Did Someone Drop You on Your Head as a Child!?

Yes.



Yes, as a matter of fact someone did drop me on my head as a child.



“There’s something I’ve always remembered and I don’t know what it is. It’s black and there’s something very cold in my throat?,” ” I asked in my early twenties.



“I didn’t know you remembered that,” my mother said. (link 2 maren Name) “ you almost died.”



“I don’t really remember - I just remember something very cold in my throat and black-”





Nothing but black. And warmth. Not the type of warmth that is about or at all concerned with temperature . Nor was it the warmth of good manners. No the not at all frightening while all encompassing black was accompanied by a very particular warmth and quiet.



Quiet, not all quiets are the same. There is the so quiet you could hear pin drop-



-because you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.



And too the quiet of absence, the absence of any man made mechanized sound. The near absolute quiet of being under water. The roaring quiet of tension so thick it is as if two conch shells were placed over ones ears. Absolute waveless stillness- it was that kind of quiet in the black warmth but a lump of cold in my throat?



I always wondered but hadn’t bothered asking until my early twenties. For just like my name the question might well be a secret Martha had been keeping and had recently been purging.



“It was summer very hot, unusually hot for Minnesota” my mother said over the phone “we had just moved, no air conditioning - so I gave you an ice cube to suck on. You choked, turned blue -the phone hadn‘t been on yet- we had just moved…”.



‘That explains the lump of cold,’ I thought finally being able to place this odd recurrent sense memory.



“I was three months pregnant- couldn’t call an ambulance, the neighbors were an acre away so I couldn’t run for help.“



I eventually did the math, both sets of tabulations. I was twenty months old and M(om/artha) was three or four months pregnant with my younger sister .



“So I picked you up by the ankles and shook you up and down hard until the ice cube came out or you would have died.”



That last part was more information, more information than even she knew was telling me and much, much more than I need to know.



For she had been so proud and self congratulatory “I did the can- can with you till I was eight months pregnant,” Martha had said. The conversation had been about eth benefits of exercise and the recent medical research announced and being disseminated: better for baby and moms to stay active during pregnancy. Martha had sat in the driver’s seat of the Volvo and patted herself on the back. For she had done just that, stayed active, did the can-can into her eigth month, until she could do it no longer when she was pregnant with me. Even though that went against her doctor’s advice. it wa sthe opposite of what she and most women were told. She hadn’t rested and taken it easy. On the other hand 20months later while I turned blue choking the acre was too far, too much exertion, too much of a risk. But Martha had shared these two truths so far out of range of each other, six years or more that I know she never really knew what she’d said, revealed.



Was the child in her already more valuable than I? Yes. Did she follow the rules and medical advice when it cam to that child? Yes, for running to the next door neighbor just at or after her first trimester was far too great a risk. Whereas with me doing the can-can into her third trimester , until she just couldn’t manage it anymore had made perfect sense.



I was the middle child though most records will tell you I was the eldest but there was another who came before me. Him she drowned in alcohol, by her own account. Me she drowned in milk and tried to shake loose. By the third pregnancy I guess she’d decided to give motherhood a try.





“You almost died,” she said of that re-current memory of death and ice and peace “You cried…stuttered for a couple of weeks- because you’d been scared.”



Except I wasn’t scared. I remember how I felt in the that black warm blanket of quiet.



I’m sure I did cry but I suspect it would have been being back that frightened me. Back to quiets that weren’t quiet at all, frightening darkness-es and lights, scalding warmths and cold- but not in my throat.



The contrast would have been what made me cry. The contrast.



SO yes someone did drop on my head as a child.



After which I had evident speech difficulties(stuttering) and balance problems for several months but children are in a state of neuroplasticty. There was a hold over was in the visual center, the same center which would again be bruised but this time by the force of a baby grand landing on my head, twice. A visual problem involving tracking and (essentially) aperture/depth of field adjustment. Worse because it wasn’t the first time?



