The sweet pineapple breeze

 November 8/1960

   I am writing in this journal because my lawyer told me to do so, she said if I describe how I feel it will help me sort out my emotions in between the lines, I can even write about the gray areas if I want. I don't like gray areas, I prefer blue or green because that reminds me of the ocean, the ocean and I are the same you see. We a mixture of water and salt, talking about salt water I can feel the sweat trickle down my back, everyone is holding their breath waiting for the judge to give his answer, would I be sentenced a lifetime in hell? Or will I walk around a free man.

   The judge slowly stared down at me through his spectacle with beady little eyes in his swollen dough man like face.  We made eye contact for a brief silent moment, his eyes bore into mine as if he stared  long enough he would be able to see into my soul.

  Eyes are the window to the soul, myth has it if you stare long enough into someone's eyes you might just catch a glimpse of their soul hiding just behind the curtains of judgment.

The judge opened his mouth and uttered three words that would change the rest of my life.

" Charged with insanity."



  December  9/1960

 The guy that was sitting next to me was chewing tobacco, I didn't even know people still did that. He kept glancing at me out of the corner of his eyes and would chew a bit faster when I shifted my body, I grinned maliciously. I was obviously making him uncomfortable, I bet he was probably thinking what I would have done to end myself up here, maybe I stole children and sewed their cold blue lips together with greasy thread,etching a permanent smile on their youthful faces. Or maybe I saw letters that were feelings or numbers that sequenced into sentences on my bedroom ceiling telling me what to do.

- A couple of hours later-

   Tabaco guy pulled out his transmitter and barked a command in the crackling box. " I got Bill right here, we are nearly there, about ten minutes away." I smirked, this guy looked like he was going to shit his pants. I am not a very intimidating looking man, but maybe that's what makes him to uneasy. I am a skinny guy  with bottle cap glasses that teeter precariously on the bridge of my long skinny nose.

  I look like that man who waters his garden every Sunday and religiously reads the Sunday paper .I also wonder about religion sometimes, When I was a child I was brought up in a strict catholic household, sit straight, Don't talk shit because Jesus is always watching. You know the type.   Ah Jesus, that man who apparently walked the earth. It's the same definition of insanity, how can one say a schizophrenic is crazy when a religious man is also talking to an invisible man and listening to invisible rules, the only difference is that one man expects an answer back. But who makes those rules? If you expect an answer that makes you unstable but if you have no faith it means you are sane. But ask any religious man and he will preach about faith.

  The car suddenly jolts to a stop, I peer up through the crack of my closed window at what awaits me. A huge gray building looms ahead scratching the gray, smokey sky with spikes that line the skeletal iron gate. But what catches your eye is the sign that is spray painted on and  neatly printed with the help of a stencil, black letters that said " ST. JUDE INSTITUTE OF THE CRIMINALLY INSANE."

December 10/ 1960
  I am sitting on my bed, if you could call it that. More of a starchy cot that reeked of soured milk, next to the cot if you were to lie down and face the beige wall you would see little scratches engraved in the crumbly plaster, this saddened me for some reason. I could picture a wrinkled old man lying curled up in a position that his old bones creaked in protest, tears dribbling down his wizened old face, tears carving snail like trails down his sunken cheeks.

  My roommate wears Star Wars pajamas.. If you could call them that. He appears to be a 40 year old man and goes by the name of Jim, according to Jim he was once a girl but decided that the life of having the name Jane was much to plain for him and he needed to be a Jim.  He told me that he tried so hard to be a Jim, but no one would listen to him so he had to take things into his own ( now manicured he proudly stated) hands.

  So Jane found scissors and locked herself in the McDonald's washroom, in the wheelchair stall even though Jane does not have a wheelchair, because Jane was a bad bad girl. Jim got too upset to finish and his hands  started to tremble so I told him it was okay. Jim then told me that I don't seem like I have too much crazies in my head, that if I ever need some he will give me some of his if I would like, I like Jim.

