the asheville asylum

part 2

part 4

klaus again. i told MWF that i'd be going on vacation over thanksgiving....and Dmoll too. i don't know where to hide Dmoll's stuff, paintings and the afflica diaries and what's worse who's going to take over while i'm gone. first, Dmoll gave me this picture to take off the asylum grounds because it's too personal. he said the title is about being born 'It is April 14th and I'm ready to be born, Mama.' then, Dmoll said to give it to MWF, so that's what i'll do. it looks like he drew his mother that i know he don't know and katrin and has a lot of writing on it. Dmoll said to give MWF this note:

that
without which I choose:

you say:
we must all be grounded in what freud said was a given external reality...to accept this; to learn to adapt to this with socially acceptable behavior within venn diagrams defining one's closest number of primary and secondary societal interactions; and then (and then you turned away from me and didn't finish what you we're saying you arse you couldn't see me listening not just hearing these stupid muffled sounds that pervade this place...when i get out, permit me to kick yr ass....p.s. yr still my friend bu)t....

I Say:
without which
that I choose:

^{you can believe in a lie and change the world}

^{I know}

^{for i have done just this}

This is MWF. Dmoll has been in his room for the past three months. Klaus has been a great aid as intermediary between Dmoll and me. But let me be clear on one point: he has confined himself, he wasn't forced into self exile. We did, however, conclude after the cremation episode that an appropriate punishment would be only a week's restriction to his room. Drs Andrews, Murphy, Safna and I do not concur on Dmoll's condition, nor his treatment. 

Safna believes that Dmoll's occasional aural hallucinations manifested in his dialogues with his imagined counterpart demonstrate a classic example of temporarily arrested schizophrenia. While I defer to Safna's clinical experience in this field, I cannot agree that Dmoll's occasional hallucinations are an indicator of major psychotic illness. Given that this behavior falls outside the norm and appears to overwhelm and completely preclude immediate meaningful intercourse with his real environment,-- I am not so certain that these occurrences are solely predictive of increasing withdraw into what Safna thinks is a "creation of an imaginary life that shall superimpose itself on this reality and eventually stand in its stead." As far as therapy is concerned, he believes individual counseling with prescribed short-term goal achievement programs supplemented by medication should cure him. I do not believe that this 'makeshift' success therapy has any substantial support in literature for an illness that he has already labeled acute schizophrenia.

Andrews is sometimes gleefully referred to as our "friendly neighborhood supplier," for he is known to carry not only an array of physicians 'utensils' with him wherever he goes, but also booklets of prescription forms, each displaying advertisements from pharmaceutical companies, customized just for him. Andrews has branded Dmoll as suffering from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and never hesitates to point out that he mentored one authority in the field, Dr. Terman (Dept. of Psychiatry, Columbia University) and was instrumental in the publication of his paper "On the question of mechanism in phototherapy for seasonal affective disorder: Considerations of clinical efficacy and epidemiology" that recently appeared in the Journal of Biological Rhythms. Andrews feels that the November climate here in the Appalachians is the cause of Dmoll's acute onsets of depression and apparent suicidal tendencies, and, to his mind a "pleasant little dosage of venlafaxine should do the trick!" And as a loyal stockholder in the Wyeth Company, "Why not give him 125 mg/day of Effexor XR!" According to Dmoll's records he's been on SSRIs before....to no avail. I cannot believe this to be the correct diagnosis or treatment. I know that Dmoll is a fast metabolizer and that he cannot tolerate a venlafaxine with such a short half-life., and because he has no tolerance for Prozac or other paroxetine to assist in mitigating withdrawal, this would produce a harmful discontinuation event for him. Is it not possible that the appearance of withdrawal symptoms may indicate that the alleged depression had not been resolved in the first place?

