After my dad’s funeral

After my dad’s funeral, my mother got married to a butcher. I cried until I lost my voice, and then somebody I didn’t know transplanted a flower into my throat. Later, I became a one-eyed cat who could fly from mouth to mouth. I was light like a daydream masking the face of an immigrant child. The butcher coughed savagely, shaking his iron long tail to disturb me. I felt hungry, running toward my mother’s thigh to ask for a new chance. She said: no way, babe. He is our god. Just kneel before him. Just be a good girl.

I crawled into a corner, burying my face into the torn curtains calculating the distance between heaven and my father’s coffin. I wanted to be there. I wished to make a candy from the silky clouds& send it to him. I desired badly to meet his god and ask him if he was real or surreal. My stepfather gets closer. He holds scissors in one hand, and a cactus in the other. His grin swallowed the room.

Ode to my grandmother

My grandmother is an Alzheimer’s patient.
Last year she lost a tooth and memory. She began to confuse laughing with crying.
She started wearing our curtains, dating a late actor, and playing cards with my Shirazi cat.
“I love you, Granny” I always say. But she looks the other way waiting for Azrael.
She tells me how beautiful she used to be when she was my age.
I smile. My grandmother says she had a hoopoe once but couldn’t remember where he went. Maybe he hid in my chest? She wonders
she touches her nipples as if she tries to discover something new about them.
My little hoopoe, I miss you! She says with tears in both eyes.
The moment her last tear kissed the floor, I heard a sudden and strange sound coming from within, and then, just then my grandmother was gone.

The Trail

As usual, Israfil blows the trumpet. I sit on the edge of an animal’s tongue,

Thinking about how many times God massaged my neck.

The sky pours out random rumors about the curse of the Pharos.

I wave at a chimpanzee who looks like my father. We laugh.

I see a familiar face who reminds me of a popular leader.

Now he has turned into a clove flower.

How long were I here weaving more fairy tales over living and dead?

A cherry tree wears a rosary, buzzing like a bumblebee.

I am looking for anything to blame God for. The last hour will come after a few seconds.

When my face becomes a starfish, and when the sun gets smaller to fit the size of my pocket,

When water fills my grassy mouth, I begin to count the scars carved around my belly.

A lot of moons and poems mixed with my blood. Do you know laughter?

I ask God, who hasn’t a throne or golden chairs. He squeezes my hand and whispers into my ears, I am the inventor. Three little angels engrave the first letters of their names on the tree of paradise. I run, wondering how Adam and Eve ate each other.

I still hear the breaking news, although this is my second death.

God was holding a pair of scissors, managing to touch the tip of my nose.

Everything is purple. Another version of me was crucified to a wall.

I kneel on a prayer mat. Butterflies circled around my body.

Now I understand that I am preparing for a new death. Good girl,

Israfil says. I smile, swallowing more stars. God knows how to create entertainment.

The crime

Someone knocked me down& mailed my corpse to a floating cavern.

Each part of my body sings a lullaby.

Sometimes I hear elephants telling a folk tale.

Sometimes I hear frogs drumming out of my ear.

The angel of death boils a banana to feed his young.

I am sweating wondering if the hell was a short joke.

A blind woman shedding her skin. She has a witch’s fingers.

I look into her eyes& it takes me to a tulip garden.

My arm turned into a wise man.it talks to me as if he spent all his life as a philosopher.

I kneel among many little moons.

God is nearby, wearing a grand hat made of milky cloud.

Talk to me, he says pointing his finger to an upper window.

I have a genie inside, I say.

God laughs. This is an old joke.

I try to kill myself, but I remember that I am already dead.

The man who slaughtered me was an artist.

He knows how to squeeze castor oil into my fully open eyes.

Transformation

I dream of cockatoo birds sipping milk from the sky

I fly from corner to corner holding sugar, wine, and more funny jokes.

God is up sitting on his throne watching how the earth dances under my bare feet.

Kisses, wishes and more than that riding silver horses.

Creamy cloud falling down close to my head singing an old song.

My bones covered by the rhythm. My tongue turned into a butterfly. I sway in the air thinking of the worlds I pass dreaming of more honey rivers to have more fun, wondering how many orphan girls still live within me.

I try to raise both hands throwing them to a new universal castle. I feel new again. I sense more than being alive. There is something beyond happiness. There is delicious beyond joy.

Believe me, there is music you have never heard of.

Hallucinations

I had a dream of cows lead some people;

Who were humming an old-fashioned poem.

The sound of the flute was coming out from the teeth of an ancient Oak tree.

In that dream also, there was a moon and a half falling into my mother’s lap

She was stitching a great piece of the sky upon the little heads of three terrified cats.

I had a dream of being a gorilla

The dirt was caked perfectly with my fingers

I was another version of myself

Peeping into another world

Bathing in another water.

My body had billions of rooms

Empty ones without guests.

I was closed to be a river

But the temptation to be something bigger

Made me kneel

Swerving like a verse

Hovers like an angel’s napkin.

Shivers like a love song

In a poet’s chest.