I do the eye-brain exercises I did as a child again? Yep, and hope that maybe, maybe some day I’ll get to be like all the other kids.

The 8 Ball

I have improved substantially. I didn’t realize how substantially the amnesia/file retrieval difficulties had improved until recently. AND am glad I ignored medical advice and concentrated upon improving them.



Recently it came into sharp/er focus just how vulnerable living in a state memory-less-ness and without the capacity to form or remember a narrative can and could make a person.



About a decade a go, a few months after my third major head injury a friend asked “Have you seen Memento?” and recommended I rent it because “You’ll relate to it”. I did.



The brain injury was difficult on anyone who knew me before, including the dog, because who I was - I wasn’t anymore.



I’d had a stenographic video-like memory, could follow and cross reference complex material/s and then- poof- all that was gone. I’d look away from your/a face during a conversation and with that turn of my head- the memory of your face, your name- who I was talking to - who I was sitting next to in relationship to the topic- all that information would be gone- immediately and instantaneously. No idea who I was sitting next to, had just been speaking with and often I was still speaking I just had no idea to whom. That turn of the head and whoever, or whatever, was there just disappear/ed.



‘Pop quiz - who’s sitting next to you right now?’



If I wasn’t looking straight at them- I had no idea. Heck it didn‘t take long for me to forget whether or not there was someone there. Nope I’d turn my head and whoever- whatever disappeared. Visually- that’s still true but improvement of short term memory and being able to construct a narrative has helped.



“Segmented consciousness,” a girl from class had called it.



”Segmented consciousness” damn sight better terminology than what I was hearing from the SC(UM) medical profession within the Confederacy of Dunces. “You really had your bell rung?” was the reply I’d get whenever I asked: what happened to me?



What can be done? “Done- nothing you’ll be better in six more weeks” “six more weeks” then “six months” and then (and without warning) “you may be like this for the rest of your life”.



Ten years, a lot of work and an unwavering belief in neuro-plasticity - and I do remember. I can. Some.

The amnesia’s way better, I figure I just have to keep rebuilding a section at a time. The book of faces I had figured it would help: old names from old files arranged with and amid old as well as age/time adjusted photographs and then recently there was/were the following exchange/s.



“The old gang,” said one of those face-n-tags recently from within c/hat.



“…the old gang…“



The old gang?



“We didn’t have a gang” I informed the digital estimation? The cat in the ©hat or is it c/hat? An old friend’s beau. An old defensive line-man? Or was it offense?



Odd…



I really have and did work on getting my memory back. Why? The more neurons I have reconnecting and able to fire- the better? That’s been the hope; plus its weird when people talk about their lives, tell stories and you literally got noth-in.



Odd too, recently there was a chat or c/hat or a ©hat with some1 wherein we did have a gang.



“Best Secret Santa,” my old eight grade locker-mate/buddy declare(s/d).



No, that is incorrect- I instantly and sadly knew.



“Eight grade?.. I wasn’t your Secret Santa.”



I remember who I was 8th grade Secret Santa to - and it wasn‘t her. See there was a story- a whole thing which could be summarized in the following Aesop-ian caution:



Don’t judge a Christmas stocking (or a Secret Santa) by the top layer as you never know what might be just a bit farther down (at the end of the week).



Believe? Hope. Trust- I’m not your friend so I can screw you over. By the last Secret Santa day of 83/84 I was redeemed-



?



Me, I hadn’t seen the point in daily bits of knick-knack and believed it would be a greater gift - a better gift that could really be used, enjoyed and perhaps remembered?



Though she may have preferred something store bought everyday. I didn’t take into account that she might, understandably, have been disappointed most of the week. “Best Secret Santa,” (!)allegedly my old 8th grade locker-mate/buddy inaccurately beamed across the digital divide as and in c/hat.



No I wasn’t - not in that year of baked goods, clove pierced citrus and Jean…



Do you really remember me?