Well. Typically anal, typically Freudian and in his unique grand fashion, our Dr. Murphy has concluded that Dmoll suffers from a neurosis stemming form a classic Oedipal complex. The dominant, demanding and mistrustful mother image is an a priori hypothetical given that, of course, must have been influential in his early childhood prior to appearing at the asylum. Murphy offers all of Dmoll's verbal outbreaks as aimed specifically at his father (and male God) and Dmoll's paintings as expressions of love for his mother. Murphy references all Dmoll's painting as containing references to sexual imagery as well as a dream that he had told Murphy on one occasion. 'I remember being chased by a skeleton through a deep ravine where I was almost trapped by him. He was carrying a long spear and kept trying to poke me with it. I climbed the steep wet walls of the ravine through bushes and thickets and managed to get out. In the distance I saw two hills and so I started to run toward them. I woke up just as I got to the base of the hills." Murphy maintains that the skeleton is Dmoll's father and, of course, the spear is his penis. The ravine is his mother's vagina, the thickets represent pubic hair. Crawling out of the ravine may well indicate birth or perhaps Dmoll's consciousness and the scramble to the mountains is his attempt for nourishment at his mother's breasts. The last picture Dmoll finished demands a neo-Freudian interpretation. Katrin, according to Murphy, stands as a substitute mother to Dmoll....of equal value and importance. Furthermore, the amulet points to a problem perhaps more mysterious or religious in nature; and although naked, she seems well attired,. She also seems more attractive; has larger breasts, a more feminine form and "uncorrupted" vagina, according to Murphy. A previous picture of sportrane shows Dmoll's hatred of his father; that is sportrane = father (lover and pimp) too many illicit wives. Dmoll's solution was sportrane's dismemberment and cremation. His treatment: analysis based on Horney's more pro-feminine and contextual approach.

All right, even if I were to agree.... so what? Murphy's description is interesting but superficial.

i'm rodney and i hate this f**king place....it's *hit to have to work here where all the stupid rich folks come to lose weight and the perverts and the veggies. this place is a road kill. except for last year when joey and i used to sneak up to murphy's window when twyla was there. geez. man. you talk about a babe. and she'd be doing murphy. i mean every week and then it happened. f**kin' joey started giggling and then i only heard me and him holding our breath and little wheezing sounds coming through our lips. waiting. then we took off. i know he saw us running across the lawn.  so now klaus is the supervisor custodian and my dad's boss and my dad said that that sob really screwed him over cause my dad was supposed to get his job. but i know why he didn't get it. anyway dad's a wuss. whatever. my mother works in the kitchen and i cut grass. i wanna drive the tractor but that ***hole won't let me. the other day andrews says he got a photographer to take pictures of the custodians to put in the hall. so we went to a place at the mall and we got our picture taken. mom and dad were arguing as usual so it don't--you know-- look so good. whatever. i just wanted to get back cause there's a new girl called dee whatever and she's 19 and got the hots for me i know it. so i told her i was going to visit her. and i did, but the b**ch wouldn't do nothing and she started to talk and talk and told me i was too young so i told her to go f**k herself and i just left. dumb ass. my dad moved out a month ago because he says my mom is too controlling or whatever. and my mom started to take off early on fridays and goes out with margie and gets back late at night or saturday morning. things are really screwed lately whatever. and now we got a family of imgrants who moved in and are taking over. man this placed is f**ked. anyway, this is us.

this is katrin and i'm mad as hell. but first: klaus is back but partially paralyzed on his left side. after andrews' attempt to force him into retirement, it seems that the whole asylum, led by the custodians, threatened to walk out on the spot unless the county board reconsidered. the hernandez family, especially rodney started his underground graffiti war on the walls; cherry higgins who seems to have something on murphy got him to change his mind (i think twyla helped); and the dorr family, who, i hear, talked jesus himself into invading each and every commissioner's conscience with a cauldron of hell-fire. and it worked. so klaus had to relinquish his position to henry, but he is here semi-retired and gets his pension and a free apartment. but there's something pretty unusual about him, because Dmoll only talks to him and MWF anymore., and klaus' new apartment on the third floor now has a new door with a brass sign not unlike Dmoll's that says CONFESSIONAL and underneath that, a small postcard size picture of my sister that my mother painted. klaus asked for it and MWF told me it would be healing--whatever that means--so i gave in. i haven't thought of my dad in a long, long time. i hardly knew him. MWF gave me a title for it because he said that even though she is smiling, there is the slightest sadness in her eyes. anyway he calls it "the girl who looked like forsythia."