 Later today
   Jim and I are at lunch right now, I am surrounded by other patients, that's what we are suppose to call them not crazies, or idiots or freaks. It was in the book of regulations that the fat nurse with the mole nestled under her left eye gave me, I wondered if she stayed up late and never slept her eyes bags would weigh down and gently overlap such a disgusting mole.

 Anyway, in my book of regulations that is a thick white book that has all the rules in alphabetical order so my brain so not have to wrap around the fact that not all letters are in order, just like the world is not. But in here everything is lined up and symmetry is perfection. I have learned about the other patients that sat with us, there is Lucy who is a meek old lady that sat on the edge of her seat staring me down with bulging eyes. Lucy is a different book altogether though, she has a mass of frizzy curly hair like a lion mane, she has eyes that are slightly wild, like she has lived in the jungle like streets of the city. Lucy likes to talk about her dead lover Dee Dee, she clutches a black and white photo of a young girl with a beak like nose and beady eyes. Apparently Dee Dee is with her all the time, she likes to give me details about their personal lives and how Dee Dee is still with her even in the afterlife. " She’s out of this world." Lucy winked at me. Made me shudder.

    Another patient that sat with us was a big, beefy black guy who clutched a smelly rag doll to his chest the whole time, smearing her crudely sewn smile with crumbles of cake and syrup, he was trying to feed her I guess. The enormous black guy ( who goes by the name Harold, no ones knows his actual name but he appears to be a Harold which I quite agree with)  I hesitantly asked to see the doll and what the horrid thing was made out of. Harold seemed a bit reluctant but then passed her over with an approved nod from Jim. I cringed as I toyed with it in my hand, turning it around in the light to get a better look, it was made out of tissues wadded up and had what appeared to be real human hair and old ripped bits of cloths to serve the purpose of clothes. It smelled revolting. Like burnt hair and damp clothes. How the nurses let him keep such a disgusting thing made me want to gag, I ventured to Jim about it later and apparently they had tried to take it away from Harold when he first got admitted but he howled and threw such a violent fit it was silently agreed that no one would try to remove it again. No one knows why he had such a strong attachment to the foul doll, " it looks a bit like a voodoo doll!" Jim liked to exclaim gleefully to the nurses " better watch out g'old Harry boy here doesn't try to stick pins into it or you might not be able to deliver me my fine meds eh?".


December 20/ 1960

  Days and nights have blurred together, the lights are never off. Even when I close my eyes I can see them behind my eyelids, zig zags of blinding white strips. Sometimes they take shapes like a whale or maybe a tiger shaped like a women locked in a cage, long red finger nails clawing at the white beams of light that cadge her in.

January 4/1960

  I'm going crazy.  The things I have witnessed in here would make you want to rip your own eyes out,  every day is the same with the same people is starts to become a blur of pastel colors. I can't fucking do it anymore. The things these people have done are beyond what your wildest nightmares, at night when you lay curled up in your cot you can hear the screams that echo the halls from all those unsaid words, I can't sleep with the cries that seep under my door and makes the skin on my back crawl, I am damp with cold sweat.

  Such a choking sound, it's sounds like a girl's voice as if sadness has wrapped its long bony fingers around her neck and stuck it's tongue of misery down her throat, suffocating her. This place is like hell, it's driving me fucking crazy I can't talk to anyone. One night I couldn't handle it anymore so I pressed my alarm for a nurse, this jaunty little thing came strutting in my room and asked what was wrong. So I told her, I confessed everything. How I had lied during my trial and pleaded insanity so I wouldn't go to prison. That I wasn't crazy. " Look! I can drink water like a sane person, here I can talk like a same person. I am a man not an animal to be caged up!" I begged her darting my hand out to grab the pitcher of water on my bedside table. I tried to pour it into a plastic cup that was there but the water sloshed over the side. " I swear to God I'm not fucking crazy! Why won't you believe me?"

