Life Inside The Sane Asylum...Easter Sunday

The things I could write about on this Easter Sunday morning...

I could go on and on and bore you to death about my Easter Sundays as a child, but I won’t. We all remember, the dressing up in our outfits, eggs and wabbits, peeps, baskets with fake grass, deviled eggs with ham, and all the rest. 

This Easter Sunday morning I want to write about my memory of the Pound  Cake Lady.

I was raised as a fundamentalist in the Southern Baptist tradition. On most Sundays our preachers preached hard against alcoholism, promiscuity, and narcotics because these things could lead to cigarette smoking.

Easter Sundays were different. They were cheerful, optimistic, and full of hope. I think they were looking forward to the covered dish lunch that would follow the service. And the ladies that brought those covered dishes...well, they were just blessed.

Every church had those talented ladies known for their speciality. Mrs. Thomas was known as the fried chicken lady. Mrs. Dupree made the world's best chicken and dumplings and Mrs. Lindsay was called the Pound cake 
Lady.

She was slight, with gray hair, and usually wore this bright blue skirt suit on Easter Sunday.

There are some people you don’t forget. She was one of those people.

She had a heavenly glow. People smiled when they passed by her like she was unique.

“Who’s that woman?” someone would ask.

“That is the Pound Cake Lady,” always,said in reverence.

After the Sunday Easter service, we would all go downstairs to the fellowship hall. Easter Sundays were bigger spreads than most. There was even a special table dedicated to cornbread and biscuits.

It was too much. Overwhelming. I even saw people standing outside the fellowship hall, smoking

cigarettes after their meal. It was as though they were unwinding after sin.

The woman in the blue skirt suit placed something on the end of the table. It was golden, fat, hulking, sacred pound cake.

“Hurry and get some, before it’s all gone.” went through everyone's mind.

The cake didn’t last four seconds, especially among those chain-smoking just outside the door. But when it disappeared, the old woman replaced it with another.

People blessed her name

forevermore. Hallelujah. And so did I.

Every church has a pound cake lady. They are young, middle-aged, or elderly, and they are holy. These ladies are messengers, sent to humanity as proof that God is not gluten-free. He loves white flour, sugar, and butter, no matter what diet books say.

If you have doubts whether your congregation has a pound cake lady, just ask your church secretary. She knows their phone number by heart.

May your Easter Sunday be blessed with the spirit of hope and optimism...Doc

Lemme Think About It...E-motion

" Emotions are a record of your past and your body stores these records. Your body
       responds to these emotions...so your body is living in the past of e-motion."

So, with that said, it could be inferred that you are really not a pain in the ass, but just a pain from the past. See, you are ok!...

Your body is a map and storage house of every experience you have ever had.

So many of us carry repressed and trapped emotions within multiple areas of our bodies, without even knowing it. In fact, we can go for years, even decades, completely oblivious to the blocked energy our muscles are holding on to. This repressed energy is responsible for countless ailments and chronic health conditions that cause us great suffering.

The fact is that your body doesn’t forget.

Human Conservancy...evolving

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How does the mind evolve?

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That question was on my mind this morning. I just could not let go of it for some reason. I must say it bothered me. Much like the reaccuring thought of a root canal gone bad. EVOLVE???

It seems to me that civilizations have evolved through some form of strategic forgetting. Maybe a forgetting of what were once considered vital life skills.

For example, the farm era may have morphed itself when the farm worker realized they could let go of all their woodland lore, their skills for animal tracking, and other bits of information that seemed vital coming form the hunting and gathering era. And, hey, they got wind there might be a good living in pork belly.

Now let's move forward in time. When societies industrialised, then reading and writing became vital, and the knowledge of ploughing and harvesting could fall by the wayside...and so the mind forget those bits of information.

As you are so astulaty aware, many of us get lost without our smartphone GPS. So what's next? Dirverless cars? With driverless cars, will we forget how to drive ourselves?

I'm guessing we will be surrounded by voice-recognition Articial Intelligence that can phrase the most beautiful and appropriate utterances for us all. 

Hell, we may even forget how to spell. And does it really matter?...Doc

Human Conservancy

The Human Conservancy Field Office

Field Notes…

Today’s psychology, as a collection of theories, concepts, and techniques, has attempted to help individuals and the society realize relief from mental problems solving methods that do nothing to increase ones understanding of the role of thought. 

