Psychotic Views Part Sixteen:
In the paper, the biggest story of the day was birth control, birth control can you believe it, and what was the hot story of the day on the, what passed for a TV news channel? Go ahead, guess, give up? Birth control. Why is this such a political issue in the U.S.? Why is it any kind of issue? Massive world poverty, underground slave trade, global climate change, wars, a lousy health care system, a lousy public education system, corporate owned media, corporate owned politicians, racism, a permanent underclass, government debt, personal debt, jobs that don’t even pay enough to keep people breaking even, corruption straight across the board, sexism, torture, violations of civil liberties, violations of civil rights, the use of mercenaries by the government to fight wars. All of this is going on and yet the hot national media news story is birth control.
What the fuck man, how can anyone anywhere be against birth control? Huh? There are seven billion people on the planet and growing, one out of four of them are starving, that’s approximately one billion, seven hundred and fifty million people, 1.75 billion. I can understand arguments made on both sides of the abortion issue, but not birth control, not one goddamn person on this absurd little orb called Earth should be against birth control, not one. The people who are against both abortion and birth control carry illogical and unreasonable to the nth degree. People who are against abortion should be the biggest advocates for birth control on the planet. Think about it, yeah, I know you don’t like to think, but do it anyway. Why do abortions occur? Unwanted pregnancies, right? Why do unwanted pregnancies occur, because people aren’t using birth control. So, if everyone is using birth control you have no unwanted pregnancies and you have not abortions, Jesus fucking Christ. It seems so obvious to me. Am I the only one though? Am I the only one who thinks its so obvious? SO, logical, reasonable and sensual? Total birth control, no abortions, almost everyone says an abortions is such a volatile issue. They say there is no common ground for pro-abortion and anti-abortions to meet on.
Well, to me, there is a common ground and the common ground is birth control. Both sides could work together on this issue. Look at the good that would result from everyone using birth control, less people getting diseases, gonorrhea, syphilis, clymedia, AIDS and all of the other, less poverty, both for women and for children, less life threatening hunger. The numbers for child hunger rise with each passing year. What do these anti-abortion, anti-birth control people want? What are they expecting to occur? There are only two possible scenarios for humanity if everyone on the planet lived according to their anti-abortion, anti-birth control criteria. Either no one is going to be having sex or Mother Earth is going to be up to her forehead with people.
Do anti-abortion, anti-birth control think it’s a reasonable, feasible idea to have limitless, totally, uncontrolled amount of people occupying the planet. We seven billion right now, is there ever enough to them? Too many? Ten billion? Twelve billion? These people and their supposedly high moral ground, well, is it fucking moral to push a kid out into the world when the odds are highly stacked in favor of that child starving or getting a disease, suffering his or her entire life and dying before the age of eight years old?
What is it with these puritan moralists? They draw their ‘Do not cross’ lines in very strange places. Obsessive about sex, aren’t they, or so they say in public anyway. Who knows what they’re doing in private. A lot of these type of moralists are very good at preaching but lousy at practicing what they’re preaching. They play a certain tune outside for the world to hear, but it’s a different tune being played inside away from the eyes of others.
Even if they’re completely sincere and not hypocritical about birth control, their lives of demarcation are at least a thousand miles from where they should be. They moralize endlessly about sex, birth control and abortion, but oddly they remain mum, muted on the subject of war and other rich humans.
Premarital sex is a sin, birth control is a sin, homosexuality is a sin, abortion is not only a sin, it’s also murder. They get red faced, vein popping mad in their bulging eyed outrage over all of their subjects, but war? Huh? What? I can’t hear you. Did you say something? No? War is the darkest, most devastatingly destructive wrong human beings can commit. If you want to put things in religious terms and call them sins, then war is the darkest, most devastatingly destructive sin human beings can commit, not sex, not birth control, not abortion, war.
War is sin committed on a massive scale by which nothing else can even come close by comparison. Civil war, foreign war, international war, whatever their type, they are the crulest, gravest sin of all, but when war is being proposed, when the prospects of it are about to be fully engaged, where are the religious leaders and where are the Puritan moralists? Who knows what percentage of them actually believe war is an outrageously offensive sin, but few of them, very, very few of them will say so out loud in any sort of public forum. Yes, yes, the moral cat gets their tongue. Thousands of people die, maybe tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, endless series of murder, rape and torture, sometimes entire families are killed, endless scores of destruction of land and building structures.
