(Towanda!) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

”I had no idea you would pour all your energies into something so – insignificant.”

The strange man whisked the papers on the rocks, not looking directly at me. I turned away from him, thinking I needed to get quickly away from him, and I still had all those buckets to empty at the neighbor’s yard, because I had promised I would empty the buckets after the rain.

But I needed to walk fast and with great determination, because there was danger there, lurking just outside my side vision. And I had to steer clear of the other house. I had lost the right to be afraid of that house, or, in that house, and I bet the malevolent spirit, who had appeared to me sometimes in that house was now appearing to the new residents. It was dark, and I saw lights on inside, but I could only glance for a moment, not stopping, or else my heart would surely stop beating. Out of jealousy, out of fury, out of unforgivingness. Why had the creature not followed me out? Why couldn’t it be like in The Entity, where the evil followed the woman, or Jaws, where the shark followed Mrs. Brody all the way out to the South Pacific in one of the sequels, just to get even? If I didn’t even have Pennywise anymore, who was I? What was I?

Like the strange man said. Insignificant.

That was the first night I woke up with dirt and small pebbles in my sheets.

Horrified, I threw the covers away to search for human body parts, but dirt was all there was to find.

Obviously, I told no one.

Dr. Kesey rushed into the room, with a nurse and two guards, but since there was no physical harm, only the nightmare, he was able to calm me with a benzodiazepine and some kind words.

He knows what the trouble is. They all do.

The biggest surprise during my time here has been seeing Mark. They had told him I was psychotic and needed time to get to terms with reality even a little, before he could visit. I still can’t say how long I have been in here. He never talks about that. But he never died. It was very hard for me to believe. I had such clear images of myself searching for him, turning the whole house upside down, emptying all the cabinets. An image of pickled tomatoes.

But he said living out in the country was a bad thing, that being so secluded had somehow contributed to the deterioration of my state, you should have heard him, I truly hated him at that moment, it was so obviously a memorized line, they all think I am an idiot just because I had a meltdown. I let go of his hand when he said this to me. “Dr. Kesey warned me you might react to hearing this, but I think you have the right to know, Alexandra.” He has stopped calling me Nip-Nip. It is so official here, with the Alexandras and the Mrs. Spoffords. Even him. Who cares if they record everything in the visiting room.

So, when he told me he had sold the estate, my home, while I was in here, deranged, another word the good doctor and his homeys love to spread around, I wanted to kill him. Yes.

He must have seen it in my eyes, because he rose to his feet and instantly took a step back. I hated him for doing that, too. As if I was dangerous. Then, I pondered, perhaps I was.

I told him I never wanted to see him again. I was angry. I spat on his face. I called him a traitor. A murderer. After he left, I cried for a week. Some of that time I was in isolation, since, according to Dr. Kesey, my crying upset the others, and messed the whole healing dynamic of the unit. I didn’t care.

So far, he hasn’t been in to see me since. But I know he talks to Dr. Kesey. The doctor tells me this, sometimes, if he thinks I am being – receptive. Like the last time they intercepted me banging my head on the hard floor boards in my room, almost drawing blood, and he needed to sedate me, and I slept for a long time. When I awoke, he asked me if this was really the kind of behavior that I wanted him to report back to my husband, who had been heart-broken as it was, the last time he had been to see me. “I am heart-broken!” I yelled, sullen and petulant, knowing I was behaving exactly like a crazy person, but unable to ignore my baser need to take it out on anyone at all, to make them see how much they were hurting me.

I guess, being in a place like this, with everyone’s craziness so easily exposed and out in the open, one creates one’s own selective boundaries for what is considered truly crazy, and what is just another Thursday at the asylum.

These notes are the only thing I have here that are private and all mine. The big mute man from group therapy keeps them hidden for me. I asked for my own notebook, and Mark did promise to bring it to me when Dr. Kesey okayed it. But that was before I got mad and he left, so I don’t know what the situation is, with the notebook any more than with Mark.

The nightmares started not right away after I last saw Mark, but perhaps a couple of days later. I don’t know who those people are, in the dreams. Dr. Kesey is an old man with Einstein hair and a perpetual encouraging smile on his face, so he definitely is not the strange man. Sometimes the man is the new resident. Sometimes he is some authority figure I am trying to talk to, but he never looks at me. There are the blond twin girls, sixteen-year-olds, holding hands in micro-shorts and denim jackets. There is the woman with the curlers and thin, almost transparent skin. There is the inexplicable feeling of impending doom and menace. And sometimes there is the feeling of becoming the monster myself.