i don't know why i have to get involved with all the unsavory situations and do the disciplining around here. here's what happened last week: we've always had a local hotline for people to call to ask for advice regarding any emergencies. but over time we received an abundance of calls from outside our calling area-- indeed, we started getting calls from out of state. the board of directors gave us permission to establish a 900 hotline so that we could give emergency advice at a nominal 25 cent fee to cover our costs. we manned the switchboard from 9 am to 9 pm. katrin started, but soon we had to hire two more staff nurses. we were very busy, especially from saturday through monday, and just after holidays. in january our accountant discovered a $12,000 increase in 'donations' and they grew to just over $23,000 in february. roland discovered an additional $30,000 three weeks ago and he discovered what was happening.... to our mutual and utter disgust. we played back the 900 tapes and were horrified.

it seems that Cdur and jennifer had somehow arranged a 900-jenifer number to be hooked up from 11 pm to 3 am and they were manning the phones. rodney was involved as well. they had re-christened our asylum as 'the sucker love institute' and were giving all manner of explicit advice that would shock the knickerbockers off a pilgrim. but it wasn't only the tapes, they were sending polaroids... of patients.

the board threatened to dismiss dr. andrews and me and prohibit all fundraising for the next year... which meant that we would have to shut down some of our outreach programs. but thank goodness eunice got involved and calmed down the board and the uproar in the community. following her advice, we kept the donations, establish an 800 number and with the $65,000 in unexpected windfall, we will be able to expand our sexual abuse outreach program.

jennifer was very contrite about her involvement, but i still worry about Cdur... i know andrews will resort to increasing her medication dosage... typical for him.

cherry higgins...what can i say. all the boys call her eve. oh...i'm joey, jennifer and Dmoll's friend. i suppose you know that she moved to washington, but is now back. she's a mom and i'm glad to be a god-father. she's starting college here this year. she wants to be a nurse and work here. she says with murphy and MWF. but i don't know anything about that. before i tell you about the standoff and how the custodians won, i want to tell you about cherry. i love cherry. she's beautiful. i mean katrin's beautiful, but beautiful in a different way... katrin's like a flower, like a purple lilac because you could just smell her strong like dirt in the morning. i think Dmoll loves katrin too. but cherry is beautiful like a canna lily. all us boys here just watch her in the laundry or helping the nurses clean the stainless. she can be a white sheet like in winter or pale with long fingers like an ice princess cause she never smiles. and sometimes when her hands are in messing with the stainless i don't know where her fingers leave off and the scalpels begin. Dmoll told me once that beauty like hers wants to be all things to all people, but everything they touch dies inside cause that beauty is like an ideal but is hollow and has no depth. and then he started to talk about someone who was a greek like platus or someone and shadows in caves. i forget. but that's what he said. and now that i think of it, daniela's like katrin. sometimes when i see daniela and cherry together then there's something going on...like daniela seems to know when people are around and then she moves like she's exaggerating, but cherry always seems startled like a horse when she lifts her head and sees someone at the end of a gesture, like she knows she's supposed to be alone. anyway it was she who turned the tide. when all the custodians got together with others of us and we were talking and some of us were shouting at the commissioners who were sitting well-stuffed gobblers at the front and who came to our meeting in the chapel and then the back door opens and in she walks. i mean she sorta floats in all in white and never moves her head to the right or left like the beginning of a short cool breeze and as she glides up toward the commissioners and it's like a wave was following her sucking everything visible and invisible from an ocean floor and dumping it all at their feet. and she puts her hand on klaus' shoulder who is sitting in the front pew. then she turns. and just glides back. and we all watch as she's walking through the door sucking us and everything she brought in back with her. and that was that.

the chairman of the country commissioners: he knew the alleyways of the LAW. he knew what others did not know nor were able to navigate. he loved to negotiate that artificial microcosm wherein he would appear as a god to those lost in its paragraphs and clauses. meet rod roper, esq. (the mountain hammer-- according to those who went up against him.) and when cherry had exited and we returned our stares back to the well-stuffed seating arrangement at the front, everyone saw what i saw and everybody knew and i mean everybody knew that the mountain hammer would not be the same... but more about that later.

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