[“Should this individual say “I am nothing but a human puppet,” he would forthwith be marched to the nearest psychiatric hospital.” – Thomas Ligotti] – where he would be treated like – a puppet! [Book ad: The year’s hottest new TV series is a reenactment of a famous murder trial ... but was there more involved than murder? A plot to take over the U.S. government? Read Try Try Again.] … [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 – XX: Pieces” / A Memorable Fancy #400
15 July, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Doctor takes our minds apart piece by piece, disassembles them, lays them out like mice ripped apart by a cat. Sometimes we talk about it, a kind of conversational terrorism. Here’s a piece of me: “Do you know why you’re here?” he asks. “I’m crazy.” “Well, saying that is just avoidance, you know, Diane. ‘Crazy’ is just a word. It’s not acknowledging what you … [Read more...]
“Asylum – IX: New Names for Old” / A Memorable Fancy #361
3 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Thanks to the Pledge Week thon, the chairs in the Ward H dayroom have been rebadged in honor of various donors, who can now tell their friends that they’ve endowed a Chair of Punitive Psychiatry. At the moment, I’m sitting in a chair commemorating a modest gift given in honor of one of our crazies from olden days, insanitus emeritus, via the hospital’s Gatehouse Society. I have … [Read more...]
“Asylum – VIII: Naming Rights at the Asylum” / A Memorable Fancy #357
30 May, 2013 by 1 Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Doctor Wolfe has found yet another way to profit from our predicament: naming rights. I hear he was turned down by the Board on a proposal to rename the entire hospital in exchange for a fifty-million-dollar gift from the Crazy Glue Company, but he got the Board’s approval to rename individual wards, “and so on.” The scope of “and so on” was, perhaps unfortunately, left to him. … [Read more...]
“Asylum – VII: Dinner at Bad Shepherd” / A Memorable Fancy #354
27 May, 2013 by 2 Comments
[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 – VI: Welcome to Greenwall Gardens” / A Memorable Fancy #350
23 May, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] The psych interns read our charts every day. They don’t even laugh when they read them, although sometimes I catch them moving their lips. It’s Dr. Wolfe who rules here, who decides our fate every day. He has four major options for us: pill lineup, confined to dayroom, confined to bedroom, or Greenwall Gardens. That last is what we call the isolation room, the one with a little window in … [Read more...]
“Asylum – V: Realize” / A Memorable Fancy #343
16 May, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Today I had another one of those precious one-on-ones with Dr. Wolfe. Doctor draws a deep breath and straightens up in his chair. He doesn’t know what that means, but I do: his next sentence will include the word “realize.” A shrink’s favorite word. “Realize” has something to with “real people,” but not with “realty,” the house I lost when I was sent here to the asylum. “Real” is whatever … [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...]
“Asylum – III: Time for Meds” / A Memorable Fancy #330
3 May, 2013 by 5 Comments
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Tiny bustling, faint noise loud as gongs: time for meds here in the asylum’s infamous (to us) Ward H. The keepers want us to come of our own accord, but they will herd the stragglers sure enough with words we know but only they own. When the keepers are gone we whisper these magic words to each other; we tinkle them like amulets. We line up silently now, hands in front, eyes downcast. The … [Read more...]
“Redevelopment” / A Memorable Fancy #301
4 April, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Your mind has become a slum, filled with collapsing principles and dark desires. Your few decent thoughts have long since been mugged by memories of what you did, and what you wanted very much to do but lacked courage for. City government has again listed the year’s most morally needy, and you topped the list. They have appropriated funds to clean out your mind, redevelop it so that decent thoughts could live there without needing to triple-lock the doors of the mind. Specialist firms have … [Read more...]
“The Tell” / A Memorable Fancy #210
18 January, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Instead of the hundreds of signs and symptoms listed in DSM-V and other handbooks of psychiatry, there could be just a single “tell” that, by itself, would convince the careful observer that you were completely and incurably nuts. Perhaps the psychiatrists have identified that tell, and are keeping it their dark secret. I’ve been looking over my shoulder, watching out to see if any of them are spying, trying to catch them in the act of observing me, careful that I do not show them my tell, … [Read more...]
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