" I'm sorry but I think it's time for your meds Bill." The little nurse calmly replied, smiled brightly at me showing all her perfect teeth in a fake stretched out grin. She turned around and flicked off the light, shut the heavy iron door with a solid click. Locking me in this hell hole.


January 8/1960

  All I do is think how I can escape or at least prove that I am not psychotic. Not that difficult eh? Think about it. How does one drink water normally? Do you pick it up with your left hand or right? Do you close your eyes when you take a sip? This could mean that you are afraid of seeing your reflection in the rim of the glass maybe. Or maybe seeing the water slosh in the frosty glass reminds you of a boat and the waves of insanity as crashing down, so you screw your eyes shut. What about sitting? Do you sit with your legs crossed? This could mean you are closing yourself off. Or do you sit legs spread apart? Do you have nervous foot tap? All of this gets recorded by a nurse who diddles next to you following you 24/7 observing you like a wild caged beast. They are just waiting for you to bite, to do something so they can skip back to your therapist or doctor to tattle to them on how you are on a the brink of a psychotic break. I need to escape, it's this feverish yearning. I can't stay here or I swear to God I will lose my mind.

Being in here is a sickness.


May 12/ 1961

   I can hear the doctors and nurses whispering amongst themselves outside mine and Jims room. They are discussing me. Apparently I am delusional. They are saying how I keep trying to tell them that I am not crazy, how therapy is not working and how I am aggressive and bad mouth all the nurses. The other day I threw my pudding cup on the door because Jim had told me he would give me 2 of his food tickets if I hit the center glass, kinda like darts. How could I refuse an offer like that? Just bad timing when Sally the nurse happened to be wandering around. She had stuck her head in asking if we had any laundry that need tending to, Sally got a face full of chocolate pudding instead of an answer. It was pretty funny though, she had globs of the brown gloop sliding down her fuming face. She started screaming and threatened to report us to Mr.Brown, the head doctor/ therapist of the institution.

  I thought that was the only reason that they were talking but suddenly in my fog of sleep I heard the words “ lobotomy”  drift from under my door and sink into my pillow. At first I didn't give it a second thought but then like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on me and my whole body went cold. They were talking about doing the procedure on me. ME. I can't do this, fuck. I am going to plan an escape, Ah yes, that's it. I will run away and never look back, maybe move to Mexico where the sky is blue, blue and the sand white, white. Where there are no more doctors and no more nurses, every day will be drenched in sunshine and the palm trees will sway like drunken lovers in the sweet pineapple breeze. Sorta like California I guess, I went there once with my step dad. Shit trip but all I remember is the beach. God what a sight. I love the way the frothy waves nipped at my ankles and the breeze laughed and tugged at the tangles in my hair. In that moment I was whole.

I'm going to run away to paradise with the sweet pineapple breeze in the air and the sand in my hair.


May 13/1961

  I have my plan. Every morning there is a delivery truck with a fat squat greasy man that drives it into and out of the asylum. I'm going to hide in it, amongst the limp parsley and carrots. This man who I believe goes by the name of Alejandro ( such a fancy name for such an unpleasant little man) I can take his place, maybe use chloroform. God knows the nurses have a spray bottle of that lying around everywhere every time a patient has a little “ temper tantrum “.
Jim the good ol chap said he will take it from the nurses station “ And they won't suspect a thing “ He winked.

  They have  security cameras hidden away in every corner of the institution but that's fine, Harold said he will use some of the materials he uses for his dolls, clothes and knick knacks like that he will stuff the cameras with and that will give me a good ten minutes to hatch my plan, jump Alejandro and smother his little snub of a nose with a cloth full of chloroform. I will take his clothing and drive the truck successfully last the security guards and towards my beach.

Sounds simple right?

