Freddy's Collection of Poems and Stories
| In My Next Incarnation | How Mental Illness Saved My Life | The Emperor's New Strategy | Effort or Privelege? | Do You Feel Weird? |
| Deva Station | December Nights | Blessed | Escape From Bellevue | BATTLING DESPAIR |
IN MY NEXT INCARNATION
Those who subscribe to the theory
Of reincarnation insist we come back
To a sea of consequences. Pondering
Such notions, I take stock of my acts,
All the damage I’ve done, all the pain
I’ve inflicted, but also I wonder if
I haven’t also been soothing, here
And there, causing a smile, giving
Just a word of hope to someone?
Keeping a spiritual resume is work,
Which may be the vain striving
That finds us doing the right thing
For the wrong reason: “How will this
Look to the Lords of Karma? Will
They cast me down to Hell, or,
Will they smile on my case?” All
I wish—should I return—is to be
A vessel of grace, one always ready
To comfort others, one forever set
To praise and serve the Master
No matter what the form or face
The Divine chooses to assume.
Not that I have any plans to return,
But should my heart come back
To search the earth for this water,
Bless me again, please with thirst.
How Mental Illness Saved My Life
By Freddy Bosco
It took me years to realize it. Many years after developing mental illness,
another consumer asked me, “I don’t remember what it was you said you were doing
before you got sick.” It hit me like a freight train. I had been putting my life
on the line! Had I not broken down and been carted off to Bellevue Psychiatric
Hospital, I might not be alive today.
The circumstances of my depression are mysterious to me to this day. That’s
okay. As my teacher says, “I can live with mystery.” An alcoholic romance that
went bad and a professional rejection combined to make me seek what is known as
a Geographical Cure. From Denver, I took a train to New York, with all my
possessions, looking for streets of gold. I had all the makings of a complete
disaster by the time I got to Manhattan.
To those who have never done New York, let me quote another individual whose
experience was not unsimilar to mine. He said, “New York is completely full of
bad influences.” And that is a large understatement. The rotten Apple is so full
of disease and corruption that any normal person who goes there soon becomes
neurotic. And neurotics like me soon—as I did—become psychotic.
It was my intention to get very big in New York, so big that the love of my life
would change her mind and come back to me. I was willing to do anything to get
ahead. Strange how the heart or what the mind thinks is the heart will do to
achieve success. All my years of carefully formed morals and conscience went
into the first dumpster I found. I was an immigrant in psychic space.
There I was: open to possibilities that I would never have thought about twice
before. The Big Time was waiting just around the next corner. Funny, but I went
around the corner so many times I found myself chasing my own tail, wondering
where my lucky break was. The remarkable thing was, I did manage to eke out some
outstanding achievements before I cracked.
I was lunching at the Algonquin with New Yorker editors, going to parties with
New York Times reporters and getting good tables at Elaine’s. None of it meant
anything; my heart was broken, sick and smashed, and I could find no solace in
anything I was doing. I self-medicated with scotch, and still woke with dread
every day. Climbing into my Brooks Brothers finery in the morning, I pushed
myself into the game like climbing a stone cliff.
One day at work, I snapped and came completely unglued. I was an editor at a
Park Avenue CPA firm, with two secretaries, six reporters, a designer and…one
nervous breakdown. They took me to Bellevue in an ambulance, injected me with
Thorazine, and stood back while all the toll of my crazy life unwrapped from me
like bandages coming off a mummy.
Finally it came to me that I had to get out of New York. The blow of that
failure and all the residual shock of my illness left me virtually speechless
for many months to come. By and by,
I came to accept the fact that I have a problem. I have a condition which
handicaps me, but I can be treated. Now, 27 years after my awful collapse, I
live a reasonable life. I am on medication, I get good therapy, and I stay busy
with part-time employment and volunteer work with people whose hearts, just as
mine did, need to be reminded what a pleasure life can be.
After so many years in recovery, from mental illness compounded by alcoholism, I
am still working on issues. I do not expect spiritual perfection; I content
myself with spiritual progress. The famous 12 steps help me, as does my family,
loyal friends and a community of people devoted to the proactive cause. I am
like the Hanged Man, who had to be turned upside down to attain enlightenment. I
do not claim a great spiritual achievement. All I know is that the guy who came
back from New York is ready to greet life on its own terms, instead of the
harebrained agenda I left with.
So if it took getting sick to wake up, then I am grateful for every step—no
matter how painful so many of them were—that it has taken for me to be able to
sit here and address a reader who may be struggling with terrible self-doubt and
discouragement. Rain falls on every life, but I have no doubt that we were born
to experience happiness on a daily basis. I have no idea what’s to come, not for
myself or anyone else, but I am here, serene. I can’t see yesterday or tomorrow.
All I know at this moment is this moment. It is enough for me.
