the asheville asylum

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a welcome to those coming here from www.wynja.com/personality/jung.html
to write Dmoll415 at the institute

the series "the asheville asylum" is about a town in western north carolina. my best friend--the man without a forehead--is helping me write this. i am DMoll415, i work in the kitchen.

dr. p sythe andrews, graduate of cornell. bs in zoology, ms in behavioral sciences, phd from harvard veterinary school. thesis: "effects of regeneration on the lateral locomotion of the planaria" began working at the asheville asylum in 1961. after his wife, eunice, died during childbirth he complained of recurring bouts of deja-vu during which he spent hours in the library cutting and pasting biographical sketches of notable psychiatrists into his scrapbook-- assured that he had known them all at one time or another. secretly he underwent analysis by his colleague dr. murphy, whose diagnosis was intermittent retrograde loss of memory. considered the ideal candidate, he was promoted to the head of the department of amnesia. currently, under his care are daniela mccurdy (13), joey hawthorne (22) and franklin beau doubeahi (35).

ok, it's 1985, december and cold as hell. the man without a forehead isn't here right now, so i'll have to introduce franklin. for the past 14 years he's been coming in the kitchen in his under shorts and pointing to the light bulb and saying 'do be ah hi' and that it was going to snow...35 feet deep. he came here way before i started in the kitchen. i heard from dr. andrews once that some hunters found him on frank's knob covered in fur and blood. the asylum tried to find out who he was, but nobody claimed him. we knew his age because the sheriff found a note in his dungarees saying, "we had him in 50. he answers to franklin, but my wife calls him bo." that was all. he always had this look in his face, like he constantly had his finger in a frying pan... and that was his smile. last month he came in for thanksgiving dinner and half way through the cranberries he jumped up and shouted, "it's gonna snow 35 feet and i'm gonna lay me down under that big white shawl and mama's gonna rock me and rock me. it's gonna snow and i'm gonna sleep cause my mama loves me." then he was gone. they called the sheriff. so far nothing. dr. andrews was really mad and called him an ingrate. he was a gentle guy and i miss him. jenny painted this picture of him. this is me Dmoll.

"it had been a perfect night - i got his phone number - but when i got up to shower he had gone, leaving behind an iou - i just kept looking for him in the mirror" that's what she is supposed to have told Dmoll and he never forgot it. this is the man without a forehead talking now. what Dmoll heard her say was heard through a hole that joey had cut between the men's and ladies' lavatories. even he, whose integrity i most admire, could stoop too-- so i kicked Dmoll's ass for him. twyla ann montgomery was an out patient of sorts here, she just came and went without an appointment according to katrin. she'd march right past admittance in her cutoffs and blue heels, past klaus, past katrin and into dr. murphy's office. there would be a sound of skidding furniture, rustling papers, a clink from the phone bell... then a god-awful gasp for air and then silence. twice a week. nobody ever saw her leave. katrin told me that she thought she was after his appointment book. i don't know, but it seemed like klaus was always washing phone numbers off the lavatory walls on those days when somebody was enjoying her company. joey heard from katrin that she managed to finally get his appointment book; klaus heard she married her podiatrist, i heard she married some retired new york architect in north asheville.

hey, this is Dmoll415, back....so i hear that MWF (my friend the man w/o a 4head) told you about twyla. hummm- the part about the toilet ISN'T TRUE...joey did it. anyway, this is a portrait of dr. murphy, assistant head of the department of amnesia. and yes it's true about eunice andrews because daniela, his great niece or something, told me that her mom told her that it wasn't andrews' genes stretching that placenta. i always liked murphy because he seemed to care about his patients like twyla. but he had this 'thing' according to klaus... poly something...like a flower. klaus would always get this look of awe in his eyes like he was referring to a deity when he talked about murphy. poly and some kind of flower. i still don't know what he was talking about...but he'd say, "man, we're not talking about a pouch, not even a sack...i'm talking about a whole duffel bag, and stuffed with ammo." everyone here likes murphy, only dr. andrews doesn't seem to trust him. when andrews got pissed, he'd call murphy the 'stiff,' like he wanted him dead, i guess. daniela painted this with a lot of women figures on his head. and one of them might just be her, cause she's got a bun in the oven. [Dmoll kann wirklich ein esel sein...schwanger bin ich nicht) currently under his care are jennifer duffel (15), twyla montgomery (25), fitzgerald a. sportrane (48).

hier ist danni. i kann ein bisschen deutsch. Dmoll ist gerade auf einer party mit twyla und ihrem mann und kommt bald zurueck. MWF hat mir gesagt, dass ich ein paar worte ueber mich selbst schreiben darf... ich habe schliesslich einige bilder fuer Dmoll gemalt. ich bin gerade 14. meine mutter starb bei meinem geburt. ich durfte mit dr murphy einziehen, als ich 6 jahre alt war. er ist wirklich wie ein vater zu mir...immer da, wenn ich ihn brauche. ich besuche ihn fast jeden tag im irrenhaus und ich hab ein eigenes zimmer! neulich habe ich probleme in der schule... ich meine, ich habe immer  mit jungs probleme gehabt, aber diesmal ist es wirklich schlimm. scheisse, Dmoll hat gerade the zeituhr gestochen, ich muss jetzt schluss machen. (well well well we'll see we'll see. daniela still can't quite come to grips about her problem and it's not the boys in her class, it's her precocious late puberty! let's face it, she's dripping with sex and i don't think she recognizes it. she told me once that murphy just said that boys are boys and it's natural to tease. the only way an educated man could say such stupid crap is to his own daughter in total embarrassment, because you know daniela's never had a real mother. well, she had an ersatz in nurse katrin, but hell katrin's head of the 'mad animal department.' all she knows about explaining sex to a human is whamming and slamming. jesus that makes me mad. as i said, daniela is really mature physically. so, she's a target, a target for the girls out of jealousy and a target for the boys who dream of scoring. i tried explaining this to her during supper on a couple of occasions, but no dice. just couldn't understand. how can anyone with an iq of 138 (according to nurse katrin) be so dumb? do i feel sorry for her? i don't know. when franklin disappeared that told me there was no god; with daniela, god just made this place and took a long vacation.

