
but in keeping with the spirit of
‘must actually do this’
voila

fiction!

- -

{partial transcript of voluntary intake statement}
K - County Psychiatric Institute
11/13/07
Patient : [perhaps inevitably the name is blacked out]
Complained that he’d met god and was no longer to be
trusted mingling with ordinary people.

. . . people called him crazy, and he was, almost without regard for how you might choose to define crazy, he’d find a way to fit it . . .

he had a thing for elevation; where most people would content themselves with standing up, he was of the habit to climb things when wrapped in the fervor of a particularly succulent diatribe, it was a rare scene outside of his domicile, but when comfortably ensconced in the home atmosphere . . . well let us just say that there were a number of nights when we egged him on, although the end result was never quite the same

you see he had this problem with being right, it was alternately beautiful and horrifying; and on so many levels, i mean he could display an absolute lack of tact or put you in mind of divinity – and by divinity i don’t mean the Judeo-Christian ideal which has turned so many a mind away from the concept of divinity – there were moments when Jonah was tuned into . . . let’s say a different understanding,

and that fucker could humble you; didn’t matter how many books you’d read, what degrees and accolades you’d accumulated, he’d root right on into the core of a thing somehow . . .

mind you, most of the time it was great,
i considered myself an intellectual when i knew him
and this guy had some outlandish convictions that he would defend, not only vociferously, but articulately, and that – coupled, of course, with his willingness to lay anything on the table for debate – was a pure delight for my mind at that time, i mean how many people do you honestly run into who are willing to debate the very existence of existence . . .

and not just once, but over and over again, turning
perhaps inevitably
to the very concept of the question itself,
our ability – or lack thereof- to formulate it . . .

{two minutes of silence;
the patient; twitches, scratches and furrows his brow}

we don’t even know what we’re talking about, that’s why most of us keep talking

{picks at his nose, pinching and tugging}

hell, i don’t even know what i’m talking about . . .

except that’s not exactly true,
i know what i should be talking about,
and don’t know why i’m not talking about it,
or rather him . . .

{the patient leans back in his chair
he looks relaxed for the first time}

you know, back when i first met him, Jonah used to say that he always wanted to get himself admitted to a mental institution, just to see if they’d let him go

{a pause, a moment of consternation,
the feeling of relaxation passes
into a moment of panic}

but this is strictly voluntary of course,
i mean i came here of my own free will,
because i’m frightened
and i need to talk this thing out

after that i get to go back to my life . . .
right?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 3:47 am and is filed under indiscriminate, fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.