"Controlled Burn"

"Controlled Burn".

The books I had ordered from Amazon arrived. One was the English original; the other was its Spanish translation. I first read the English orginal a few weeks ago. I came across it by chance in the library as I was browsing around. The book's blurb interested me so I checked the book out. I read it that very evening. The stories were spare, dry, lyrically violent, and so well written that I got out my iPad and got into Amazon. There's also a French translation available but the price is steep, so I'm holding out for now, but I have a feeling that I'll break down and order it in the future. 

Reading the stories has calmed me down tremendously, especially at night, right before I fall asleep. Reading the stories has rekindled in me the desire to write my own stories. I write in order to crystallize my thinking, and to come to terms with the way my life has turned out. 

A fictional short story is a lie that bears/carries/conveys a truth. The sun is beating down hard on the land where I'm living. It's only 9 am in late May, yet the temperature is already hitting 95. The forecast has called for 114 in the shade. I was out early this morning for my daily run. You shouldn't run more than an hour in the desert environment later than 10am in the Summer. The heat and the aridity will kill you, even if you carry adequate water and exceptionally acclimated. I almost died a few years ago. I was foolish and pushing my body to its limits. Luckily, a fellow runner passed by, stopped to give me aid, and called an ambulance. One more thing: always carry a fully charged cell phone everywhere you go.

As I was heading to the trail that runs through the foothills, I let my mind fall into a free fall of associations and reveries. 

Two nights ago,  a half crazy woman called and complained to me about my self-proclaimed psychic roommate. Apparently there was a falling out between them, one is a board certified half nut case, the other claims to be endowed with psychic clairvoyance, but dismally ignorant of her own shaky psychic conditions.

To make a long story short, both the women were stupid because of stubbornness and ego. They were also cowardly but if I frankly told them so, they would jump up and down like monkeys possessed. Some truths are better off left alone and untouched. Stupid and cowardly people are stupid and cowardly for a reason. That's why they are unhappy and full of excuses. But they would be very quick with a comeback about the faults of the critics if they are criticized. They never know about two wrongs don't make a right and/or never mind the faults of others. They are too stupid to realize that they should concentrate on their own faults and if somebody cares about them and wants to help, then don't be  defensive. Being defensive means they're very weak and stupid. They can't tell a friend from a foe. A friend can be irritating, but that doesn't mean you must turn him into a foe because he irritates you occasionally, or even constantly. You must learn to have a "controlled burn". An out-of-control conflagration of hot temper would be dangerous to your life and pocket book. Take it from me. I'm speaking from experience. 

Now that the women are unsworn and undeclared enemies, there should be more peace and quiet where I live because there will be fewer phone calls and odd hours of visitation and loud prayers and incantations and suffocating smoke from incense burning. I'm telling you, Man is a very fragile animal, as far as his mind is concerned. He tends to believe in Bulllshit and is prey to Nonsense, masqueraded as Faith and  Religion. 

The biggest and most common Bullshit involves a Fiction called "God". More humans have died because of this man-made Fiction than any natural calamity. One of the first things I do in meeting a person is asking him if he believes in the Bullshit called "God". If he tells me that he does, I immediately classify him in my mind as deluded or incorrigibly brainwashed or a plainly fucked-up stupid little monkey. Fuck, I always ask myself why in today's age, in the 21st century, there are still so many stupid humans around? Didn't Hitler already kill most of them? By the way, the last time I checked, "God", despite being "all-knowing", "all-powerful", and "merciful", didn't intervene to save any of these believers in those dreadful Nazi concentration camps. What kind of "God" is that? "He" didn't save them then. "He" is not saving them now. And "He" will not save them in the future because there's no such Being. It is a Fiction, a product of Human Imagination. It's a Bullshit, pure and simple. And only fucked-up stupid little humans would believe in that Bullshit. I'm telling you, Man is an animal that loves to lie, to themselves and to others. Man is a lying animal. Not me, though. I'm an exception, an aberration, an oddity. Yes Sir, I'm different. I know it. You know it. I only lie when I write Fiction. 

The half crazy woman, named Tammy, also begged me to help her adolescent son who was involved with far-out computer games and is now exhibiting symptoms of psychosis. The poor kid can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. She said, "Roberto, please help us. You know about metaphysics and the occult. You're well read. You must save my son. Talk to him, bring some sense to him."

-" Where's your son now?", I asked

-"In a place called Community Psychiatric Facility somewhere in the northwest, off Charleston. The cops took him there last night after he got violent and hit me. Luckily for me, my boyfriend was there and able to restrain him until the cops arrived. Roberto, please help us."

