"Epilogue"

Like prisoners chained in a madhouse, the mental health system has a way of degrading everyone involved. Though was harsh & Medieval, it doesn't mean "the warehousing" of man's hopes, quirks, and fears isn't still used as a bureaucratic convenience, like locking up dogs at the pound who pace around and bark with their paws up on the bars as lost, lonely souls with desperation straining in their feral eyes. And because institutionalizing them has become too expensive, they set them loose with a disability check and a housing subsidy. Every so often they report to a doctor, who with a case load of hundreds, can't ever really sort through these intractable problems-- of neurosis and half-truth, of delusion and fancy.

See the crazies running free through the park, ducking behind trees and splashing in the fountain! But when someone like Bobby sets up his tent of stories, it becomes like a giant carnival of manic, off-kilter experiences that "the jailers" take with a grain of salt and figure "well enough to leave alone". Well, at least until the patients become a danger to themselves or others. And there's Bobby running around inside a jumbo, bouncing clown-house of manic-depressive schizophrenia as "Pop Goes the Weasel" plays a tune on the fruity circus organ. He's harmless enough as he steps outside to munch on a snow-cone and catch his breath, but he's obviously at a point of "no-return" and has been there for quite some time. \

No, he ain't coming back to your world or mine. . . . .

At least someone listens-- really listens-- as he waxes poetic about "getting well and going back to work someday" but with failing health and thoughts becoming more and more scattered, that isn't going to happen in my lifetime or his. I can say it was a privilege to take down the stories of the man who talks, but doesn't hear, and share them with you. May this character find a sense of peace and well-being that frankly, most of us never achieve. . . . .

Drop "The Bard" a line at
michaeladams_s@yahoo.com