The Emperor’s New Strategy
By Freddy Bosco
Our imperial shenanigans make Ancient Rome look like a nursery school. Cramming
an additional 21,500 troops into Baghdad to kill the rebels reveals to me a
desperately uninspired commander who is not supported by the American public nor
the Congress or even his own generals. We throw good money after bad. The war
has cost $800 billion so far.
Do you know why we invaded Iraq? Because all the King’s horses and all the
King’s men lacked adequate intelligence. We’ve got Cheney, the most powerful
Vice President in recent history dismissing the public outcry as the babble of
“those talking heads on television.” We’ve gotten word that W’s regime is
itching to get Iran to show the slightest provocation so we can expand the war.
Wall Street, meanwhile, is doing its own escalation, trading blood for money,
reaching its highest mark ever. And on the home front? Astronauts, once thought
of as heroic, are out to kill each other; children sag from obesity; and our
Southwest, even with the pathetic fence, has begun to become the Amexican nation
in which identities are routinely stolen, jeopardizing the safety of some
innocent citizens so that ambitious but otherwise undocumented workers can do
menial labor.
Yesterday, I tried to do my civic duty by calling the IRS with a simple question
about a publication they had sent me pertaining to 2006 taxes. I spent a good
hour on the phone getting bounced from worker to worker, having to explain my
question to a good half-dozen “representatives” before someone would give me an
answer.
When I went out to check the mail, I saw the letter I had left out for the
carrier lying on my front steps. Is this whole Empire falling apart? Randy
Newman, in his song “State of the Union,” said the end of an empire is a messy
business. Meanwhile, life goes on: we spend millions for ball players while
schoolteachers starve, and we build our workday around email jokes and cups of
Starbucks latte.
Small wonder that Eli Lilly rakes in billions for anti-psychotic medications and
American sleep is disturbed. Here we are: 300 million compulsive gamblers going
for broke in the Middle East while China continues to eat us up from the inside
out. I recently read a good assessment of that particular part of our Decline
and Fall: “They loan us money so that we can buy their t-shirts.”
Even the last miniature American flag I examined had “Made in China” written on
it.
Good morning, America, how are you? Let me take your temperature, but don’t be
surprised if your blood pressure looks like Mt. Vesuvius about to explode. Our
whole culture seems to be toppling under the weight of its own contradictions.
We’ve got an individual at the helm who truly believes he is doing God’s will.
Will the outcome of the 2008 presidential election save us, or will we just be
switching seats on the Titanic?
EFFORT OR PRIVILEGE?
Sometimes, I feel as weak
As the winter sun, vainly
Trying to smile, behind
A veil of clouds. What mask
Of struggle hides my joy?
Warehouses full of baggage
Emburden me in my quest
To fly birdlike, free to soar.
All through my ache, I know
I was born to celebrate this life,
Not to pound out the blues
No: not again. Confound it!
My inheritance of addlebrain
Malaise sets me up to practice
With a longing borne from pain
Which only tells me to rejoice;
I know, marrow deep and deeper,
That Divinity smiles on me,
Even as I run, a rodent in a box,
Looking for a corner of escape,
While sure contentment waits
For my unconditional surrender. .
Do You Feel Weird?
By Freddy Bosco
You’re standing there at the supermarket waiting to buy your provisions, or else
you’re there on the bus as people are getting on, and something strange
overcomes you. Everything seems to go flat and the scene looks to be in
suspended animation. Think of what it would be like to have this sensation all
the time, and you’ll have a clue as to what a large percentage of the population
goes through. Welcome to…what euphemism should we employ here? Just a touch of
head stuff, let’s say.
An old Italian proverb says it all: “Sono tutto mondo pazzo,” which means, the
whole world is crazy. I’ve never met a psychiatrist (I have known one or two)
who wasn’t honest enough to admit the truth of the old proverb I quoted, with
the qualifier: it’s all a matter of degree.
We sometimes see unfortunate individuals afflicted with terrible…head stuff, to
go with our agreed upon euphemism. Out there on the street, ragged and
muttering, perhaps performing a ritual action with a personal meaning not
readily apparent to anyone else, they act out an action, like folding and
refolding and folding again the cuffs of their jeans. With apparent oblivion to
the ridicule of all those who happen upon the scene, they go about their
compulsive behavior.
In recent years, some miraculous advances have been made in psychiatric
medicine. Regular folks like you and me take Prozac, although they may not tell
anyone not intimately acquainted with them. How many of those with a prodigious
thirst for alcohol are actually just trying to medicate themselves for…head
stuff? That manager you work for slips off from the office every morning for an
hour, to do what? Maybe to go to her analyst. Nothing new about that, but we’re
light years ahead in terms of accepting the necessity to treat this heretofore
hush-hush form of illness.
