A dream flew over the cuckoo's nest

[vaneramos]

Amaryllis

From Wednesday afternoon, a roadside image of snow and sand posted in texture.

~~~~~~~~~~

I have trouble remembering movies—the details of plotlines. I don't understand how people can walk out of a first viewing with the cleverest lines of dialogue already on their tongues. I have to replay the videos a few dozen times to write down one word at a time correctly before I can even dream of repeating them.

But when a movie really hits me (and most of them do), it percolates through my subconscious for the next 24 hours. I will wake up the next morning with the most affecting scenes replaying in my head. I can't hear the words or remember how to string everything together. My mind works visually and conceptually. I must ride tendrils of the story's images and ideas all night long, carrying them down avenues of my own perception, watching them evolve into something that relates to me. Next day the dreams are forgotten. I have only feelings and impressions replaying like a tape recorder in the ears of my mind.

Last night that movie was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which I finally saw for the first time with Marian, after 30 years. She noted that the actor who played Billy, the young man who stuttered, was familiar. Googling Brad Douref, we discovered he played Grima Wormtongue in The Two Towers.

This morning I awoke with certain scenes fluttering like wounded birds in the corners of my mind: the shock treatment, the choking scene, the mercy killing, a long view of a ghostly figure disappearing across a field under dingy dawn light. I wonder how it affects my subconscious to have a movie like that dominate my dreams for eight hours. And if it does, why can I not remember the story in more detail. It must go somewhere, all that spinning. Maybe if I watched the thing again today, it would sink into the longterm memory banks where I could recall it more easily.

As it happens, I remember one dream, in which I met my new psychiatrist for the first time.

Yesterday I actually called her office and lined up an appointment on February 21. The receptionist said they are booking for July, but she happened to have a cancellation.

So I was meeting Dr. J. for the first time, sitting in a large, bright office across an old-fashioned desk. I couldn't really see her. She was a puddle of liquid distorting the light above her swivel chair. By sitting sideways and looking at her through peripheral vision I could get a clearer impression, but she still only looked like a wow in a room of mirrors.

I felt anxious. I had to convince her there was something wrong with me, a legitimate reason for seeing her. This bothered me because as time goes on I have the growing conviction there's nothing wrong with me, I'm just not well-adjusted to this mad society we live in. So why am I taking these pills if all they do is make the estrangement bearable? I have half-answers to these questions. I hope the vaporous shrink will relate to this, rather than prescribing 100 volts of electroshock a day.

Echoes of that horrendous movie. Echoes of my life. What does it mean when reality laps against the shore of fiction?

Comments

[vaysha.livejournal.com]

Wanted to pass a little beauty back Van- I was so moved by this piece of writing and the spirit of this woman I thought you'd enjoy as well.
blessings,
V
http://www.livejournal.com/users/catelin/179683.html

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Funny, I saw your comment in Connor's journal and went over there already. You have no idea how close it hits to home right now, stories I must wait to tell. Thank you for thinking of me.

[vaysha.livejournal.com]

I'll look forward to your sharing.
xoxox

two things

[ranjtheobscure.livejournal.com]

first, nice pic.

second, I fear being medicated out of existence.

It goes far beyond the Huxlean fear of being Soma'd. It is the fear of being medicated out of awareness, that surrendering pain would come with a price that is worse, ultimately than pain.

I understand the anomie, and I agree that the parts of it that are exogenous cannot be abandoned without entering the brave new world of Huxley. The question is, what can be done to reduce the wearing psychic damage of getting up every morning, such as I do, and reading about some fresh new betrayal of civilization in the name of security and freedom 'Murka-stylee.

It wears at a person. And the small victories that civilized humans have these days all seem to gasp and flicker, like the scattered light from a jumping movie frame in the dark backstage of a far worse madness than my own.

I know that you are fighting to be healthy, just like I am. But I envy you living in a free country, whose leaders more frequently than not sound sane. I envy you worrying that your treatment is justified, as opposed to affordable. Gods, I envy you that.

You could move down here...
Distressed Canadians feel a lot saner for living in a country where the background rationality levels are at record breaking new lows.

By comparison with Fred Phelps or Grover Norquist, their pathologies seem almost trivial more like slight and charming eccentricities.
Listen to 15min of Rumsfeld, and suddenly Son of Sam seems to make horrible sense.

Re: two things

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I think I'm happier comparing myself to American politicians and journalists from afar. ;-)

What gets to me most is our obsession with consumption and financial stability, at the expense of quality of life and sustainability. It bothers me that we live in a society where the individual becomes so estranged from the community and the earth on which we are utterly dependent. This social phenomenon is just as prevalent in Canada as the States.

I am in the choir, brother.

[ranjtheobscure.livejournal.com]

First Tenor.

Re: two things

[artricia.livejournal.com]

What gets to me most is our obsession with consumption and financial stability, at the expense of quality of life and sustainability. It bothers me that we live in a society where the individual becomes so estranged from the community and the earth on which we are utterly dependent. This social phenomenon is just as prevalent in Canada as the States.

That gets to me too. Lately I've been reading Christopher Lasch's Revolt of the Elites which talks about these things from the perspective of historical ideas of American democracy. Wendell Berry, I think, writes on this stuff too; his stuff is a little easier to encounter.

Re: two things

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I've been familiar with Wendell Berry's writing for about 10 years. It would safe to say he has influenced my perspective on these issues. One of my favourite quotes comes from him.

"Urban people are connected to the land by their gastrointestinal tract."

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I saw that movie a very long time ago, and my memories of it are appropriately vague, but, yeah, I don't think I'd want to see it right before an appointment with a mental health professional.

Googling Brad Douref, we discovered he played Grima Wormtongue

It's remarkable that he would be recognizable despite the passage of 30 years and the application of a whole lot of makeup.

but she still only looked like a wow

Like a what?

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I mean a curve.

Marian is remarkable in her ability to recognize actors and voices. When she was about six an operatic piece came on the radio and she immediately identified the soprano as "that woman who sings the cat songs." It was Frederica von Stade, who recorded such an album with Garrison Keiler.

[artricia.livejournal.com]

I think it means that the fiction is really really good -- reflecting something of our life, our times, back to us.

I think some of the best fiction is prescient, too. Some of the things that seemed so unbelievable when they were first published in books are commonplace now.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting thought. And I wonder how much of history and society has been influenced by fiction.

[avad.livejournal.com]

might mean we're waking up?;)
love your dream.verrrry interesting.:)

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Hehe, waking yes.

Funny thing about my dreams, when I do remember them, is I usually don't have to think to figure out what they mean. It's as if I understand my own subconscious symbolism pretty well.

[avad.livejournal.com]

well, you wrote them!;)