The toll of war incalculable, but do they climb up high on their moral mountain top and preach outrage about that? No, they save that for birth control, and as is so often the case with anti-abortions and anti-birth control advocates, they are also against government sponsored help for children: school lunch, Head Start, etc. They don’t want people to take precautions against unwanted pregnancies, they don’t want people to protect themselves, not against pregnancies or diseases. They want children to be born, endless scores of children. They not only want it they insist on it, but after the birth, they don’t care what happens to the child. They don’t care what kind of life that child has. Their moral responsibility ends, with their superior morality in tow and they just calmly and casually walk away, child born, job done, mission accomplished.
What is the child poverty rate now? Not just here in the U.S., but for the entire world. What is the infant mortality rate? What is rate for childhood diseases, birth defects, what about the rates for neglect, abandonment, molestation and abuse? What are all those rates here in the U.S.? What are they in war torn countries? What are they in countries with high malnutrition and high poverty? Oh, that’s no concern to anti-abortion, anti-birth control crowd, child born, job done, mission accomplished.
U. S. politics is really as such a sight to behold. Corporations are people, money is free speech, all three branches of the Federal Government are corrupted, so are the branches of the State and Local governments. Climate change is fucking the planet all to hell. Brain diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are up, respiratory diseases like asthma and emphysema are up, poverty is up, unemployment is an outright epidemic. Homelessness is up, personal bankruptcy is up, tens of thousands of people die every year due to having no access to health care. The Pentagon spends more money than the rest of the world put together on defense. U.S. citizens are allowed to be assassinated by the government, U. S. citizens are allowed to be held indefinitely in jail without ever being charged with a crime, war, all of this is going on each and every day in the U.S. without analysis, assessment, or discussion, but oh yes, let’s prattle on about gay marriage, birth control, and call the other people pseudo controversial issues.
Why talk about war and military spending, when you can talk about gay marriage. Why talking about a failing infrastructure, a failing health care system, a failing public education system, when you talk about birth control. There is no serious national discussion about any truly serious national discussion about any truly serious issue in this country. Is it any wonder then that these problems have just gotten progressively worse, and will continue to get progressively worse in the future until the entire country gets sucked down a gigantic toilet bowl black hole.
You know what I think? I think people like me are the only really honest people in the world. I’m nuts, I admit it, I’m stark raving, howling at the moon, naked in my backyard, fucking nuts. You know what should be done instead of building walls to open up people like me. Walls should be built around the entire goddamn world. All of humanity should have large padded walls built around it. The entire world should be declared fucking, goddamn nuts, because it is.
Ladies and gentleman! Ladies and gentleman! Quiet please. I, as spokesperson for the international group of eminent psychiatrists and psychologists known as the United Brotherhood of Psychiatrists and Psychologists (UBPP), have an important announcement to make. We have had all of humankind legally declared fucking nuts. This declaration obviously includes all of us, since we are a part of humankind. Denying we are also fucking nuts would be fruitless because everyone knows psychiatrists and psychologists are nuts as the people they are treating. So, starting next week, construction will begin on a massive worldwide project that, when completed, will house all of humanity inside a psychiatric care facility. No one is to be exclude, no one, that’s all for now, thank you for coming. There’s coffee and doughnuts for anyone who wants them at the rear of the hall.
I was wondering if I might just want to stay here indefinitely. It’s safer in here than outside. People in here are, at least, than outside. People in here are, at least, have been diagnosed and are being treated. They have been recognized as having a problem. All of the people on the outside are still running around with no supervision or monitoring. They are undiagnosed and untreated. They have not been recognized for having a problem. Hell, the way people drive alone, should act as ample evidence of their suffering from a mental psychosis and the cats just on the surface without any deeper analytical examination.
Maybe I could do things to keep myself here. Howling at the moon, walking around naked everywhere, growling and barking like a dog, stuff like that. The goal here is supposed to be for you to become well enough to leave and return to the outside world, but the outside world is much more frightening than being inside this place. I can see that, now I’m actually here on the inside and here I am again writing another book. Why? Doing so probably only serves to prove that I am suffering from an incurable psychosis.
I am a writer, having written, I am a writer. This is an unbreakable truth. I am a writer. When finished, this will be my sixth book. There are a score of short stories too and another score of story ideas, but it has all been for naught, not one word has ever been published, not one word. Why do I keep writing then? Why? Why write if you aren’t going to be published? Why bother? Why struggle? Why go through all of the time and effort? Maybe it’s just a mania, an obsessive, delusioned mania, I don’t know. I have learned so much, but I know so little.
Published or not, a writer is who I am. It is what I am. Writing is as vital to me as the blood rushing through my veins, the marrow in my bones, the pumping of my heart. I have to write. I have to write. I have to do it regardless of the outcome to stop would be to die.
