[“The Quiet City where screams are felt as waves” – Michael Palmer] I can’t hear them screaming anymore. But I feel them, pounding on the shore of my mind, restless as the tide. … [Read more...]
“The Hollow Mind” / Memorable Fancies #1701
11 December, 2016 by Leave a Comment
[The mind is a hollow space constantly invaded by gods and voices.” – Roberto Calasso] For years I’ve heard the gods whispering to each other, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. But then one day I overheard them clearly – talking about me. When they discovered I was listening, they immediately shut up, glanced at each other, nodded. The memory of their voices, those fatal words, fills my hollow mind. [Click ‘Random Post’ above – be astonished] … [Read more...]
“The Mind’s Truth” / Memorable Fancies #1641
8 October, 2016 by Leave a Comment
[“...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...]
“That Killer Smile” / Memorable Fancies #11
6 July, 2016 by Leave a Comment
“I’m not a serial killer,” he said. “I never meant to be one, at least; that’s not my self-image. A serial killer never stops till he’s caught, isn’t that what they say? Not me. I’ll stop. I’m just looking for Mr. Right.” He looked me up and down, smiling. [Click ‘Random Post’ above – be astonished] … [Read more...]
“Embodied Minds” / Memorable Fancies #1461
7 February, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Here are two people in the same body; always fighting, stumbling over which way to go, or one awake while the other sleeps, creeping quietly across the room not to awaken its bodymate. And in another country there is one person with two bodies, bored with the two lunches it has to eat every day. <END> Buy it at amazon.com/author/terencekuch: See/Saw. In this novel from Ink Smith Publishing, you can sell your memories for cash. And regret it. … [Read more...]
“The Confession” / Memorable Fancies #1450
26 January, 2016 by Leave a Comment
[“He would say, for example: At times I feel that another person and I are the same and at times I don’t.” – Wittgenstein] Jorgensen imagined me one day, pretended that there was a vicious man, a second self, who compelled him to do all those – violent things. So when Jorgensen went on trial he called me as a witness, implored me to confess that I had forced him to violence. And to his surprise I did appear and I did confess, but my revenge on Jorgensen for inventing me was this: I confessed … [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...]
“The View from Nowhere” / Memorable Fancies #555
21 December, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[“Strange error about our lives because we try to experience them from the outside.” – Albert Camus] There is no objective point of view, no place from outside ourselves to see ourselves, or to see others. A private point of view is the maniac’s truth that he is the God of his own small space, and that his eyes see only the contents of his own mind. <END> If you liked this post, please tell your friends and share a comment here or in StumbleUpon, … [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...]
“Folder-Therapy” / Memorable Fancies #460
15 September, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Continuing the journal of Diane McMurphy, a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum”] One of the patients sneaked a look inside a manila folder at the nurses’ station: the classic urban legend of the madhouse. I think it’s a plot; Doctor leaves papers around for us to “accidentally” find, read, be terrified or reassured. It’s some secret therapy, papers saying things he made up, lies about us, things he wants us to know and deny, fantasies for us to try on for size. It’s a … [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...]
“There is Always a Word” / A Memorable Fancy #253
15 February, 2013 by Leave a Comment
“They think they’re so damn smart with all their labels, those shrinks and their words, you know how they like to label people. They always have a word for it, don’t they?, whatever you do. Then they think they know you. There’s always a two-dollar word like ‘schizoaffective disorder’ for instance. Or ‘sociopathy,’ as if one of those cold words they got out of some textbook could capture the hot complexity of what I do. Like killing, for instance.” … [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...]
“Thursday” / A Memorable Fancy #158
11 November, 2012 by Leave a Comment
There is an alien inside me. It’s been there many years but has not, as yet, harmed me. I feel it moving after I’ve eaten. In bed, I look down and see my belly rising and falling regularly – my alien is asleep. There is some involuntary out-gassing – my alien must not have enjoyed my dinner. I found a few foods it can tolerate without upset, and I eat only those. Even though I detest these foods, my alien seems to like them. I have begun seeing a psychiatrist. She tells me that my alien is in … [Read more...]
“Two Psychologists” / A Memorable Fancy #030
14 October, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Two clinical psychologist friends discuss the most problematic patient of each, without giving any names; but slowly they come to understand that it is the same person. Is this patient really troubled, or is he up to something? Or... <END> … [Read more...]
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