This has led to the misperception that rituals, techniques or other placebos are the route to change. Thus, by creating the illusion of change through altering the form or formate through which people express their insecurity, negative feelings, and dependencies, psychology has unwittingly contributed to its own inability to progress as a science and as a field of study. 

There is nothing to be found in studying and explaining the attributes of placebo sugar pills, water injection, or psychotherapeutic rituals, because in the end it is the human beings level of understanding and ability to think that brings results.

The field of psychology will take a new and exciting direction when we begin to look directly toward the mental power we as humans possess. Once this new wisdom is formulated and shared with people, the benefits will spill over into our society to help many people looking for relief from emotional dis-ease. Mostly from their own fear anxiety and recurrent life of self destructive behaviors that seem just out of individual control. Life Adjustment issues I call them.

This direction is also the one that will help the most people in the long run become better humans. Whether they are talking about improving the quality of their own individual reality, or possibility that of a society or even an entire humanity, the principle is the same. The only barrier to accomplishing these feats are those of thought. It is the knowledge of this fact that will allow human beings to successfully break the perceptual, emotional, and behavioral barriers that we all struggle with.

It’s a beginning…but now the idea must mature into a reality. Our evolution of humans being human as a science will emerge. After all, consciousness is now being studied as a mass, something akin to gas and other quantities that cannot be seen. Our evolution will emerge as a willingness to accept something new, to listen to someone saying that the world is round rather than flat; that the earth is not the center of the solar system; that energy, matter, and space are alloted. Or perhaps by shifting our focus away from the manifestation of people’s problems and move to the principles of thought, reality, consciousness, and emotions we will see our connection to mental well being. Society may just find the route to its own wisdom.

Human Ecology, The Human Conservacy, a new way of being human, a new humanity…it’s time, it’s a possibility…well that’s what I’m thinking on this day…Doc

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...just a thought

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Life Inside The Sane Asylum

Just A Thought

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In the early 60's I did my graduate internship at Central State Mental Hospital. I was once giving a speech and asked the audience if there was anyone who had graduated from there? One fellow raised his hand and said he did not graduate from there but he once played football for them. Funny guy, or at least I thought so at the time. I always remember his comment when I think of that thin line between sane and insane...

On the Central Campus there were over three thousand residents or patients, as we called them. In truth, it was home for most of them. During the sixties there were no outpatient treatment facilities for those with adjustment problems, so the state took responsibility for their care. 

Pills mostly, with electroshock on Wednesdays for those that could not forget. Music therapy on Thursday for some and at night straight jackets with leather tie downs for others. I still remember my late night rounds through the locked wards. The sounds and conversations that echoed down the narrow halls that would make good subject matter for a psychological thriller. 

There was this young lady name Rosie that worked in the office where most of the interns worked. She had been hospitalized for eleven years since the age of 18. Rosie was very bright and a great worker. Her gift of math and statics was used daily by all the interns. If Rosie was not talking to you, she would continuously talk to herself or to an imaginary person in a very angry voice, continuously complaining, ”And then he did this to me, then he said, and I said”, and then, “How dare he tell me this”, and I always watched in amazement. How can anybody be so insane and still apparently hav a job and do such great work?

One day, I was washing my hands in the bathroom just down from my office, and I thought, “My God. Her voice, she never stops talking.” And I suddenly realized, well, I do that, too, except that I don’t do it out loud. And then I thought, “I hope I don’t end up like her,” and somebody next to me looked at me, and I suddenly realized in shock that I had actually said these words aloud, just like her. 

I realized my mind was just as incessantly active as hers. The only difference was that my thought was mostly based on feeling sorry for myself. It was depressed thinking. Her patterns were fueled by anger.

Just like Rosie, there was two of me. The "I" was there, and the "me" that was the continuous mental noise, the stream of thinking that considered life and considered myself a problem.

I think of Rosie on occasions. Especially on those occasions when my mind thinks incessantly of "me".

Not half that bad on a good day...Doc

From Inside The Sane Asylum...

Journal Entry: 3/30/19

Red sky by morning...

Sometimes, in the sweet spot where day meets night, you catch cloud formations drifting in off the gulf. I have seen thousands of them and they are all intriguing and unique in their own way. They remind me that we are constantly traveling in a much larger space, on this spaceship called Earth.

Sometimes, probably depending on my state of mind, or state of being, I see an unusual formation that makes me stop, contemplate. In my mind, it may be a succubus, a giant squid, a stray nebula, a wraith seeking shelter before the full light arrives. Or, it could be a civet, gently pawing a dangling bergamot as a parade passes on the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement—with the aroma of baking bread, street crepes, and cigarettes.