If you live on Capitol Hill as I do, you see a lot of people who love to party,
and in amongst their ranks are many whose partying has taken them beyond the lot
of the hung over into burnout. Some of the people who suffer in this fashion
veer into treatment. The lucky ones do. Getting help is an option for which no
excuse needs to be made. For anyone who seeks psychiatric attention, a number of
choices exist.
The University of Colorado will match you to a resident psychiatrist for a
price. Many residents do some of their best work during their practice days, and
the University has grown up a bit since the days when they insisted on Freudian
interpretation. The ready availability of the University’s hospital is a plus
when it comes time for that ordeal, the big “C” word: commitment. We can all
agree that the hardest part of being a mental patient is the commitment.
For outpatient care on an ongoing basis, MHCD serves over 6500 adults and
children. MHCD does not, no matter what disgruntled wags may say, stand for
Malevolent Hostile Circle of Destruction, but, rather, the Mental Health
Corporation of Denver. Founded in 1989, it represents the consolidation of all
the City and County clinics that existed at that point. MHCD has eight clinics,
and 40 residential facilities including group homes, apartments and assisted
living for those with…head stuff.
MHCD recently won two awards, one of which was as the community provider of the
year by the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Care. The other was
the Martin Luther King Jr. award for Social Responsibility. The caseload of MHCD
workers is weighty, what with the demands placed on them by cuts in state and
Federal budgets in Medicare and Medicaid. Sometimes the caseworkers are young
and overworked, and, as it is with any large agency, some people fall through
the cracks. But for the most part, MHCD clients express satisfaction, even those
who go to the Wishing Well just to wish they were well.
Karis Community is a miracle for those with serious and persistent mental
illness. Located on Detroit Street, Karis takes selected clients to refurbish
them with living skills. Located in a rambling building which once served as a
convent, Karis offers a revolutionary program and achieves remarkable results.
The Capitol Hill Action and Recreation Group (CHARG) stands out as a truly
inspired approach to the treatment of head stuff. With a clientele of less than
50, CHARG is small enough to pay personal attention to all of its clients. Many
of the professional staff of CHARG came from the old Boardwalk community, along
with a philosophy of empowerment. Like Karis, CHARG is dedicated to elevating
its consumers into a full expression of living. With a drop-in center as well as
another freestanding administrative office on Capitol Hill, CHARG has earned a
sterling reputation as a champion of human rights.
So, if you have been paying a private professional every week for a dubious
agenda that asks only what you think about your private professional, one of
these agencies might have something to offer you, especially when it comes to an
experience of community. We are all in this together. Isolation only exacerbates
head stuff. Having a special place to share the experience of the strangeness we
all feel from time to time makes for comfort. People reaching out to people
makes for a better world, one where trust can happen.
Deva Station
By Freddy Bosco
Before I met her, I was good
Enough for myself. Happy to be
Just me, set loose carefree,
A soul idly floating in a dream
Of dragonwings. Blue and green
Paper glued in a design on my wall
Gave me an afternoon’s ecstacy.
I would have an odd beer, nothing
To set off alarms. Further, further,
On down the road after dances
Of crafty romance and dalliances,
She came to me by the moon
Lusty and dark, lit, she seemed
From within. I was ripe for harvest.
Never before or since have I held
Any other with such yearning
As we scotched our way to hell.
Gone she is but she left her mark
Cut deep in me where she visits me
Every desperate week in dreams
That haunt me like the vampire’s touch,
Forever wanting, never to be had.
December Nights
Celebrating The Nights Of December
By Freddy Bosco
In the deepest darkness, we go forth in the shortest days of the year: bundled
and hunkered down. Snow comes to enshroud us at this time and we shiver as much
from the cold as from astonishment at the stellar display in the midheavens: the
stars!
We get treated this month to a sparkling assortment of customs, all ignited
surely by the depth of our December nights, when we burrow under blankets,
dreaming in peaceful warmth. Our night’s prayer thanks the source of our
comforts and blessings, distributed as they are, widely these nights where
war-torn earth sighs for relief.
The pain of ignorance scatters misery over our ravaged planet, even as we sleep,
and we hasten to find the simple joys that deliver us whole to this precise
moment just to know we can rejoice that we are alive!
While our feelings of mercantile obligation cloud our consciousness at this
time, stretching our nerves and budgets on a stressful and painful rack of
torture, we have at our reach a chance to feel something glorious. It has
nothing to do with lists of objects to purchase, but instead, it is the longing
of our hearts for the glory of the light and peace.
Long, long ago, there must have been an observation by an early humanoid that
the sun was coming back, and that the longer and longer nights were giving way
to more brightness. The promise of warmth and, with it, a chance to return from
hibernation gave our ancestors reason to dance!
The celebration of these nights, when we gather and do little dances of social
expectation with each other derive in part from the return of the sun. Were it a
bit closer, we’d fry. A bit farther, we’d freeze. We have the good fortune to be
whom and where we are, with light emanating from within each of us as surely as
it shines down upon us.
