Provision for the Reception and Relief of Lunatics: An Essay by Henry O'Malley

Provision for the Reception and Relief of Lunatics:  An Essay.

         Prelude: "Where is the beginning?" asks One. "Where is the ending?" asks Another. The Middle is concerned with both: "Why have they abandoned me?" IT thinks. One and Another both have mouths, but their voices misrepresent the sounds most applicable to their intentions. IT is the substance of both beginning and end, but IT does not ask. IT thinks. There are times when the beginning, middle, and end lose contact with one another.

       Mental illness is not supernatural. So be it Hippocrates. Who, then, is IFrankMaster? IFrankMaster is the devil that invades my mind and body when my brain opens up to receive evil and erase Henry. Frank is not here now Hippocrates. If Hippocrates were Henry, he would have to think a lot harder about his assertion. Mental disease has a physiological and natural basis, but damned be the lot that limit this disease to those two terms. Mephistopheles...archfiend. There are a lot of people don't know about Abraham: there are a lot that do not know anything about anything. We are are all ignorant concerning one thing or another. No one is omniscient; therefore, everyone is ignorant. No lie. I am honest as Abe. I saw him the other day. He was in my room, head-in-hands-weeping, on the floor. I sat down beside him. I promised Sarah the Black-

Kali Sara - Black Sara, not to disturb his weeping; Saint Paul is another story..."We live by faith, not by sight." I did not ask him why he was shedding tears. I knew why. We are telepathically linked. He was in utter despair concerning the present state of America. "...Pretending to be Romans.....pretending to be Romans...." I heard him say these words through his weeping. I nodded. Judy Collins was singing "Send in the Clowns." And then there is Casey, an idiot-lunatic type that bores me to tears everyday with his sports-Tourette's. A lot of Americans have sports and weather Tourette's, but Casey is a bad case. Who do you think you are Hippocrates? They place leeches on my body, bleed me, remove my teeth, leg-chains, manacles, straight jackets, barred basement cells, extreme temperatures, poor ventilation. The Hippocratic Oath. "What I may see or hear in the course of treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep myself holding such things shameful to be spoken about." Yes, sir. Does my blood press on my brain so? Haldol and thorazine, atypical clozapine...they keep out the supernatural. I once was the gatecrasher of smart-parties. The Mennonite intellect at a party is gatecrashed by a supernatural being in the flesh. They caught him jumping off a train and tumbling onto the prairie. They took him to the barred basement cell that transformed into a white-washed and sterile island of ne'er do wells and false, ineffectual smiles. Termites or needles plunged into his skin and injected Henry back in again.

Lex Talionis,

 

Henry O'Malley