Do I really remember you?



(Yes)



Do I know you or is this just another layer upon another layer of masked balls danced upon a web while tracked inside a net?



(The 8 ball says yes and no on that one)





What if I hadn’t worked and worked and worked to reroute the old wiring- connect the disconnected and reclaimed the files that were temporarily lost? Out of bounds? Unfound? Not allowed? Access restricted? TBI amnesia -ed? (Because once upon a time - I had one the best memories around.)



If I hadn’t worked to get that back would I have simply believed and accepted the input a computer screen was presenting me? Would the following have become my truth because I’d been fed the data:



“I was my locker-mate/buddy’s Secret Santa in the 8th grade”



Would I have just gone with that?



Had I not worked on the amnesia and re/built those routes and paths- if those files weren’t now super easy to get to and totally accessible -I could have even been sold on that: so, so easily. And by who? Or what.



Anyone.



My old locker-buddy-mate? Who back in the day did actually shoot straight with me. The girl who‘d clue me in when someone wasn‘t being straight with me - someone I had love/d.



I brought bourbon balls into Middle school!?



Yes! That’s entirely plausible and probably entirely true - except that’s not what happened, not entirely.



To me they would have been a low cost item/baked good already around for the holidays wherein I could bring something, give something that day that didn‘t cost hardly anything and thereby give something really big on the last Secret Santa day. That was not really the best kind of Secret Santa perhaps but that‘s the kind of Secret Santa I was…



... And I wasn‘t the c.hat friend‘s secret Santa that year.





Merry/Happy Kwan-ukah-ristmas-solsti-tick-tock--tick-tock-how-many-sh(o/i)pping-days-are-left-Every(1/one)!



E/specially 2 u of the 8th grade crewcru.





(I really do prefer)



-Camille



PS: I wasn’t entirely accurate with you recently. I was actually a communications ma(j/g)or which at a small school is/(can be) like creative writing. And like journalism. And there was plenty of both. I also got credit within my major for poetry writing, screenplay writing, playwriting, technical writing, in-depth reporting, editorial writing…( worked hard to get some semblance of all that back too.)






I was a Writing Major?






Except that Major didn’t and doesn’t exist at my college.






“Creative Writing Major” - I spent a good deal of time (the major-ity?) writing, much of it creatively. Even technical writing is creative- (loved that class) but they only seem to hire engineers for writing manuals. Which of course is why VCRs were flashing “12:00” all over the nation and the world for nearly two decades.










Anyway hope that clears up any inadvertent confusion from our c/hat per my course- of study.






I like/d your Mom- glad to hear she’s living a love story, and hope she is.

Q: "So what have you been up to? /How r u doing?"

TBI: Life without the (brain’s) ability to trail make






Picture a hallway. There are five doors; 4 are brown. 1 is white and leads only to utility closet, is color coded white and doesn‘t enter into the following equation.



So a hallway, four doors, all brown, each a slightly different size, and each of the four brown doors with a slightly different finish to the wood.



How long would it take you to differentiate between these four doors? To learn and know automatically what was behind each of these four doors?



Behind one door is a bedroom, behind one door is a bathroom. The other two doors are closets, one closet door is narrow and corresponds to the shape of the bathroom, behind this door are linens and toiletries. The other closet door, of the four doors in this hallway, contains coats- the shape of this door corresponds to the shape of the bedroom door



How long would take you to memorize behind which door was what? Or to imprint the kinetic memory?



A day? A month? Imagine if it took months- months just to know what is behind which door in the building in which you live. Months to not keep making that same mistake over and over and over again as simply to which closet you can find a towel and which closet you go to for a coat.



How long would you be gong to the bedroom and be pulling the door to the coat closet?



But that’s this apartment, 2009-2011.



In my first apartment after the crash (2001) I spent four years (2002-2005) looking for the silverware drawer and trying to find which cabinet contained the water glasses.



