On psych wards and a joke
This is from a The Irish Times book review
Re U.S. writer Bette Howland’s posthumous memoir W-3, the name of the Chicago psych ward she stayed in.
“Her prose is direct, unadorned, understated. Despite the horrors she endures she does not appeal for the reader’s sympathy, but rather seeks to be understood, to have her voice heard, and to have her vision of her story recounted and expressed, a story that otherwise would be put down for her by the doctors, psychiatrists, externs and others she meets along the way: ‘I would like to put this in a recognizable form,’ she writes of her experiences; and goes on to do so forthrightly, and without a trace of self- pity.”
People with mental illness are often treated cruelly, I would say in some cases tortured. The 1980s pop star Adam Ant, who had mental health issues later in life, said in a more recent interview that mental illness is “the last taboo.” I don’t think anyone who is not physically violent or threatening suicide/murder should be forcibly hospitalized.
“The Sound of Stress Ball” by yours truly
With apologies to Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon (I blame John-Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt again)
I’ve come to squeeze you yet again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping (keep those seeds away Mr. Man)
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains within the sound of stress ball
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
Beneath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my hands were calmed by a soft stress ball
That split the night
And touched the sound of a stress ball
And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People stressing without squeezing
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share…
No one dare disturb the feel of stress ball
Fools said I do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Squeeze a ball that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of stress ball
And the people bowed and prayed to the stress ball they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the signs said the words of the prophets are written on all the stress balls
And tenement halls
And whisper’d in the feel of a stress ball