Some of us have the bountiful good fortune to recognize the fact that the light
and the peace we seek lies within. Nothing outside of us—not even political
remedies—will ever give us the serenity we seek so desperately. There are those
who make a lifetime of searching and questioning. Even when it has been shown so
many times by so many of those who’ve been sent to reveal the truth, the quest
continues.
The Bible says, “The kingdom of heaven is within.” And my own teacher has said
many times that if he were to write a book, it would say nothing more than,
“That which you are looking for is found within you.” I stand and watch myself
scrambling over the landscape trying to buy the things I think will make myself
and others happy, just as everyone else does, especially at this time of year.
In December, as at all times, let us give freely of the only thing we really
have to give. To the best of my understanding is the reality of the fact that we
have nothing to give, nothing but the love that resides within us, which we can
know only by honoring the call of our hearts to go within, where we find that
priceless light.
Blessed
I figure that I am
A fortunate person, because
Of what I got and what
I didn’t get. There are
Wonderful things I got
And horrible things
I didn’t get. So far, I am
Breezing, sailing along
In near-oblivion to the grace
That surrounds me, and all
The gifts I could recognize
And accept if I were truly
Conscious and grateful.
Carrying my home within,
I can go anywhere, certain
That however long my time,
I can be joyous every day,
Smiled upon and blessed
With unfathomable love.
Escape From Bellevue
By Freddy Bosco
The psychiatrist they assigned me to was named Jenks. Rhymed with “jinx,” and
boy, did she ever live up to that assessment of my luck in that hospitalization.
For those who haven’t spent much time in New York, let me explain that Bellevue
Psychiatric Hospital was, at the time when I was committed there, a huge dirty
snakepit.
Highly overmedicated patients in ragged pajamas roamed the halls hour after
miserable hour waiting for lunch or dinner or bedtime. Bad as Bellevue was, we
all lived in fear of getting shipped off from there to Manhattan State, a
facility where the desperately Hopeless cases were sent. In Bellevue, we at
least had a good ratio of patients to staff, so that assaultive behavior got
noticed and addressed right away.
I had gone to Bellevue a year earlier for a week during my first official
nervous breakdown. On my second visit, I had been taken there directly from my
job by the police. I was in handcuffs which went well with my three-piece suit
and Brooks Brothers tie. The officers had decided I was a Risk, so they saw to
it that my hands were tied.
After refusing to say anything to anyone once the cuffs went on, other than to
tell the nurse at Bellevue that drugs were against my religion, the staff
decided I needed an immediate injection of Thorazine. After tranquilizing me,
they stripped me and put me in pajamas, then onto a gurney which they put on an
elevator to take me to My New Home.
For a horrible month, I struggled to make Dr. Jenks understand why I had been
living the way I had been living before I flipped at my job. At one point, the
staff decided to let me have my suit back. One morning, I was called in to see
The Jinx in her office. My girlfriend was in the office, and something about
seeing her triggered me.
I stormed out of The Jinx’s office. I walked down the hall and saw that the
front door was open, because a janitor was scrubbing the floor, down on his
hands and knees. He evidently thought I was not a patient, because he smiled and
excused himself to move aside to let me out the door.
In my delusion, I decided that everything had been set up to let me get out of
the place. I thought I was supposed to leave.
Out on 29th Street, the first thing I did was throw the artichoke my girlfriend
had given me over the tall fence onto the lawn. I was convinced that it held at
the very least a homing device. I did not want to have my location known. I
really had no idea what to do next, so, of course, I went to a bar, looking for
a woman I’d met who worked there.
She was not there, so I made my way back to my job. Back to the scene of the
crime. I had no idea what else to do. I went into the office of the company
president and, not finding him in, sat down at his desk and put all my money
onto his desk. I began to count my money but was interrupted by the arrival of
the police. My escape thwarted, I was shipped back downtown, in a screaming
ambulance, my escape from Bellevue nipped in the bud.
BATTLING DESPAIR
By Freddy Bosco
When I let my faith go and give in
To the fangs of my mind’s intent
On savaging my happiness, I suffer
Terribly, finding myself locked up
In darkness, and I hear only wicked
Laughter. Packaged thus in pain,
I consider drastic measures: goodbye
To life, but! There is one still small
Voice, faint but true which urges me
To trust. The fact that I have survived
Thus far proves to me that trusting
Has never seen me wrong. Self-pity
Is the favorite tool of the Worry Maker,
Located between my ears, who barks
Condemnation, shaming me for having
Done things it suggested to me earlier.
The gap between the twin perfections
We come from and go to leaves me
Open to everything life can deal me,
And in my vulnerability I can grow,
Even though growing so often comes
At the expense of artificial comfort.