[“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...]
“The Silence” / Memorable Fancies #1191
5 May, 2015 by Leave a Comment
[“It will be as it is in this life, the same room, ...” – Ezra Pound] I am forced to remember this image forever: white walls, hard instruments, dials and buttons, cold therapies, collusions of silence. <END> Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: Everything Wants to Happen, the first thousand Memorable Fancies from this blog, revised and updated. … [Read more...]
“My Fellow-Patients: Andy” / Memorable Fancies #530
25 November, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Andy The New Guy wanders up to our lunch table, looks around for someone to talk to. I turn away but not in time. Andy has a problem – less annoying than what most of us do most of the time, I’ll admit, but still a nuisance. Every day, he thinks this is his first day in the asylum, asks where things are, introduces himself, etc. Just now he’s introducing himself to me for the maybe … [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 – 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 – XIX: “’Who’s Real?’” / A Memorable Fancy #396
11 July, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] I pride myself on being Doctor’s special project. “A tough case,” I once overheard him saying. On Mondays I have him for individual counseling. Today is Monday. “How is Sugar Odette these days?” he asks. “Fine, Doctor. She can’t wait to hear what I’ll have to say about today’s session.” “And what will you tell her?” “I don’t know, Doctor; we haven’t had the … [Read more...]
“Asylum – XVII: Bedtime at the Asylum” / A Memorable Fancy #389
4 July, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] “What are your dreams, Diane?” Sugar Odette asks me. “On most nights, I dream that monsters are chasing me.” “No, I mean your hopes for the future. When they let you out of here.” “I hope they don’t catch me.” “Who?” “The monsters.” # Sugar gives me a hug and a kiss because she’s annoyed that I’m not taking her question seriously. Then she turns over and … [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 – XII: Movie Time Again” / A Memorable Fancy #372
13 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Another dayroom movie here in the asylum because, aside from terrifying visits with our mind-probers, that’s about all there is to do. This one is …: “Escape of the Maniacs – A group of obnoxious inmates of a lunatic asylum believe they are escaping from the institution and having various gruesome adventures, while in ‘reality’ only having a bad day in group. This documentary, … [Read more...]
“Asylum – XI: A Tourist Guide to My Palace” / A Memorable Fancy #368
10 June, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] Founded many years ago as “Shepherd Hospital for the Pitifully Deranged,” the name was changed in 2001 because it was no longer in accord with twenty-first century principles of ethical jargon. So now it’s “Shepherd Hospital Center for the Pitifully Deranged,” even though it doesn’t seem to be the center of anything in particular. Most of the townies, with understandable confusion, call … [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 – 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...]
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