Much like any new day, clouds can be anything we want them to be. If we use our imaginations, and ignore the noise, we can begin to shape our own reality. We are free to do this. It is part of what makes us human.

If your day is cloudy, I hope you find a way to enjoy it. Be a trapeze artist, a shoemaker with a puppet, or just sing something, even if only you can hear it.

More Times Than Not...a day in the country

More Times Than Not

When I get the chance, I like to spend a little time working on my old tractor. It's always therapeutic in someways. More times than not, I have to tinker with it a bit to get it to run. Always a little adjustment needs to be made to wake her up to the fact there is a job to be found.

Well this morning, just as I thought, more times than not a wrench must be found. Now you must know, I am not much of the tinkering kind, but when I do, I usually call my Uncle Rufus to offer a little of his advice. My Uncle Rufus is not real handy with a wrench either, but he has a few skills up from mine so he qualifies as a consultant, and besides, he is one of my favorite Uncles. I don't really call him for his advice, I just like to listen to his b.s. stories and get his opinion on LSU football or baseball, as it was this morning . "I would have never taken the first baseman out,” he says, as he hands me a part and points there. I agreed. Who am I to question Uncle Rufus?

The real reason I always need Uncle Rufus, is the fact that he has the phone number to call J.D....I call him, J.D. The Philosopher, because...he just is. Can fix anything with his hands, especially my old tractor, more times than not. He told me once ”He could have been an astronaut, but who the hell wants to ride a rocket?”

Because J.D. is so good at fixing stuff he stays busy fixing stuff, especially the relatives broken stuff. He lives on his portion of the homestead, raises a garden, drinks a little beer, welds, collects all kinds of shit, but just mostly fixes other people's shit. He has no Fix Shit sign hanging buy his mailbox for others to see...says, “I don't like to deal with the general public.”

J.D. is the kind that studies a problem before he applies his magic. More times than not he will take his welders chalk and draw a few things on a piece of scrap iron, then takes something apart just to see what's in it and of course the thrill of putting it together again. “There, that ought to work,” he says. Sure enough, it did. 

Last evening, about dark, I was visiting with J.D.  We were sitting on his front porch discussing the small challenges in life. He asked me how many bushels of peas would be a good swap for ten pounds of catfish. Seems there was a barter offer from his friend TK. Apparently TK was in the mood for some purple hulled peas and quiet obvious J.D. was hankering fish. I told him I didn't know the relative worth of either one, but guess it depended on how bad he could taste those fish. Said he would have to think about it as he lit the smudge pot and cursed the frogs making racket in the fish pond.

J.D. is the Salt of the Earth, the Philosophers Stone, a true friend and more times than not has to fix my shit…my day in the country…:)

Reflections From The World...Billy Collins

Poem to the First Generation of People to Exist After the Death of the English Language

I’m not going to put a lot of work into this
because you won’t be able to read it anyway,
and I’ve got more important things to do
this morning, not the least of which
is to try to write a fairly decent poem
for the people who can still read English.

Who could have foreseen English finding
a place in the cemetery of dead languages?

I once imagined English placing flowers
at the tombstones of its parents, Latin and Anglo-Saxon,
but you people can actually visit its grave
on a Sunday afternoon if you still have days of the week.

I remember the story of the last speaker,
of Dalmatian being tape-recorded in his hut
as he was dying under a horsehair blanket.
But English? English seemed for so many of us
the only true way to describe the world
as if reality itself were English
and Adam and Eve spoke it in the garden
using words like snake, apple, and it’s all your fault.

Of course, there are other words for things
but what could be better than boat,
pool, swallow (both the noun and the verb),
statuette, tractor, squiggly, surf, and underbelly?

I’m sorry.
I’ve wasted too much time on this already.
You carry on however you do
without the help of English, communicating
with dots in the air or hologram hats or whatever.
You’re just like all the ones who say
they can’t understand poetry
but at least you poor creatures have an excuse.

So I’m going to turn the page
and not think about you and your impoverishment.
Instead, I’m going to write a poem about red poppies
waving by the side of the railroad tracks,
and you people won’t even know what you’re missing.

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...National Nothing Day

Conversation between Dr. Ego Prozac and Jess Ben Rambling...

Doc: Hey Jess, did you know today was National Nothing Day?

Jess: Is it an “official” holiday?

Doc: No, that would require an official act of Congress.