June 12/1961

  I finally got my journal back, I have been stuck in this padded cell for weeks. Needless to say my plan failed. It was going smoothly at first, we were all sitting in the games room hunched over a dinky little game of monopoly using pieces of lint as game pieces because apparently the actual figurines were considered hazardous and the caged clock on the wall was slowly ticking away. I could almost taste freedom. I had the little spray bottle of chloroform stashed in the deep wrinkles of my gray polyester jumpsuit that was mandatory for all patients to wear, I keep brushing my calloused fingertips against the bottle anxiously. Suddenly Jim learned over the table and locked eyes with me. It was time. I watched as big Harold heaved himself up and staggered to the beady little camera lense, he squatted down and stuffed the lense with cotton. As soon as the action was done I lept into action running across the games room and swung open the door, I looked back for a second at all these poor people stuck in here, they were not crazy, far from it. They were just misguided souls that needed a but if compassion not to be locked up away from society to see with their judging eyes. The world out there sees something that's only function is to hear. I turned around and clasped the knob with my sweaty palm, I turned it once, twice, it was locked.

  So really that's all there was to it.  I have been in this padded cell for ages, maybe they forgot me here. All I see is peach colored fabric, you know when you look at a bright light and you start to see bright flashes and zigzag patterns? That's all I see ricocheting off the camel colored walls, even when I shut my eyes I still see the lights deep in my skull, almost like my head is empty.  I feel like my head will collapse, but there is nothing in it. Where is my mind?  I wonder if this what it feels like to go crazy... Because after all what does sanity feel like? Being able to hold eye contact? Being able to smile and greet people with a “ how-do-we do?” People say we create our own reality but when does the inventor become a mad scientist?

Where is my mind?

[ end of Bills journal entries]


  The room was clean and white, there was a table with thick belt like straps and the air was still, an array of nurses quietly bustled in the background gently rustling the metal instruments around on the sterling silver tray.  A scrawny  man was strapped to the table, head slightly elevated for the procedure. His eyes were wild as they darted back and forth, nostrils quivering in fear. He was medicated but was mumbling about a jury and a judge. He was thrashing back and forth against the restraints as the doctors and nurses waited patiently for the medication to kick in. The man slowly stopped as his movements became more sluggish, tears slowly rolling down his cheeks dripping on the sterling silver. I stepped forward with the sharp needle in hand, this was going to be my first lobotomy. As I gently placed the needle in the correct postulation right between the two frontal lobes the man opened his eyes and looked at me with watery eyes.

 In a voice barely above a whisper the man said in a shaking voice “ I promise you, God I swear I'm not crazy. I lied to the judge, the jury, everyone. Please help me I just shared to be a free man and walk on that beach of sand white and the skies as blue as the eye can see. Please for the love of God, don't do this.”

  I signed. This man has been in this institution since he was 15, he had a breakdown in his local high school and had attacked a fellow peer. He had been talking about a judge and jury ever since he got here, for the last 34 years.

  smiling apologetically down at the floppy brown haired man, pulled up my surgical mask, positioned the needle and the hammer on the end. You have to get the angle perfectly you know, and hit it with the perfect amount of pressure, it's easy once you get the hang of it.

  As easy as 1..2..3.

Tennant Of WildFall Hall Review

    The play Tennant of wildfall hall was a very intriguing play that was held in a diffrent time era and how women were treated and the way they thought very poorly of themselves, men treated them like objects and this drove women to belive the only place for a female was in the kitchen, hence the term out of sight out of mind.  I have a deep respect of Helen because even when she was being abused she still took charge of her own life and the one of her child's ( who was really adorable like a tiny adult)  and fled her broken marriage to mend herself and became a stronger women in the process. She took charge of her life and buried her tragic past behind, Helen soon fell in love with a man named Gilbert who sought her hand out in marriage but his attempts were futile because Helen did not want to burden him with her past. In desperation Helen gave Gilbert her Journal that she had been feverently writing in to keep herself sane during her destructive marriage, This act of trust and bravery led Gilbert to understand and step in into the shoes of a wife in the 1600 and the trauma and emotional abuse so many women endured for many years. He accepted and understood Helens past and tried to get her to marry him but all was in vain when Helen fled back into the arms of her past. After two long years Helen and Gilbert reunited and with their pasts behind them led happy and fulfilling lives.