The sound of rain beating down on my car roof used to drive me nuts. In a moment of frenzy I removed the roof with a metal cutter and replaced it with thatch. On the upside, it makes the car interior cool, rainproof, and muffles the sound of rain. On the downside, when the thatch is dry, it is flammable. On a few occasions I've driven to work with the roof on fire. Once - on arrival at the office - I went straight to a meeting with my hat on fire. In a moment of panic I threw the burning hat at a colleague, and his nose hair caught fire. The episode wouldn't have been so catastrophic if the fire hadn't spread quickly to his beard and virgin wool underwear. (Who knows what people wear to work underneath their clothes? For a while I wore a black PVC gothic corset with black satin trimming purely for medical reasons. I had an out-growing toenail.) My colleague worked part-time as a Forest Fire Lookout at the local national park. It didn't help that he ran straight out of the building, jumped on his bison, and made straight for his watch tower in the park. Subsequently, the tower burnt down, and he was observed running from the scene by a passing Long tail Weasel with short eyesight. With smoke billowing from his clothes he appeared to rant, " I can't find Himmler, my little meadow vole!" He was never seen again. It is thought "Himmler" met a broad rat called "Adolf," and they wrote a major treatise on the economic importance of rodents.
My lineage has endowed me with a lack of muscularity befitting an interloper without the "loper". During the night my wife kicked four of my front teeth out. Was it deliberate? Who knows? It was the first time - to my knowledge - she has worn black German Army Para Boots and camouflage netting to bed. She usually prefers Soviet and Russian tactical and combat gear. As for me, I just wish she'd wear something from Harvey Nichols' - a Pierre Hardy Perforated leather handbag with a small strap - preferably around her neck. All day I had to speak, smile and eat while holding my hand in front of my mouth. It was a mistake to order "Polpette Alla Casalinga" at lunch-time at my local Italian restaurant. The meatballs were about 3 inches in diameter, and the tomato and basil sauce ruined my clothes. One fellow diner thought I was learning Spanish. Another thought I was preparing to audition as Don Vito Corleone in "The Godfather - The Musical". I left the restaurant before there was an assassination attempt. I like my thighs and arms the way they are.
I've just returned from London. I was fortunate to see Gillian Anderson in a production of Henrik Ibsen’s "A Doll's House" at the Donmar Warehouse, and Jeff Beck at the Royal Albert Hall. Both performances were uplifting, as indeed, was London.
Reflections: I am presently revisiting a draft poem with the working title: "Walking with Proust," which I started four or five years' ago. It is centred on a teenage girl whose parents' believe she is not normal - whatever normal is? She uses words they cannot understand. She has a boyfriend they suspect is homosexual" She reads Marcel Proust! She is committed to a sanatorium to change her behaviour [sic]. Indeed, she is given extensive shock treatment until she is incontinent; walks around naked; and the memory of her parents' and boyfriend are totally erased. The teenager is chalked up by the medical profession as another therapeutic success, and released back to the arms and safety of her parents' [sic]. True or fiction? Sadly, true.
Sometimes the heart of the poem skips a beat, or fails to beat, and then I stop too. The interior landscape changes. Finding the right words, timing, space, to convey verse of sadness, grief, abuse - while preserving meaning and value - casts its own shadow. The shadow, however, is not as long as that cast by some medical treatments, and failures, perpetrated against patients (over the centuries) who attended hospitals seeking help - and worse? - were not ill in the first place.
Who knows the extent of fraudulent stories told over the years by unethical medical professionals to their patients, and the role of drug companies in propagating the myth of abnormal brain chemistry to sell their wares? A lot of the abuse - like most abuse - was, and in some instances, continues to be, carefully concealed by its perpetrators, and the organisations, and companies, they represent.
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