Jess: Well I think Congress has been celebrating Nothing Day for years, but given that its point is to be a non-event, that doesn’t really matter, does it?

Doc: Of course it's not an official holiday. That would totally defy the whole meaning of the day in the first place, but I notice you celebrate doing nothing on a regular basis.

Jess: This is proof positive I know nothing about Nothing, but it seems the beauty of the concept of nothingness is that it’s full of possibility: It isn’t anything, so it can be everything. So, why should we limit the observation of the holiday to one very specific day? 

Doc: Happy National Nothing Day Jess.

Jess: Wishing someone a happy National Nothing Day kind of defeats the purpose of it, no? 

Doc: Seems to me this is a lot to do about nothing.

Entry Note To Self...memories

Journal Entry: 1/5/19

Morning Meditation 

“Perhaps one of those special things we keep around to remind us of certain feelings and affections of time past.”

There is a story behind this photo entitled Morning Meditation. It is the creation by the late John Donnels of New Orleans. Just a memory. 

For most of my productive years, at least those that had any value, were the ones I spent working alongside Catholic Sisters in healthcare.  A strong and dedicated group of women. Since I am deeply rooted in religion, but not a deeply rooted religious man, I have always remembered that I was raised by a Holy Man and worked most of my life with Sister’s of Charity. My entire life has been around people with purpose. So in a way that has become my religion. Just sensing the beauty of those serving others is a form of worship. At least for me.

 About twenty years ago I remember visiting with Sister Margret each morning. As I entered her office I always noticed this picture hanging on her wall. Each morningI would gave it acknowledgment. 

When my career ended with this Order, Sister Margret presented me with this photo. What a gift. I entitled it People With Purpose. I look at it each day with fond memories. Perhaps one of those special things we keep around to remind us of certain feelings and affections of times past?

Years later, I just happened to be in New Orleans during the French Quarter Festival. It was one of those short trips that turned into a longer trip and I made it a purpose to stop by Mr Donnels Photo Gallery down on St. Peter Street. St. Peter’s Street is nestled in close to Jackson Square. 

What a nice walk it is to revisit anytime I return to New Orleans. I usually take St. Ann down to Cafe Du Monde, have a cup of dark coffee, stroll the River levee and pick up St. Peter to Mr. Donnels studio. It’s like I have a need to check in again with all those first impressions made years ago.

Mr. Donnels did not know me, but I felt I knew him, maybe just a little. After all, I had admired his photo each day for many years. His gallery was filled with pictures of his neighborhood and its people. His kind demeanor, only confirmed my belief in his purpose.

Mr. Donnels died in 2009 at the age of 84. Donnels had his gallery near Jackson Square for more than 50 years. He lived in the Quarter for most of his life, and was playwright Tennessee Williams’ neighbor in the 1940s.

His work, chronicled in a 1999 book, has been exhibited at the Kennedy Center, Harvard University, the Ford Times Collection of American Art, the National Academy of Design, the New Orleans Museum of Art and Historic New Orleans Collection.

Although he was a renowned photographer, Donnels began his career as a painter. For a time, he worked as a police sketch artist. In the 1960s, Donnels bartered a painting for a camera, and a career change followed.

After his death there was local documentary was made of him. It was called the “Pink Satin Suit”:

The Pink Satin Suit documented the struggles, perseverance and discipline that go into the making of a self-made man. Johnny Donnels is an icon of the French Quarter, as was his gallery, filled with his own art. His great love was The French Quarter and his art was revealed like a lover’s embrace with the life that he saw and captured. He was, to many, the last of the great Bohemians: a symbol of freedom and ease.

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...last post 2018

Window of Life

“I stand before the window of life,
Tall & strong, chin held high.
Stripped of my defenses,
Clothed in my pride.
Naked to all,
Revealed to none.”

”Where new friends come,
And old friends stay
To listen to my tales of
adventure and strife.
While i stand my post
at the window of life...”

May all your journeys in 2019 bring you ease...if by chance it should take you in the wrong direction, don’t forget to adjust your sails...Doc

Life Inside The Sane Asylum...As I Sit Here

Life Inside The Sane Asylum 

As I Sit Here...

Inside The Sane Asylum...Jeffery’s Asylum

Journal Entry: 12/22/18
Jeffery’s  Asylum

I think most people like the idea of The Sane Asylum. I’ve never really asked that question out right, but when I tell people my hobby is my Blog, writing about life Inside The Sane Asylum, they nod and smile. When I tell them that the author of the blog is Dr. Ego Prozac, they nod and smile.

