Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
I wrote in Principles about my interview with Katie Koestner and Claire Kaplan.
That interview is now live at Gel, Ink, and Rollerball.
For people who want to know the source material for The Augmented Man, The Settlement, Recovery Triptych, and much more of my work, here’s your chance.
I’ll be posting several excerpts over the coming days starting today with Katie’s intro to the episode.
Enjoy.
You can read the backstory on The Book of the Wounded Healers in The Book of The Wounded Healers/(a study in perception)/Frame and Chapter 1 – The First Communication, and it may help understanding the story’s universe a bit.
Read previous chapters:
During my time in the hospital, I met a man who had never been to The ‘Nam but whose life had been so traumatic that the only way he could rationalize his experiences was to believe he had been there. He manifested all the patterns of acute Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; persistent re-experiencing of the trauma, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general responsiveness, increased arousal.
This wasn’t surprising. Talking with him, I came to realize that emotionally and spiritually he had more in common with Vets – loss, pain, remorse, fear, psychological failure – than any others group he could associate with. After a few days, when he knew more about me, I, too, became his enemy. My knowledge and experiences were a threat to those he fabricated and eventually he had to leave. I don’t remember his name but I’ll call him Jack. Whenever Jack walked under a doorjamb he would kick the top of the jamb to show everyone how high he could kick.
There was another man, Bill I think his name was, who was of the right age to have been to Woodstock but had no memories of the best known feature of it – “Hey, man! They shut down the highway!”
Bill was average height and build, with the coloring and coarseness of someone whose life involved little intelligence and lots of labor. His voice bore the mark of thirty years of chain smoking although he hadn’t developed a hack, something I attributed to his several years on the sea. Balding and cropping what little hair he had, Bill always smiled a terse little smile and watched everyone around him to see if they were watching him.
Bill was the kind of guy who would talk to himself if no one was there. He would announce his entry into a room and his exit. He would announce the onslaught of his bodily functions and describe the strains, groans, farts, and moans associated with them. Instead of simply getting a cup of coffee he would engage himself in monologue, “I guess I’ll just get a cup of coffee here. Now where’s the cups. No, don’t tell me, I know. Yep, here they are. A little cream? No, today I think I’ll have milk. Sugar. Now where’s the sugar,” and on it would go through the cup of coffee and onto the next. If everyone in the ward were watching retro TV mysteries and Columbo was about to nudge the felon into submission or Jessica was ready to reveal the culprit, Bill would enter, his voice the same volume as the TV, and begin his monologue of which chair? which lamp? was there a paper to read? what’s on? and who did it? “Oh yeah? I don’t know. I think it’s somebody else. Maybe that guy there,” and he would point at the announcer on the commercial for underwear.
It had to be planned. Either planned or practiced for so many years it passed into habit.
Bill, by the way, wasn’t one of the orderlies. That was the other guy, Jack. Bill was one of the counselors. That was how he introduced himself to me.
I found out later he was a habitual patient.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!
You can read the backstory on The Book of the Wounded Healers in The Book of The Wounded Healers/(a study in perception)/Frame and Chapter 1 – The First Communication, and it may help understanding the story’s universe a bit.
Read previous chapters:
Fourth grade, now a student in Mrs. Woodbury’s class, and we are talking about a recent Russian cosmonaut landing. One of the kids in class asked why the Russians always landed on land and we always landed in an ocean. I remember Mrs. Woodbury dismissing the question, “We could land on land if we wanted to…” I don’t remember the rest of her answer. What I do remember is knowing, knowing even then, that Mrs. Woodbury was lying, that we couldn’t land on land and that water was safer for us. What I remember most was knowing in that sacred unspeakable way only a child can know, even as Jiminy would know, that Mrs. Woodbury was afraid of the truth, afraid to admit that the Russians could do something we couldn’t.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!
You can read the backstory on The Book of the Wounded Healers in The Book of The Wounded Healers/(a study in perception)/Frame and Chapter 1 – The First Communication, and it may help understanding the story’s universe a bit.
Read previous chapters:
Have you ever noticed that your sock can drive you crazy? If the seam makes a little ball or wads up under your toes, it can drive you crazy?
Spontaneous language. Esperanto, Interlingua, Novial, Interglossa, and Glossa, this last a language conceived during WWII and developed by two women through the middle to late 20th century. It was suggested as a single language alternative to the various European languages when the EC became a reality in 1991-92. It is based on Latin and Greek words, has no syntax or grammar rules, and only 1000 words. Supposedly it is very easy to learn. These are scientific attempts at spontaneous language.