Putting away a load (or two!?) of laundry was an all day event

and sadly

is still taxing.



Not like it was, that’s what I ever say: I’m much better, I’ve improved more than you can imagine. The thing is people don’t have much imagination for what a TBI, or anything really, is on a 24-7, 12 months a year or 356 days anything is or could be.

Flawed designs

An FB "friend" - too loose a term- old acquitance made what may have simply been snarky comment per another blog and pointed out that I'd mixed up my Hoovers (Shannon Armstrong wherever you are I did not confuse that one). Despite messing uo my Hoovers- I still like that and my purple show entry.

And Yes- I may suck as a writer but I had to work very hard to get to where I could baseline write again so

....


there.

FB " Herbert Hoover was the President before FDR; J Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI who kept dossiers on everyone and supposedly liked to wear dresses.











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My reply:
 
"Damn- now that is the sort of thing I used to know. ( I had profound amnesia after the TBI so in addition to relelarning my life - ther ehave been little details like that- the sort of mistakes I never made before because I could count on my brain to remember and retrieve information and do all sorts of things you do every day and have no idea the sheer and (often embarrassing) and frustrating hell that is to be: the Scarecrow"
 
Hoover: The President who presided over the beginning of the great depression- who GWB was regularly compared to and also was a character o Spring Break '88 in Fort M., FL.
 
I could rewrite the below- though the names of the players may change the game is still the same- and I don't much like the game.
 
So
 
"about an hour ago FB acquitance "think my point was that I can't list how to post an ad in two or three steps as with some of the things you've asked me about Facebook. It's a little more involved and I'd have to do it myself.




By the way I read some of your blog posts and you write well."

..

I shudder to think which ones.

The web- just a place throw bottles stuffed with verse into the surf -hoping that they might find a missed shore's edge.

No you Don't Know

Thought of u 2day. “It took four years 4 me 2 knw whch drawr was the silverware drawer, whch cupbrd the glasses were in”


“that happens 2 me”



Excuse me? “My daughter or husband will put something somewhere and I wont know where something is”.



“No we are not talking about the same thing”



“So you walk into your Kitchen and everyday have no idea where you store silverware- no idea which closet the coats are in- you walk into where you live and have no idea where anything is!”

Anyway – thought of you because that’s why you were the last of the group of us that I saw or wanted to talk to because I knew, I knew it’d be

FB messaged yur Mom. I always thought that she had trouble pronoucing my name but that's not what it was was it.
 
I never had much imagination for such things. It was a joke right- how she pronounced my name. I always thought it was because she had a hard tmie pronoucing it- but even at but even at Al's wedding. It was a joke wasn't it- a long running not at all funny joke.
 
It took me a long to 'get it'. Took me until recently.

Attention Herbert Hoover

Dear Herbert,




Is it okay if I call you Herbert? Well I just did so if it’s not- oh well! Plus you’re dead so…sorry about that but according to current rumor your memory has been stripped and you are now living in an undisclosed location BUT just in case you are still in the loop I thought I’d give you an update.



Remember those dossiers you kept on oh so many if not all of us- you know the ones those beatnik-hippie-flower-power-types gave you so much crap about even after you were dead?



Well sir you’ll be gratified to know their children and their children’s children have completely embraced the concept.



Shocking I know- so I hope you’re sitting down and wearing a dainty frock for this.



Oh and if the dress thing was just a vicious rumor then I take back my last comment but the truth is sir: if you liked wearing dresses then I hope you got to be put in a woman’s body for your next round trip. After all you did for your country - you earned it.



The dream of citizen dossiers has finally come true. I know you always knew the day would come so maybe its not such a shocker but here‘s the twist: would you believe the citizens themselves are creating them? I myself have created a substantial dossier on myself including pictures, thoughts, beliefs, preferences, contacts, former contacts.



Future contacts?



No that’s the job of the N(A)SA and I wouldn’t want to step on any toes.



