[“...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 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...]
“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...]
“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...]
“Asylum – I: ‘If there’s no song …'” / A Memorable Fancy #276
10 March, 2013 by Leave a Comment
[Diane McMurphy is a patient in Bad Shepherd mental hospital, “The Asylum.”] On Sunday mornings we have Group, each one led by an intern on rotation from another psych ward. Most of these interns are very earnest and boring and I can get away with saying only stupid things, not giving away anything personal. But about once a month we get “Jon,” – that’s what he likes to be called, not “Dr. McConnell.” I like Jon, even though he sees right through me and out the other side. If anyone were … [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...]
Memorable Fancies 