A Commonplace Book

And what are Aphorisms?

White lies! Dumb lines!
Stupid jokes!

I think someone who looks just like you came here once and told me the same things you're telling me but I don't know if it really happened, or if what's happening now is happening now, or what. I don't know.

When they were in an episode it usually started in a very beautiful way. They would see meaning in everything. Everything that crossed the plane of their senses was always filled with deep and rich meaning. And it was peaceful and beautiful, and they felt empowered, and they felt as if they finally understood what it was all about. They felt that they knew a unity of all things, a sense that all things in the universe were one--sure, you hear that all the time--in self-help books and on bumper stickers and so forth--but they really felt it, they understood it, and to them it really was. They felt a kinship to God, and then that kinship would develop into something more like sonship--or daughtership if it was a girl. And then from there they'd go on to feel that they were the spirits of God himself, trapped in a human body, which was in actuality a prison of matter. And once they reached this point, which was the high point, the realization that they were spirits trapped in matter and that there was no way out--and not just matter but they were also being held against their will in a literal prison--the majority having been committed against their will--when what they wanted most of all was to go out and tell the world what they had learned--and so when they realized they were trapped, and that there was no escape, not just from the hospital but from their very bodies!--well, it always went downhill from there. The heavenly visions would turn to nightmares, the angels would turn to devils and witches, the pretty bright lights would turn to torrents of blood and... you get the picture. The problem is our society. We have no place for the schizophrenic. In the native cultures these were the holy men, the shamans, they were protected and revered, and you'd bring your little papoose to him for a blessing or a prophecy, and the society would make sure he was fed and clothed because he sure as hell couldn't take care of himself. But now we leave them to fend for themselves. To be preyed on by villains and wolves and drugs and alcohol, until they eventually do something that either gets them shot by the cops or put in a psych ward, and then they're fed drugs and monitored for a time and then sent back out to fend for themselves again.