Seeing the early records of my dreams in this beat-up blue notebook that isn’t even mine is sometimes painful, but I reread them anyway. I have no recollection writing them, but the hand is most definitely my own. On the cover of the ruled notebook, blue like blue jeans, soft and juvenile, kind of like the ones that used to be handed out to us in the beginning of the school year thirty years ago, for Calculus and Biology and English, with things like “I love Larry from homeroom 4ever!” written inside hearts in the back cover, is a name. M. Quick. The previous owner. The big mute man hasn’t said much about him, a little asylum humor there. Since I am not supposed to have sharp objects in my hand right now, I very well can’t ask anyone else about this M. Quick, either. To think I would shove a pen in my throat! Dr. Kesey doesn’t get the episodes. He doesn’t get it. But he will.

Meanwhile, Forman, that is the big mute man’s name, keeps me in pens and pencils. He has grounds privileges. He helps in the kitchen. The nurses like him, and the guards would ask his help, were he not one of the inmates.

Forman is friends with Torrance, who I guess is the prerequisite troublemaker of this place. I guess Forman keeps him a bit calmer. Torrance lives in a different building, at the foot of the small hill, with the red tin roof, the B-side, as the residents call it. “Quit screaming right now! Do you want to go live on the B-side?!” That kind of thing. The B-side seems to be like the boogeyman for the inmates here. I guess the unit we are living in, then, is the A-side. I like the music record analogy.

I only see Torrance randomly, when they tear him through the halls in the middle of group therapy, kicking and screaming, not from the one I participate in, but another, for the seriously disturbed perhaps, although why I would not be participating that one I have no idea. “There he goes again, that crazy fuck, yelling his head off. Like you”, Bells once said, obviously intending to be as rude as possible. Well, perhaps that is why Forman sought me out. Perhaps he likes the really volatile ones.

I met an old friend of mine the other day. He stood by the doorway, not meeting my eye.

“What about love? Where does that come in, or at all?”

Alarm clock

healthy eating, nuts and Oreos, for Sundays

empty apartment, physical exercise, I sit in the corner, eating my hair

“What, no garlic?” “You can add some, man.”

I’ll have mine with whipped cream, please.

Love me love me love me love me love me love me love me love me love me.

L’hiver: the best way to empty the reservoirs of bad vibes? Après moi, le déluge.

If I smile like this,

if I turn around like this,

if I took off my clothes,

if I make the sun go down,

if I sit very still,

if I tell you lies,

if I never ask any questions,

if I rise like the full moon,

if I hold my hands out in pain,

if I let my hair grow,

if I keep it short,

if I wrote pretty words,

if I gave you my journal to read,

if I asked you for nothing,

if I asked you for something,

if I ran for my life,

if I washed your hair,

if I quit drinking for good,

if I disappeared from sight, 

if I broke all my promises,

if I cleared my schedule,

if I never shopped for shoes again,

if I told you I trusted you,

Would the dirt from underneath my bedcovers vanish?

Would you love me more?

Or not at all?

The problem with the sheets is twofold: I, as of yet, do not have grounds privileges. So how is it possible to sleepwalk outside, at night, in this facility? Also, why am I always checking for body parts? Is it a dream? Because I don’t recall anything like it. And how come Landis, my roommate, has not said a thing? She hates me, and would love to report something like this to Dr. Kesey. She used to have the room for herself, since her old roommate killed herself, and now I think they are placing bets for my quick departure in the same fashion.

But the episodes are not about self-harm, not at least in a way the doctor and the rest are interpreting them. I have no desire to die. Mark knew it. Although I am not sure if he knows it now. But I am beginning to get the hang of this place, and I will try and play by the rules. I miss the outdoors, and from what I can gather from looking out the windows, the grounds are large and well kept. There are tall trees, mostly spruces and pine trees, the outskirts of what I believe is a large forest, around the hospital buildings. There seem to be at least three yellow buildings here, quite the compound, and when the sun is shining through the treetops onto the glimmering snow, it is really quite beautiful.

I will play by the rules, so I won’t have to hide the pens or the notebook. I need to talk to Mark, but I believe he will be back when Dr. Kesey says I have calmed down enough. I want to see what it looks like outside. If it is at all possible to get the kind of dirt on my sheets that I am seeming to produce here. I feel like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption, emptying my pockets unsuspected in the trash at lunch, the pebbles making a louder noise than I would like, masking the sound by coughing, or by some other means. I think the nurses think I am getting rid of food, but my weight is staying the same, so Dr. Kesey has not brought it up yet. Thank god the dreams don’t come every night.

Shit, it’s nurse Nichols. No time now will continue later.

Obviously, a debt of gratitude is owed to the following: Ken Kesey, Susanna Kaysen, Matthew Quick, Milos Forman, Mike Nichols, John Landis, James Mangold, Stephen King.