Plus would you believe it all happened just like President Jelly Bean said it would? I don’t know if you and President Jelly Bean ever met formally but I feel sure his dossier made for interesting reading. He was an actor after all. Since I think you missed that chapter I’ll fill in the blanks. Redemption went like this: Profits are the ultimate good.



But that wasn’t a very catchy jiggle so someone wrote him great lines about a city on a hill and that we could spend our way to it. Actually he said we’d spend our way out of debt. Sounds like something out of Alice’s not so wonderful trip to a deck of cards doesn’t it?



See by the time President Jelly Bean came around Coke was no longer a delightful beverage which made voodoo economics much more appealing and nearly everyone bought the lines as President delivered them so very well.



Fastforward and here we are today on verge of an IPO for something called the book of faces: the ultimate synergy of citizenry and commerce. Imagine it sir: intelligence gathering, entertainment and profits all wrapped into one. Though you and President Jelly Bean “died” the “dreams” didn’t die with you but are alive and well and living in SIM cards everywhere.



It’s beyond anything you ever dreamed about for if the zoot suits ever do a round up they’ll know just who to look for, where and through whom but really it would and does make more sense simply to route and/or reroute, deny and prevent access or provide it this way and that. Perhaps in such matters it’ll earn the players more points or more chips- as whatever their form they’re largely one and the same.



Gotta pay that guy at Styx after all -or at the very least keep up with Joneses on Quasar 5.



Lastly Herbert I hope you’re enjoying the educational programming President Jelly Bean willed you: Strawberry Shortcake. But I suggest not following their fashion sense- one girl to another. That and should you and President Jelly Bean ever meet towards the hike to Big Rock Candy Mountain: Beware! I hear Ike is still broadcasting and suspect he’s none too pleased at a blind march toward a military-industrial-social-network-entertainment- program.



I know, like anyone would ever watch that show!



Sincerely,



Anonymous

(As if !)

PS: (Ididn't) disabledland.com/dandruff-is-a-germ-disease-newbros-herpicide-1900
PPS:(Idid) http://beholdtherelish.blogspot.com/2011/10/herbies-purple-shoes.html

Herbie's Purple Shoes

PS:


10.10.11: News Update:



Actually its old news: Habeas Corpus died.



Of course there’s no headstone for Habeas and I don’t know if there was a funeral or if the Corpus family would dare attend because of how Habeas died.



Of course the reliability of this report is contingent on the media I receive but according to the media I receive an American was executed without trial by a drone flying not over American soil, but new world order sand.



Which means its-time-to-do-the-time-warp-again.



Remember “The List”? The Enemies List.



The enemies list belonging to your pal Dick? (Nixon not Cheney) Back before SIM cards you could follow Listees around, have the IRS audit them yearly. There were lots of them but I wonder how many priests were on the list?



I know. That information is classified and what with your stripped memory you don‘t remember anyway but wow what you could have done with that list in a post 911 corporately unwritten world.



I knew one of the priests on The List- one of those hippie, questioning authority, power to all the people types- he even included women on that people list. He made it onto “Nixon’s Enemies List”. Back then you could call the listees a name like “Commies” put ‘em on a list and watch ‘em, give ‘em a hard time but you couldn’t call them commie and just have them killed. Although who knows maybe you did and we just never heard about it, or maybe you just sent some of them to Vietnam.



Now however after 911 a new word came into fashion: terrorist. And that has become a very special word giving special powers to special people who deem themselves as very, very special.



Everybody’s using the word, the name: Terrorist. Call someone a terrorist and be you a Middle Eastern dictator or the Leader of the allegedly, and now officially former, Free World: you can just call someone a name, ’that’ name and have them killed. That’s how Habeas died.



His name wasn’t Habeas, I don’t know his name. What I do know, or at least what I’ve been told, he was on a List, next to his name was a word: terrorist. Or so we’re told.



Oh- he was an American. Did I mention that?