i see that Dmoll's at it again- spreading rumors. while it's true that i've been a substitute mom to danni, i swear i've done my best to keep her distanced from murphy's moods and his 'clientele.' i mean, i like the guy and he's good to danni, but he knows absolutely nothing about raising a daughter- Dmoll's right, danni IS his daughter. but let me tell you a little about Dmoll: this picture is he in 1971, so he's been here for about 15 years-- a year before i started here. i'm going to write this in german so Dmoll can't read it. hahaha demoll! nun, er war acht oder neun als er eines tages erschienen ist. schauen sie sich das bild oben vom irrenhause genau an. rechts von der bruecke steht eine grosse birke. jemand hat Dmoll zu ihr gekettert. es war, glaube ich im oktober, walpurgisnacht. eine patientin hat es vorgesehen... ich meine sie hat zwei tage lang aus ihrem fenster gezeigt and geschrien: "hallelujah christ has risen and come to save me." als wir ihn entlich entdeckt, war er beschmutzt und eigenartig gekleidet, als haette er beim karnieval als wildes tier gearbeitet. kein wort englisch konnte er sprechen. mehr von ihm spaeter. so, after we finally got him to stand and walk like a human, he learned english pretty fast. finished our school here and got a ged. then he started to read and he's been reading ever since. he finished andrews' books first then started with murphy's. it's funny about Dmoll now that i think about it. he's grown up in a microcosm, a reflection of the outside world's extremes. and he is a motley composite of this and what he reads. i'll think about this some more and add a note or two later.

i don't know what nurse katrin or daniela said about me but i know it's not true. as i said before nurse katrin is head of the mad animal department. that's the row of the smallest rooms here in the basement. they have one window, padded walls and an industrial brass drain right in the middle. and this is fitzgerald a. sportrane. one of richest men in the community. originally from new orleans i think. i've heard that when he started buying up a lot of property here, he matched each purchase with a kept woman. soon he had so many that he put them all in one house and called it the asheville hotel,- but everyone here called it what it really was. that was during the war when the inn was hosting soldiers on furlough and men by the carload would drive in from the dry northern counties in spring. he's been here ever since i can remember and according to nurse katrin he has some kind of degenerative disease that's eaten a good portion of his brain. she says that when he bangs his head against the drain, it sounds like a gong. it's so bad that when she goes into his room to squirt him down, she wears an entire rubber suit, helmet and all. she's hardened up to it. i'm ashamed to say i have too. his family still lives here, but no one's ever seen them except for dr. andrews. when nurse katrin found these old newspapers in the maintenance shed she drew a picture of sportrane. he tore a piece off it when she tried to show it to him.

ok, i'm back. this is Dmoll. nobody's telling me what nurse katrin wrote about me, except that i read a lot. almost every book in andrews' library. right now it's almost halloween and i'm going to my first halloween party. it's outside the asylum in an old part of asheville. i know i was invited as a tagalong-- that's what MWF told me and if it's one thing i can take...it's truth. well, maybe honesty is a better word because it's more situational. no. maybe sincerity is the best word because it can mask honesty and add padding for those who are easily hurt. i drew a picture of what i'm going as. here it is. i call it: "here's my head, but he made me do it." probably because i'm really not sure i believe in free will... i don't care what bertrand russell says. when i see all these people here, people no one loves...people whose very existence entices belief in an afterlife...people who because of some lack of catalyst during meosis or whatever or some sleeping pill...people whose breath can petrify any mental construct of a benevolent deity into salt...people who are no closer on the yellow brick road of evolution to nirvana than any zygote that shrivels in a dead ethiopian womb...(what lion? what lion? i ask you) people i feed every day and who i talk to in my foreign language...people who should really ultimately inherit everything if there were anything to inherit. i sometimes think i'm the only one here who can cry. god. i think i'll go as a father confessor.

  If i didn't love Dmoll so much i wouldn't find excuses for his latest outbreak. he sometimes gets into hot water for these eruptions. but as katrin said a while ago, he has very little real world experience, and has addressed this shortcoming with books. there was a researcher in atlanta,- torrance - i believe, who took an interest in Dmoll for a time...said he was very gifted....even used him as an example in one of his books. i sat in on some of the interviews. but more about them later and Dmoll's confession about his secret room. oh, yes, i forgot...this is MWF and i drew a portrait of myself and my friend at Dmoll's request. it isn't much. so Dmoll touched it up and signed it. i don't care. i'm not as good as daniela or jennifer. Dmoll named it "the man without a forehead and the woman who loved him." touching, but i like it.

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