Disgusting humid weather this month better be compensated by a cold-ass winter; wasn’t too bad when I got up early to drive to the VA.
Every 3 months I must go discuss nothing with a pleasant but useless elder Indian (from India) VA shrink. It’s not her fault she’s useless (except for prescribing medications). The world is batshit insane and everyone’s life is in some measure a disaster. We’re coerced to live this life on earth or suffer dire consequences on the Other Side for trying to crawl out the dog door of suicide. There’s nothing A Doctor of Brain Firmware or anyone else can say or do for you. I understand writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline already covered all this but was not clever enough to call it the Céline Solution.
The only reason I played the VA’s head game was to keep those anti-depressants coming.
Doctor India neither cared nor was indifferent about me. She was doing her government job for probably less money than someone with a private practice. Being older she will likely die before me and reincarnate into another Indian body. I wouldn’t mind coming back as a vampire bat or box of tampons in the Playboy mansion.
Today I arrived at her office exceptionally happy for some reason, maybe because I was going to get to see the brain again.
On a high shelf in Doc India’s office was a model of a human brain made of clear heavy glass, sitting in an open-topped plastic skull (minus jawbone).
What good was a model of the brain in a shrinks’s office? I’d never heard of a shrink pointing to a spot on a plastic brain and explaining, “Your problem…is this area here…the Sea of Apathy is too mushy…” It was a prop, like a beaker filled with colored water bubbling from dry ice, indicating a mad scientist at work in a B movie.
Doc bid me to sit specifically in one of two identical chairs on the other side of her desk. I assumed this was some sort of psych test to determine compliance. Or maybe she was anal retentive, I had little time or interest in diagnosing her.
I was still chipper as I sat. I looked at the brain and realized I got it backwards, it was the skull base (minus lower jawbone) that was made of glass (or crystal, so this post can be connected to the new Indy Jones movie) and the model of the brain was cheap plastic. A shame, I thought, that I don’t have a glass brain. People could look at each other through the distorted glass halves while I ignored them. When I got depressed I could pour ocean water in the halves and drift away. I guess my skull and head would also have to be glass for this to work….
“You seem better,” Doc said.
“I feel better.”
“What changed?”
“People say you should ‘be yourself’, which is useless advice…I suppose I just realized to accept who I am.”
What I left out was that I’d given up. Fucked in every way but the one you pay dearly for and only I can unfuck myself. So it goes for everybody, with the tale of the tape being most people die with their gifts unused.
Most of the time I didn’t care, the mentality of a drug addict minus the drugs. Useless society, useless world, 98% drones awaiting another 1% to write about the antics of the final 1% of criminals and celebrity fuckups. Instead of doing anything to get out of the hole, I’d simply learned to appreciate every second away from people, a consolation prize version of nirvana.
Doc India said, “I think you’re ready to be discharged from the program.”
Program? What program?
I agreed as long it meant getting to keep my prescrips. Now I won’t have to make the drive to the ole VA every 3 months (parking is impossible) and deal with the Black working the check-in desk (fortunately not there today) who hated me for reasons unknown. I never looked forward to dealing with his bad attitude. How stupid do you have to be to start shit with people with mental problems?
The woman taking the Black’s place didn’t stamp the discharge paper NOT CRAZY. Nor should she have.
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