Rather an important detail him being an American because having been born here and his family having fought wars and paid taxes meant he was supposed to be entitle to face his accusers. That’s what his lineage was supposed to have bought him and his forward but the contract has been altered.



I know! Like how happy would that have made you and Dick if you could have just killed everyone on “The Enemy List”. No trial- just call them a name, give the order and the trouble maker is gone- and not gone to Canada or Europe gone but maybe not forgotten but executed without trial never to be bothersome again.



Oh did I mention the no trial thing?



Should have as that was a rather important nuance to this latest development in pursuit of the Nixon Cheney Double Dick Dream: President as King.



Two Dick’s one dream.



How could this be worse for civil libbers like me?



America’s first black President pressed the button.



Not that he actually pressed the button, no that job belonged to some guy or gal with an affinity for videogames. That’s the new system: the Presi-king calls you a name, someone playing a videogame remotes a Pentag(on/ram) toy. The human drone pushes a button signaling the metallic drone to kill, neither drone questions the order and one of the drones hopes s/he does get caught in rush hour traffic.



Today the name/the accusation of terrorist and anyone can be killed but tomorrow, under these rules, it could conceivably be having allegedly worn purple shoes.



“We have purple-shoe-wearers in our midst -do not be alarmed when armed drones (robotic or flesh variety) appear and execute the purple shoe wearers on sight.”



I know Herbert, purple shoes are a problem. They go well with navy blue but can be a bit loud with black and you really have to know who you are to wear purple shoes. Personally I don’t think anyone should be killing anyone because the King says your shoes are purple. Ones person‘s purple is another person‘s aubergine. Such are, and always were and will be, the problems that come with having Kings, be they Presi-kings or just plain Dicks.



For instance: your shoes are lapis, or worse eggplant …though the worst is when you’re wearing chartreuse shoes and yet the King is pointing a finger at you proclaiming you’re a purple-shoe-wearer when your shoes are clearly chartreuse.



That happens with Kings, as well as Queens because there’s nothing you can do to prove yourself to not be a purple-shoe-wearer and that you were and are in fact wearing green shoes which can not be confused with lapis therefore this talk of purple shoes is unjust!



You know you’re not wearing purple shoes, heck the King may even know you’re not wearing purple shoes but now, now in America the Presi-king can declare anyone s/he wants: a purple-shoe-wearer and they’re very clearly nearly dead. So today, yet again, some King, or Queen can say “H(is/er) shoes are purple - off with h(er/is) head!“



But of course no one uses axes anymore.



A kill order is signed, a few phone calls and/or emails are made and a drone takes off from somewhere and someone who makes a point of not thinking about they did at the office/base pretends its all just a videogame.



That’s pretty much how Habeas became a corpse Herbie. An American Presi-king created a precedent. There had been a previous precedent Presi-king, see that’s how all this started “military tribunals” which broke the law but Americans didn’t much care because the purple-shoe-wearers/terrorists were foreigners so trying them a) without a trial and b) outside of America was no threat to American non-purple-shoe-wearers.



The Next step was killing an American citizen without trial…abroad. See that was very important because there’s an acceptance curve occurring.



Here‘s what happens next- I‘d say they‘ll wait a good decade or two before pulling the next maneuver to absolute power:



Drone kills of Americans (purple-shoe-wearers/terrorists) -not off American soil- but on.



Herbie, I realize they’ll have been called purple-shoe-wearers but me I’m old fashioned: I want to see the shoes. I don’t want some guy or gal saying “The shoes are purple really they are- trust me the shoes are purple”. No- I want to see the shoes.



M(r./iss) Hoover I know all this talk of shoes probably has you wanting to see if you have an appropriate handbag for the occasion so I‘ll wind up this long PS.



Be sure to cross check your color palette in broad daylight because we girls have all been there. You think the attire matches but in broad daylight you find your black separates not only don’t exactly match but don’t even blend, sometimes they can actually clash. One black isn’t in the same family of black as the other black and then where are you! Wearing black and not quite black but not close enough to grey for the outfit to work.