Mrs. Woodbury, grammar school fourth grade, taught us Esperanto. None of us learned it. I guess that was a success.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!
You can read the backstory on The Book of the Wounded Healers in The Book of The Wounded Healers/(a study in perception)/Frame and Chapter 1 – The First Communication, and it may help understanding the story’s universe a bit.
Read previous chapters:
There was a Ted Schreringer, a Dean of Christian Life at Baltic College, a small evangelical college in Michigan. I came to him with some questions, he told me to kneel and pray.
He smiled and nodded, his head bobbing like a plastic cat’s in the rear window of a car, as I tried to articulate what I wanted to ask.
The only problem was I had trouble articulating the questions I wanted to ask and he had trouble giving answers other than those he’d learned from a book. I went into his office, I remember, because it was at the end of the hall and either I turned into his office or I went up the stairs to the cafeteria. The food wasn’t that good and there were some things I wanted to know.
Simple, no?
Ted Schreringer was an fundamental evangelical Anglican. From New Zealand. He was the first man I’d ever seen who had a single eyebrow running over his left eye straight to his right, a single bush so thick that if he was from Australia I would have expected to see a joey in it. It was also my first experience with a New Zealand accent. I didn’t know until then that a New Zealand accent sounds exactly like patronizing.
This is why we go to college, to learn things.
When not kneeling and praying he saw to the spiritual needs of the campus. This meant making sure the bookstore didn’t stock any Rolling Stones, Beatles, Frampton, CSN&Y, Joni Mitchell, Harrison, Procul Harem, Harry Chapin, Billy Joel, Elton John, Wings, and is this cross-stylistic enough so you get the idea? Gospels and Christian Rock were okay.
Have you ever listened to Christian Rock? As Ted defined it? There is none, I’ll make it easy for you.
The only magazines allowed, aside from spiritual publications, were the likes of Good Housekeeping and Modern Bride. All the spiritual publications were evangelical fundamentalist in nature and scope.
This should not be a surprise. Remember this. People went to Baltic for this.
Dean Ted believed that his role was to monitor the Christian life of each student, regardless if that student wanted said monitoring or not. I know this and will explain how in a moment.
I went to Dean Ted because I was confused about who I was and who was god and what was happening in my life.
I wasn’t a “Christian” back then. Evidently Baltic admitted a select number of non-Christian students each year so the students could practice their evangelism.
Imagine being invited to go somewhere and discovering the only reason you’re invited is to be someone else’s experiment?
Ah, the joys of being Black in America.
I explained things to Dean Ted the best I could. He smiled and nodded and checked his watch and picked up a well worn Bible and opened it for me and told me what to read.
“The only thing which will save you, Ben” he said in that interesting New Zealand twang, “is accepting Christ into your heart as your personal God and Savior. See, right there.” He pointed into a gospel. “You shall know the truth and truth shall set you free.”
He rolled his “r”‘s so nice.
“Satan and God are fighting for your soul and you must help God to win, Ben.” He checked his watch again. “There is no choice other than Heaven or Hell. Endicott and that Jewish girl you see there, Ben, that’s Hell. Your friends here are Heaven, Ben. Now you must decide.”
{Either-or. Never both-and. Black or white is only available in the quantum infinitesimal slices of a moment, if even then.
Or the racial prejudices of majority America.
Which you choose is based on what you study. Take your pick.}
First, if God is so strong, why does he need help? Second, I’d never mentioned going to Endicott or dating anyone there. How did he know?
“Kneel down here with me, Ben, and we’ll pray together for your soul.” He checked his watch.
Which I did because I had learned the lessons of the playground well; young black men do what patronizing white men say.
Besides, God seemed to be on a clock. Either that, or Dean Ted had a quota to fulfill.
Greetings! I’m your friendly, neighborhood Threshold Guardian. This is a protected post. Protected posts in the My Work, Marketing, and StoryCrafting categories require a subscription (starting at 1$US/month) to access. Protected posts outside those categories require a General (free) membership.
Members and Subscribers can LogIn. Non members can join. Non-protected posts (there are several) are available to everyone.
Want to learn more about why I use a subscription model? Read More ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes Enjoy!