-"Gee, what made you think I'm better than the trained doctors and health professionals?" 

-"I just sense that. After what your roommate told me about you, I should've called you sooner. I meant to, but I never thought he would deteriorate so quickly. One minute he was an OK, sweet boy who loved his Mama, then all of the sudden, he got upset and gave me a black eye. The whole thing's killing me. Please, Roberto. We're allowed for visiting for only one hour and only between seven and eight pm. Tomorrow I'll come over and pick you up around six pm. After that we'll go for dinner. My treat. OK, man? Please!"

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I can't say No to women, especially to women who love their children, and who think I can be of help. Roberto is my first name. And "Samaritan" should be my middle name instead of the more bellicose and pugnacious "Hawk". 

Tammy and I showed up at 6:50 pm. The Community Psychiatric Facility was a constellation of adjoining new buildings and tastefully landscaped. Tax money was well spent, I thought, as I took a look at the bucolic setting. There was a rather tame and quite big jackrabbit on the front lawn. It showed no fear as I approached it. It just made a short hop out of my reach and then stopped and looked at me in wonderment. I felt calm. 

On the way to the facility (why not institute or hospital, I wondered. Euphemism? Political Correctness?) Tammy filled me in with the details about Victor, her son. He was an OK high school student, joined the Army upon graduation. Barely six weeks into training, he was discharged. He went home and looked like a nervous wreck, haggard-looking, lost a lot of weight, and didn't tell her mother what was wrong other than he got sick in the stomach, got treated and sent home! All day long he scooped up in his room and played Japanese computer games. The kid even managed to learn some Japanese and constantly muttered Japanese and played with dolls and thought he was a girl! That was when my roommate was called in for help. She got a reputation as a psychic woman, a modern day exorcist. She charged nothing for her services. She loved to help people. She had tried to talk to me about her psychic ability and her visions. I listened but tuned her out. The woman was not balanced though kind and honorable, I thought. Anyway, she spent two days and two nights to "treat" the boy. She wasn't successful in her mission. The boy admitted that he was sick and wanted to be well, but he was not responsive to her mumbo-jumbo of loud prayers and incantations. Exhausted, she went home after telling the mother that the boy should go to a mental hospital. The mother got upset. The mother and "the psychic" got into a quarrel. And they haven't spoken to each other since then. Now it's my turn to "talk" to the boy. 

Tammy and I waited in a visitation room. I told Tammy to relax and try to take deep breaths while I was closing my eyes and "meditating". What I was doing was to clear my mind and get into a serene state of mind. There was a knock on the door. Tammy rushed to open the door. I opened my eyes and I saw a thin, average height, Asian boy with lost expressions accompanied by a burly guard. The guard sat down in a chair. Tammy introduced me as a "family friend" to gather information about her son's conditions. The boy understood Vietnamese, but his preferred language was English. It was my preferred language as well. Since we only had 45 minutes left (time was wasted in filling out information on visitors and waiting for the boy to be escorted to the visitation room), I got right down to business:

-How do you feel?

-OK, I want to go home!

-Did you sleep and eat OK?

-Yes, but I was cold (he wore a jacket and warm up exercise pants though the facility and the room were set at a comfortable temperature).

-Do you hear voices in your head? Somebody's talking to you but you can't see the person? 

 

Silence. Victor didn't answer and didn't look me in the eyes. He avoided my gaze. 

-Do you know why you're here?

-No.

-No? You hit your mother and that was the black eye you gave her ( I motioned for Tammy to come over and sit next to him).

-I did?

-He didn't remember (Tammy interjected and then reached over and embraced Victor), Oh, my son, my son. 

-Do you get any medication?

-Yes.

-What is it?

-I don't know. 

I turned to the guard and asked him. He called the nurse who gave me the info (Olanzapine). I turned back to Victor:

-Victor, your Mom loves you very much. She had no choice but to send you over here. You got violent. You hit her. Do you think you will hit her again when you get upset if you go home?

-No, I won't. I've got to be positive. I figured what was wrong with me. I wrote everything down in my notes. Do you want to see my notes?

-Yes, of course, but we don't have time here. Can you basically summarize what you wrote?

-I figured everything out, from 0 to 9. Mom, I want to have two cats, black and white. Cats have nine lives, you see. That's why I want cats (He then spoke Japanese)

-What else did you write?

-I must be positive. I think too much. I worry about global warming.

-That's right, we should all be worried about global warming, but you just do your part, like don't smoke; you recycle, drive electric car, but leave the big picture to the government and the officials. You can't do everything. That makes sense to you? 