Maybe that’s the only reason I am writing all of this now, to stop would be to die. If true, I can think of no better reason to write. Maybe writing is the only thing which has kept me alive this long. Maybe it is the only thing keeping me alive now. Maybe it is the only thing which can keep me alive in the future.
Hmmmm……. I wonder if I could market this story from the inmate in the asylum angle, that’s all book publishing is anymore, isn’t it? Marketing, if it’s not obviously marketable, publishers don’t even want to acknowledge your existence. What the fuck does content matter anyway? Publishers don’t care about fucking content.
‘Yes, yes, Jr.-------, you’re a great writer. No doubt about it. Style, imagination, wit, yest, it’s all there, but so what? Nobody cares about any of that shit. Let’s be frank Mr.-------, you’re a nobody, a nothing, a never was, you’re not hot, you’re not even lukewarm, you’re cold. That what you are, cold, as cold as a hundred year old frozen mackerel. You’re here but you don’t exist. Your humor, your insight, your intelligence and your dialogue will fly bout as far as a faulty paper airplane. You’re not a celebrity of any kind: rock star, movie star, TV star, athlete, government or ex government official of any size or shape.
You’re none of those things. You’re not even a college professor. On top of that, you have no interesting back story. There’s no selling point anywhere in you future being. Now, If you had fucked Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton in the ass, and made porno tapes and accidently on purpose released it on the internet, then we’d have something. There’d be no problem publishing your stuff then. We’d have a huge selling point. As huge as _____ well, never mind. So, go away Mr. ----- and take your style, wit, imagination, insight, dialogue, intelligence, and humor with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go publish a celebrity tell all book written in crayon on a roll of 2 ply toilet paper. I smell a best seller here. It was a late Thursday morning, when I had a visitor. It was one of the two people I had called to them I was here. There was a light sound of footsteps approaching my room. It was the person who had brought me my music player. We shook hands, exchanged uneasy smiles standing next to the bed.
“Hi,” I said, “I’m glad you could come.”
“I wanted to come before, but you said-----, I’m sorry.”
“I’m the one who should be sorry, you wanted to come and I said no. At the time, I didn’t want you or anyone else to see me in this place. The shame had crowded everything else out of my mind.”
“But, I’m here now,” he said quickly trying to redirect the conversation to a more positive place.”
“Thanks for bringing my music before.”
“No problem, you always liked listening to music.”
“Sometimes to the chagrin of my neighbors. At loud decibels, music to me, is a unique art form. Unlike any other kind, you can listen to the same music ten thousand times and still want to hear it then thousand more. It can get down to your inner being and touch you like no other art form can.”
“I know what you mean. You can lose your eyes and drift off to a place far away from where you actually are.”
“A better place.”
“Always, otherwise there would be no reason to go.”
“And trips of the imagination cost nothing.”
“The only kind of trips we’ll ever be able to afford.”
“No doubt, fortunately I’ve always had a playful imagination.”
“Is it okay to ask how you’re doing?”
“Better than when I came in.”
“That’s good to hear. Are they treating you okay?
“I don’t know what goes on in the rest of this place, but they’ve been decent with me. The doctor handling my treatment goes easy on the meds and is easy to talk to.”
“Any way of knowing when you might be able to leave?”
“No, not yet. It’s a slow progression. Sometimes it might seem as if there’s no progression at all, or maybe you might slip back a little.”
“But you are moving in the right direction now?”
“Yeah, you know, it’s almost as if I’m having to learn to walk all over again. I’m taking steps, small unsure steps while someone is always holding onto me, but the day will come when I’m walking that the person holding onto me is going to let go and see if I can walk on my own.”
“That’s a good way of putting it. You always were good at that sort of thing.”
“I wish more people would have noticed.”
“Book publishers, you mean?”
“Mostly, but anywhere I would’ve been paid for creative writing would’ve been okay.”
“How about the writers who pen the scripts for political TV ads or campaign speeches. Now, there’s some professional creative writing.”
The both of us laughed. I suddenly realized that the two of us had been standing during the entire time of our conversation with this realization, I decided to sit down, I was, in truth, feeling a little tired.
“You can sit down too,” I said.
“No, I’d rather stand. You know me, always restless.”
“Antsy pants syndrome or is it Itchy Bitches Disease? I always get those two mixed up.”
“So, how have you been dealing with not having any visitors until now? Has it bothered you a lot?”
“You’re not my first visitor.”
“No? Who else has been here to see you. Not -----.”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You would’ve told me if she had been here. Who was it then.”
“A priest.”