So check your black facts against sunlight as it’s the only way to be sure.



That and should you ever the visit the grave, the site, the spot -perhaps simply the date or maybe should you just want to give a nod to what we’ve lost: wear your purple shoes.

A Strange Holiday

Easter always struck me as odd and kindergarten I finally dared to think it: giant bunnies delivering eggs and candy which is coincidentally sold at the store?

This of course meant Santa too was blown into retail fairy tale land but even without the cartoon strangeness of these holidays- fact is I'm uncomfortable with each. The gatherings are nice but the story, the story that got told - the one every one goes to church on Sunday and nods their heads to...

I think that when you've known hunger and being cold or desperately needing to bathe and none of these things are available in any other form than the entry below... And really those big churches, all that body heat when it was so cold outside and a bit of bread and wine guaranteed and a man reading a book written by other men for other men about a man who was tortured and murdered because what he was saying threatened to upset the apple cart. "His murder means you're free!"- I am of course paraphrasing.

"He died for our sins". That one particular theme/thesis is not only way to read what happened - and what happened after what happened.

Drinking blood every weekend, believing torture and murder can ever be a good thing? That doesn't sound like That Which Is- seems more like the sort of thing Darth Vader or Voldemorte would be into.

I can't believe it. Google turned back time or policy and let me in witha none google acct. Okay- I c u and raise u- or maybe g ur right on q

Title: Fall 2008




“The reason people treat you like you’re nothing is because you are nothing,” the police officer bellows.



The female police officer continues sharing this and other pearls of wisdom as her male partner in protection and service pats down over fifty women. My hands are against the wall; I and all of us are still in our pajamas, half asleep and half in shock and we know we‘re not dreaming just re-awakened into a new chapter of this nightmare. The woman next to me is shaking and looks like she’s about to cry. That last part surprises me because she’s done time -more than a few of them have. Me, I just try to keep my head down and my mouth shut.



How did I wind up lined up against a wall in the middle of the night being patted down, or felt up, depending on your perspective? It all started at a red light. I stopped and waited for the light to turn green. I know - they tell you in traffic school that is this exactly what you’re supposed to do and so theoretically it shouldn‘t lead to being frisked in the middle of the night for a cell phone but it has.



If you ask the local medical university whose bread, butter, jam and crumpet’s come from psychopharmacological research I’m lined up against this wall because I suffer from a delusion that I was ever sitting in front of that red light in the first place. The other part of my delusion is that I was a dean‘s list student twenty hours short of graduation with an acumen for system analysis and investigative journalism.



I kept restating what I regard as the facts of my life which the medical university selectively declared as delusions. After which I made a series of requests that to me seemed logical. The doctor hadn‘t seen it that way “I’LL SEND YOU TO THE STATE FACILITY IN COLUMBIA SO FAST IT’LL MAKE YOUR HEAD SPIN !” he’d yelled.



I’d asked for a neurological consult . The university had refused. I had asked for a medical release of information from the original admitting hospital. I was given a form, filled it out and told the hospital never replied. I’d refused the university upping my beta blockers from 10 milligrams to 50 or 60 milligrams. Why would that be necessary? What? if 10 is good five or six times that is better? It didn’t make sense to me and that‘s part of how I got in hot water.



Too, I’d asked for data supporting the use of the latest medication the university now wanted me to take. Which to me seemed like a reasonable request since the last time I’d trusted the medical university with a prescription pad I’d gone into saline toxicity. I was released from the university while in saline toxicity wearing clothes I‘d been given from the charity bin. The university had ‘lost’ my clothes, I filled out a form but nothing ever came of it. I was then transferred to a $180 a day a half way house. I was told I would be going directly to a homeless shelter from there. I never could figure out if they didn’t believe I had a car and possessions or if someone somewhere had decided I wasn’t allowed to have them anymore. Obviously my clothes were something someone at the university had decided I wasn’t allowed to have anymore, didn’t really need, or they liked.