-I must be positive. I worry about global warming. When I get well, I want to go back to school learning Japanese, Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese. 

Tammy cut in,

-Why so many languages? You're scaring me again, Victor. Roberto here is a good man, a good friend of Mommy. When you get home, he'll come over and talk to you, listen to you, OK? You just tell him what bothers you, OK son?

I nodded my head, took out a piece of paper, write my name and phone number on it, and handed it to Victor. 

-Just call me, anytime you want, 24/7.  It's OK to learn languages, but in your case, just one language at a time. I'm proud of you,. You can speak Japanese! That's wonderful! Call me when you want to  talk. Meanwhile, please do exercises like sit up, push up, leg raise, and best of all, run slowly or fast, it's all up to you when you find yourself thinking too much of one thing. Thinking is good, but not too much, not of one thing, otherwise it's called obsession, otherwise you get sick, and can't go home. I think you are OK. Try to eat and sleep well at night. Sleep at night, OK? Not during the day. Try to keep busy, active during the day. Yes, write as much as you like. Talk if you want to. Talk to your Mom, the doctor who's treating me, or me. You've got my number. Meanwhile tell yourself you're getting better and you're going home to be with your Mom who loves you very much, as you can see. OK,? A deal? Sorry, we've got to go. Time's up. Glad to see you. Call me if you need to talk. Anytime. OK?

I shook his hand again and embraced him. Then Tammy embraced him and cried. Victor was surprised, "Mommy, why are you crying?".

On the way out to the parking lot, Tammy hit me with questions again:

-So, what do you think? Can he go home?

-It's up to the doctor. He has to make an evaluation to determine if it's safe for him and you, too, once he goes home. Are you sure you want to eat? 

-Why not. Appetite or not, I must eat. I must be strong, for my boy. Where do you want to go?

-I'm not fussy. Anywhere as long as it's not fancy or expensive.

We stopped at Phở Việt Nam on Spring Mountain Road. I ordered spring rolls and a big bowl of phở and a beer. Tammy ordered rice and pork chops.

-What I'm going to say is guesswork and conjecture. Most human knowledge is guesswork adjusted and modified as we go along. It may or not may be true. I have no medical training, but that doesn't mean I don't know shit about the human mind. I read a lot, as you probably knew that from my roommate. What we know, study at school is from reading anyway. The more the person reads critically, the more he knows of what's going on around him, in him, and about him, if he really wishes to know. 

Your boy is sick all right, but not severely. He has psychosis, but he still has some connections with the real, everyday, physical Reality. He's not very violent. He didn't scream, yell, get up in anger when you disclosed that you put away his dolls. He was angry but he expressed his anger in a controlled way. So he is not impulsive, not violently impulsive. I looked up the medication they gave him. It's used in the treatment of schizophrenia for psychosis. I think, he hears voices although he didn't want to say so. He has obsessions. He's into numerology. He wants to control his reality. Mental illness is tough to treat. What triggered it could be stress, a certain traumatic event, or even a physical injury to the brain. But as I said, I believe your son's case is mild and  manageable. 

What you must realize is that we are all mentally sick, stressed, unhinged. To live as a human being is to be susceptible to mental illness. The difference is in the degree, the severity of the sickness. Look at Donald Trump. Most of what he says and does are not rational or sensible. Look at Hillary Clinton. Have you ever wondered why she has to do things the hard way? Why she had to lie about her being shot while traveling overseas as Secretary of State? Why the email server business? We all do things that hurt our interests. We are not really rational beings as we fancy ourselves to be. 

It's my opinion that there are three separate Realities:

1. The objective, verifiable, physical Reality in which physical and chemical laws apply. Pure water at sea level boils at 100 Celsius degrees. 

2. The subjective, human, bullshit Reality in which humans believe certain "things" and "persons" to be true just because they were brainwashed or talked themselves into believing them to be true: God, Reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, so on and so forth. All dumb asses and weak-willed or poorly educated folks embrace this Reality and are willing even to die for it.  A great majority of mankind dwell in this Reality 

3. The psychotic Reality in which bona fides schizophrenics, fruitcakes, psychos dwell.  They hear voices. They have visual hallucinations. They have delusions. They have repetitive behavior for "control". They can't control their thoughts. Their thoughts control them. Your son lives in this Reality, unfortunately. I think with medications, exercise, nutrition, and talk therapy (as long as there are no organic brain injuries) your son will be OK. You must think so. You must hope so. Your son has what's called a "Controlled Burn", not out of control mental illness. He could be cured. 

Wissai

June 1, 2016