Sugar Magnolia And My Song To You in Elephant Architecture

I have been training as Supervisor of a Ward at the Mental Hospital. It feels good. I like what I do there. It’s posh in the sense that I ride my bike or walk there. I can see myself buying a home a few blocks away and spending my time reading and writing in my spare time. I walk in, unlock 15 doors along the way to sign-in and then to my Ward. I do light paperwork (compared to being an English major at a Liberal Arts college) and greet the guys who pace the halls at night. D_ is an exceptional patient. He is never very lucid on his own. He goes on and on muttering, singing, speaking inaudibly language to himself and sometimes praying. One morning, when I first began working there, before one of his fits of insanity he began singing All My Life by K-Ci & JoJo. That was an exceptional moment for me because I was no longer in a Mental Hospital at that moment but I was transported back to the days on my winning baseball team in highschool and our game winning pitcher, Chris, who was throwing 90 mph at age 14 was playing that song after practice. And D_ was no longer just a patient. He was one of my old friends on my baseball team that day. Later, D_ would enter the edge of sanity and be thrown into the clasps of one of his fits again. We held him down as the Nurses readied their syringes and All My Life is playing like a music video in my mind. The Nurses say his mother sexually molested him growing up, and she always tries to contact him, sometimes posing as his aunt, and his bouts of fear, rage and insanity return to him. D_ is one of those rare cases where I actually feel good about him being there. So many other patients complain and want to leave and, in many cases, I wish they had a safe place in the world to return to.

It shocks me how wild D_ can seem and yet when I speak to him or ask him questions how intuitively he reacts, and sanely responds to my questions. He got into a little trouble last night and wandered into another patient’s room. The other Orderly began screeching at him and embarrassedly he tuck-tailed and came on back to his side of the Ward again; gave me a look that I’ve seen before from my friends in college when they did something thoughtless, entered through the wrong door and an alarm went off. It’s the moments like those that will forever baffle me. The look we exchanged was so full of tacit knowledge; regardless of whether or not his rational mind is always present, he knows, and I know that I’ve got his back. Just like my old droogs back in college, or my high school ball teams.

Later that night he read the menu off the wall to me. Again, the bazaar experience begins again. He read with such clarity and with precision even better than literary skills I have witnessed among some of the Orderlies I work with. Their speech and use of the English language is appalling many of the times, but that is another story for another time.

As far as my other job goes, it seems as though I have been accepted into The Tribe. It sometimes reminds me of The Ewoks from Star Wars and I am Luke Skywalker or Han Solo after they are captured. The Vietnamese chick confuses me. She has either adopted me as her father or lover and I’m never sure which one. I look after them. Sometimes they just call me in because they want to see me even if we aren’t that busy, they will make me stay. It’s nice being wanted or loved. The problem kid is back. He has quit (or been fired) from his other job and asking for his old hours back with us which was not part of the deal I made to come back there myself. Folks who never have had stability or peace of mind will never understand what they are seeing when they experience someone who has it. They automatically think that it’s wealth that they are seeing, and it is in a way. They generally can’t accept that someone can have that peace of mind and they will do everything they can to take that peace away from you if you allow them. This where setting boundaries and being able to walk away comes in useful. I am now walking away from that job for the time being. Peace has a far greater price tag than fighting a welp, punk-kid for a few scraps of meat on a bone.

I have recently been in touch with one of my best friends from college. His dad is from Greece and we used to play the Grateful Dead when we all worked together in their workshop. They taught me Greek, and their dad liked Truckin’ by The Grateful Dead. My friend, K_, would laugh with pleasure that his father enjoyed The Dead and would do his “money makin’ dance and jig” to them. Back then, I could understand them when they spoke Greek to me and I could speak it on an intermediate level back to them. My friend, K_, who is more like a brother to me than my own, has Eloped and he has not told his family yet. Anyone who understands how Greeks are with family will know much of an honour and sign of trust it is that he told me before he told his family.

I ora i Kali, or “The Times are Good”.

Last updated March 24, 2024