So I can tell, from their demeanor, they like the idea, they just don’t know what to say...so they just nod and smile. And all of that is fine with me, I just nod and smile back and say, “look me up sometimes”. They nod and smile. It came to me the other day that I am doing nothing more than entertaining myself with some nods and smiles. And that’s also ok with me.

There is this theory going around, that one day Sane behaviors will be considered Insane behaviors...as in... no one does that anymore. So the thought came to me that one day we may be locked away for our Sane behaviors. Locked away in a Sane Asylum.

Nothing like being proactive, so I just went ahead and established my Sane Asylum. The Asylum itself has no form but it has no boundaries either. No description really, other than what I might give it. “Then what is it” you say?

It is nothing more than the preservation of distinctions I make about  living. Perhaps it extends into my beliefs.  I’m quiet sure it does, for through the past three score and twelve years, many of my beliefs have changed and they continue changing as I make more distinctions about living, about relationships, peace, war, gods, demons and the like.

So I guess you could say that my Sane Asylum is nothing more than my consciousness, just as it is yours. That place where one can go to observe themselves in this world and give behaviors meaning...The Observer of  behavior in this world...called, consciously living.

Christopher Bryson, tells a story of one man’s Asylum. His name was Jeffery, as I recall.

”A man that has been everywhere, as he starts his story...a man that knows everything about music and about food. He’ll ask you what you like as you pass him by, then he’ll ask you why? He’s not always good with eye contact, but he’s friendly, humorous, and engaging. He sings to himself. Sometimes, he talks to himself. Sometimes he is loud. He minds his own business. He hurts nobody...

I see Jeffery almost every morning. He hangs at the corner bodega, or paces the block to the bar. It's a short stretch, but you'll usually find him on it, or sitting a stoop, or the bench at Buffa's. I hadn't seen him in a few days and found out this morning that he had been beaten to death by three men-unrecognizable. It was bad.

Sometimes, Jeffery scolds himself. Loudly. My hunch is that the men thought he was talking to them, and didn't take the time to get any answers before they engaged him, before they beat him.”

He's been everywhere, man. He's been everywhere. That's how it is this morning in The Sane Asylum...Doc

Footnote: Maybe  The Sane Asylum is nothing more than a preservation site for those of Sound Mind. It's not so much that this Blog Spot creates the preservation site, but it is you making the distinction, that there are a lot of characters out there like you and I, just trying to make peace with ourselves  and get along with it all. It is important that we keep making that distinction!

Entry Note To Self...2018

Last Entry Note To Self...2018
Journal Entry:  12/19/18

It’s hard to believe another year is pulling down It’s evening shades. Looking back, I have wandered about in adventure, and wondered with adventure in my mind. I have Scribbled in my personal journal, of sorts, and along the journey I have captured a few pictures that still frame my mind. Especially those that captured the essence in a special moment.

New friends I have been blessed with and ole friends I have loved. I have stood up for beliefs when I felt it right to do so. I have seen things that took my breath away and others that troubled me well into the night. I have stopped and asked questions to strangers, and not at all a surprise, their answers changed my life. I saw Goodness in so many that it has lead me to believe, that deep down, there must be a little shred of good in us all.

We are simple joy, we are unashamed laughter. Will we stay this way? Seems some dances may never end...

Thank you for this strong veil of friendship we have created, if nothing more than the shear validation that we are here.  Some say we are just imaginary friends in a grand social experiment, but just to see another take in the good for being cared about or the goodness in your thought word or deed, reflects positive intentions of kindness no matter what we call ourselves. Maybe there needs to be a new word for these connections?

Each person I met along the way became a part of me and in a sense will always be a part of each of us. Knowing our own goodness, we are more able to recognize it in others. Seeing the good in ourselves and others, we are more likely to do what we can to build the good in the world we share together.

Because I know that I don't always get it right, and that not everything I pen is great, I just wanted to quite genuinely say: thank you. Whether you read everything or almost nothing, it all means more than you know.

I'm not sure why I started writing almost four years ago, and I still don't know where I'm going. But it's all been strange. And interesting. And meaningful. And humbling. I may not have known why I wanted to scribble back then but I definitely thought I had something to say. I now know that I don't. And I guess that's progress.

So I make my final entry and close my Personal Journal, Of Sorts, and push it aside until the morning breaks a new... wishing you and yours a spirit of ease.

”Once we fly in our dreams, our walk in life will never be the same...thank you! Best wishes” ...Doc