I don’t know if saline toxicity is lethally toxic only that the personnel at the half way facility (half way to what?) called the medical university saying “We are not equipped to handle a medical emergency”. At the time the half way medical bureaucrat looked worried. “She’ll have to be readmitted”; there was some heated debate but eventually there I was back at Med. U asking again for a neurological consult again. Then again refusing anymore than ten milligrams of inderal and now requiring documentation for the next drug they wanted to put me on. It was that last bit that put me before a judge. On my end I simply wanted to know whether the medication was or was not contraindicated for brain injuries.



“I’ll have you locked up…Columbia…then we’ll see how feel about taking what I decide to prescribe you!” Dr. Kelp had yelled.



I seem to piss people off. Though I think its more the questions I ask and maybe that I do, that I did. I was provided an attorney and curiously the judge informed me that “this has never happened before” which at the time struck me as strange and unlikely in and of itself: that no one in the history of the program had said: no I‘m not taking that unless you provide me with some supporting documentation . I won that small battle. Dr. Kelp didn’t get to ship me to a hospital in Columbia, the residents and a nurse practitioner produced some documentation but the medical university isn’t above holding a grudge. Gods don’t like being told they’re not.



But all that was months ago and now my job is simple “spread ‘em, keep your hands against the wall- DON’T EYEBALL ME!” the cop yells at someone who let their eyes drift from the wall toward either her pacing behind us or her male partner running his hands over our bodies and up and down our legs. The Personal Responsibility Counselor on duty feels the introduction of such and guns is in order because a cardinal rule has been broken.



“If you don’t take personal responsibility for your things and something is stolen that is your fault.”



There are rules to live by here. The rules that apply to everyone else don’t apply to you anymore- if they ever did- and you better start accepting that. Those rules do not apply here. On this particular evening the Personal Responsibility Counselor had left her cell phone out unattended and the cell phone had been stolen. That theft is now the responsibility of all the “guests” as we’re called. This is would seem and in fact be in direct contradiction to the cardinal rule- but that’s the great thing about being a Cardinal of Personal Responsibility: the rules don’t apply to you.





“You wanna know why you’re here?” the female officer asks. No one raises their hand. Even those who if asked to couldn’t define the word rhetorical know a rhetorical question when they hear one.



“You’re here because you’re scum.”



I’m scared like everyone else but more so now because the questioning has just shifted to “Every one of you knows who took that phone!“ I feel confused; in part because I can’t figure out if the officer actually believes what she’s saying. How can we all know who took the phone when most of us were asleep?



“We can stay here all night,” the cop says but I start to get the feeling maybe we wont be lined up against this wall all night and I may get some of what passes for sleep here. I haven’t figured out whose responsibility it is for me not getting sleep when the flashlight this Personal Responsibility Counselor sports at night gleams in my eyes, probably mine.



Before the cop leaves she gives us something to think about after she’s gone “I’ve taken a good look at all your faces- this isn’t over ”.



I go back to bed with my heart pounding. One of the usually hardened criminals is crying in her pillow and I don’t need her telling me to know that this has happened before -but a cavity search or some private time with a guard. I realize I’m crying too but not for her. I’m scared all the time and mostly I just don’t want to die. Though that’s not the worst that can happen here. I know the worst that can happen- that’s what scares me. I’ve already seen it and I’ll see more before my year is up.



* this is my final entry to this blog- or any blog owned by google. Sorry guys but telling people, arguing that what people produce on your platform is owned by you as if you own them- not okay. It would be like facebook saying they own faces, identities and the grids of human interaction (which I suspect they'd more than happy to argue)
 
But back to the googlings: You didn't live these words and y'all sure as shit didn't compose them- so thanks for the platform but its time for me to go somewhere with a none"we own your ass and your shit" attitude.