[“...the fury of the mind to possess a body that participates in its mode of existence.” – Jean Daniélou] The mind gathers sense-impressions, but these are all second hand, what the ears and eyes and nose pass on after much scrubbing of detail. The mind is not content with this estrangement from the real. After many years of frustration, the mind develops its own ideas of the outer world. But now it hears the outer world muttering about treatment, and therapy, and how dare the mind have … [Read more...]
The Crashbrain / Memorable Fancies #1496
14 March, 2016 by Leave a Comment
[“A narrative construction of one’s identity would have a profoundly illusory and even neurotic character to it.” – Vincent Descombes] So what if I programmed it, made it all up, all my unlikely adventures, all my dramatic defeats? It’s my mind and I’ll crash it if I want to! <END> Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: Pictures of the Invisible, a fiction sampler. … [Read more...]
“The Darkness” / Memorable Fancies #1392
29 November, 2015 by Leave a Comment
[“Show me you are not the light I called to / but the blackness behind it.” – Louise Glück] Was that first rush of madness hers, or mine? Yours, she says; now I’m just like you. But how could I love you if I had not answered your call, that first time, your invitation to share the calling darkness of your mind? <END> Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: For Anacreon, 30 poems of love and life from the ancient Greek poet (originally published as a chapbook by Silkworms Ink). … [Read more...]
“My Me’s” / Memorable Fancies #1200
14 May, 2015 by Leave a Comment
[“He who hides his madman dies voiceless.” – Henri Michaux] There are two people hiding inside me: the madman and the computer. My analyst told me that the other day. “We’re looking for a third being inside you,” he said, “someone more human.” “No!” I shouted, in a craze of calculation. <END> Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: Try Try Again – A novel of deadly political intrigue. … [Read more...]
“Asylum – XXII: Dinner at Bad Shepherd” / Memorable Fancies #467
22 September, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] The pleasant little bell rings over the PA system and we all salivate. Those of us trusted to move our own legs trudge to the dining hall, which adjoins the day room and provides dining so elegant that those here who’ve been in the Army weep with reminiscence and tell the others long stories about liver-day, SOS, and Tuesday’s coffee (that’s the day cook tops up the grounds). We … [Read more...]
“Asylum – XVI: Introducing Sugar Odette” / A Memorable Fancy #386
1 July, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Sugar Odette is my particular friend. The hospital, not being able to enforce the absolute celibacy they’d like to see (which would however drive us totally nuts, thus justifying the hospital’s existence) acknowledges such relationships in a way that doesn’t commit them to admitting to the Board that any fornication is actually being accomplished. We have this ceremony in the day room, … [Read more...]
“Asylum – XIV: Family Visits” / A Memorable Fancy #378
20 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Some of us patients have families. When they come to visit on visiting day, the dayroom is where they see us: a pleasant, sunny place where the keepers can keep an eye on the crazies, keep us controlled by playing the television machine loud enough to cover up any embarrassing conversations among the patients or with their families. So we mouth clichés at each other, at least they … [Read more...]
“Asylum – X: Grounds for Confinement” / A Memorable Fancy #364
6 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] I stare out the dayroom window, the land sloping downward at first gradually, then more steeply toward the city below. Lawns. Beds of flowering moribunda dented here and there with anti-personnel mines, a few divots from past explosions. In the distance, vague outlines of fences, barbed wire, guard towers, searchlights now dimmed for day. But I think these may be only computer-generated … [Read more...]
“Asylum – IV: Words in Air” / A Memorable Fancy #336
9 May, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Once in an unpredictable while Doctor Wolfe makes his rounds, hmmm-ing and clucking, thumbing charts at the keepers’ station. There are two ways we act when Doctor visits Ward H. The first tactic is to be normal, calm, responsible, friendly, collegial. Doctor watches for these signs, writes in his notebook when he sees them. Our other tactic is to act crazy. There are conflicting rumors as … [Read more...]
“Crazy in Love” / A Memorable Fancy #198
25 December, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Crazy in love; that’s what I told myself it was, But words are the lies we use when there’s nothing else to say. … [Read more...]
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