“A priest? He came here to see you? Did you know him?”
“Given my views about organized religion and the fact that I haven’t set foot in a church in over thirty years, outside of funerals and I ‘m not likely to know too many priests.”
“It wasn’t the pastor of our old parish, was it?”
“No, I know him. He visited mom a couple of times when she was in the hospital.”
“So, he didn’t know you and you didn’t know him.”
“No, I think he makes regular visits here. Just like they do in medical hospitals. Maybe I caught his attention because of my reason for being here. Maybe he saw me when they brought me in and asked why I was here.”
“And he came in and talked to you?”
“Three times.”
“All because e was concerned about you? Someone he didn’t know, someone he had never met before.”
“Yeah.”
“He must be a decent man then.”
“He seemed to be. I thought he’d come here and start right in with lecturing me about religion, god and all that stuff, but he didn’t do that. He just talked to me, listened to what I had to say and tried to help me understand what led me to end up here in this place.”
“I could’ve done the same for you, you know.”
“Yes, I do know, but he was a stranger with no personal connection to me. At that point, I wasn’t ready to see people I had close personal ties to. You can understand that can’t you.”
“I think so.”
“It’s hard to hold your head up and look people in the eye after something like that. Especially if it’s someone you’re close to.”
“It’s okay, really, you don’t have to explain. It’s nothing you should feel bad about. Just work on getting out of here.”
“Well, I think the priest is out of the picture now anyway. We got into the subject of religion and god during his last visit and I doubt he’ll be back.”
“You gave it to him good, huh?”
“I didn’t say anywhere near what I could have. I thought because I liked the man, I took it pretty easy on him, but evidently it was enough.”
“You’re sure he won’t be back?”
“It’s just a feeling I have. There was something about the way he left, but hey, it’s nearly
impossible to have any kind of a real in depth discussion about religion anyway. You question people’s beliefs and they become emotionally erratic. You too, often end up with name calling, screaming, shouting and raving with peoples’ faces becoming as red as a boiled lobster.”
“With him being a priest, it had to happen sometime.”
“To me, all that matters is what sort of a person you are and the reason is because this is what decides what kind of a world we live in. This is what decides what kind of a species human beings are. This is what decides everything about life. What kind of a person are you? Everything else is irrelevant. You tell me you’re a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu. That doesn’t answer the question. What kind of a person are you? You say you’re from this country or that country. That doesn’t answer the question. What kind of a person are you? You say, I’m white, I’m black, or I’m brown, that doesn’t answer the question. What kind of a person are you?”
“It’s a good philosophy to live by.”
“But it’s not a philosophy you can easily hid behind.”
“Which means very few people will ever follow it.”
“People like to hide behind things-masks. The truth can be a little hard to bear. Especially when it’s about ourselves.”
“There’s another reason people would reject your philosophy.”
“And that is?”
“People like to pigeon hole other people. It makes life so much easier. It requires so much less thought and effort. Like judging people based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, sex and class.”
“You could even add looks, size, sexuality, age, physical and mental handicaps. The list is a long one.”
“Judging people as individuals is just a lot more work.”
“It makes the world more gray. Much more gray. People too often want everything black and white, good or bad, nothing in between.”
“And they like to feel superior too. Pigeon holing people makes that easy.”
My eyes were feeling heavy. I hadn’t had enough sleep the night before and the tell tale signs of it were beginning to show, I yawned, then I yawned again.
“I think I should be going, “ he said.
“You’re sure?”
“You’re tired.”
“I woke up at three o’clock and I couldn’t go back to sleep.”
“Besides, I’m getting restless as all hell anyway.”
“Okay.”
“It was good talking to you again, I’ve missed it.”
“We’ll have to do this again soon.”
“Sure, whenever you can make it.”
We shook hands again, exchanged subtle meaningful smiles then parted way. As soon as he left, I fell into bed, rolled over on the left side and I went quickly off to sleep. Within minutes, I started to dream. So often when I dream, there appear in a series of three or four, but not this time. There was only one dream this time, a rare and pleasant dream, full of beauty and light.
We were living in a daydream
With the world beneath our feet
And the sun smiled on the water
Where the sky and the ocean meet.
We were spellbound
Oh, spellbound
We were listening down at the rainbow
As the leaves fell to the ground
Whispering as they tremble
And the wind laughed at the sound.
We were spellbound
Oh, spellbound
We were children in the garden
Where the flowers kiss the sky
And the birds sang out in wonder
As the day went sailing by
We were spellbound
Oh, spellbound
Oh, spellbound
Mmmm, spellbound
‘Daydream’ Robin Trower