Seven Souls 

(The Dogs in my Life)

• for all of them everywhere 

Kelly (a Beagle Sensitive and Kind)

When I was a kid that was our dog. She sat in her place after school and kept me company, but when I was sick she knew and came to sit beside me. At other times I let her sit on the couch with a pillow which wasn’t allowed but if nobody was around I let her and she loved it. Kelly would wag her tail a lot and loved to see people, guests. I think back at her with good memories and sitting with her on say, those winter days and looking out the window at the snow falling onto the world. 

Poocho (the Tender and Instant Family Member)

He was a rescue and already had some years. A great old lab. But he had a good run as it were with us and was provided a nice home with two parents and kids, three kids. He went camping with us, and for walks in the local trails and ravines. Basically he was perfect in that he caused no trouble and just wanted to be around us. He had a comfy old chair he sat on and liked to sleep on. Sometimes people would ask why we kept that chair but they didn’t understand. I am happy that we here gave him a nice few years before he had to go the great dog fields in the sky. 

Wolfe (the High Spirit and a Best Friend)

A special dog in all ways. A rescue husky mix. They said collie-husky. Long legs. A certain aloofness he was grey and white and black and everyone stopped to look at him. Fast. Smart. Interesting. Unique. He is running somewhere up there and having a good time. Down here we certainly went far and often to fields and forests.  

Tessa (all Bark and Sits in my Heart)

Tessa recently passed but I am glad she is not in any more pain though I and everyone miss her and always shall. She was a companion that had the truest loyalty and heart. She was always a sort of old lady in that she didn’t want to go far exploring though did like to walk. In the hey-day she played and walked with her brother Wolfe and we did everything we could each day to have a healthy and good life. 

Indy (Handsome and Tara’s Birthday Gift)

Indy is a beautiful light hair collie, long and handsome, and Tara’s dog. He likes everyone though. He is very sensitive and his coat is wonderful and a bit longer than the others. He likes to run fast and take care of his younger sister Luna. Josh brought him home one September for Tara’s birthday and he fit in instantly and it’s been great. 

Luna (the Looney that we All Love)

Luna we went and got from Barrie Ontario, and she is half husky, the colour white, short hair, and has a strong spirit to say the least. She is afraid of nothing and likes to swim, play, wrestle, but also cuddle and just chill. She keeps everybody on their toes and is a great, great member of our family. 

Nova (a Spirit Strong)

Nova is our niece Diane’s dog. She lives with us right now because our niece does. I love Nova and she sometimes follows me around. She is a wonderful dog, who has learned to go to the forest trails with us. She isn’t crazy about going in the water, but went into a little nice cold stream briefly today and seemed okay with it. Nova is a black dog, and her coat seems to shine. She has a kind and inquisitive look in her eyes as she looks at you and the world. 

Raquel Bianca Barbeito (the artist) is a student of Animal Biology at The University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She is also a painter and has done commissioned work for clients who want custom animal portrait creations.  Raquel works on canvas with acrylic paints. 

——

“We must bring the issue of mental illness out into the sunlight, out of the shadow, out of the closet, deal with it, treat people, have centers where people can get the necessary help.” –John Lewis

“I Hear Something You Can’t Hear” Exploring the Subjective Experience of Mental Illness and Resiliency in “The Quiet Room”: A Book Review

by Jacques Fleury

[Originally published in Oddball Magazine & Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self]

Just Before the Darkness

Imagine a world where darkness swallows darkness and swallows more darkness. Picture a world of shadows and obscurity where dogs look like wolves and a world seemingly crumbling around you waiting to be rebuilt. The world of which I speak is that of Lori Schiller’s in her ghastly and chilling book “THE QUIET ROOM: A JOURNEY OUT OF THE TORMENTS OF MADNESS.”

The book details Lori’s gruesome tale of the illness experience of the disease of schizophrenia. The illness experience differs from the disease in that it focuses more on the day-to-day effects of the disease, how it permeates over all aspects of one’s life. By this I mean how it can affect family relationships, friendships, career and general interaction with the inner and outer world.

In the following article, I will focus on Lori’s resiliency and using aspects of the analogous theories of Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler and Carl Jung and existential ideologies to illustrate the point that in the midst of immense strife, how an individual manage to strive for purpose and meaning in their lives.

At the beginning of the book, Lori wrote “I hear something you can’t hear…” She went on to write about how in the brevity before the darkness, how bright and beautiful the world seemed.

She explained that during her seventieth year at summer camp, how “The Lake seemed more blue…the trees of the Catskill Mountains that tinged our camp took on a deeper green than I remembered….”

She goes on to say that she was “…overwhelmed by what life had to offer.” And that she “could not run fast enough, could not swim far enough, could not stay up late enough…”  She described herself as “…energetic…happy… bubbly [and] a friend to everyone.”

However, things soon changed for Lori. She mentioned a sense of doom “…settled around [her].” The camp that she once defined as beautiful became a thing of disgust, “…a thing of evil…” So began her tragic journey on the hard and often satanic and precarious road to mental health recovery. Lori stated that during one of her episodes, she did not sleep, stayed in her room and declined to go to class. She was engulfed in “…the blackness of [her] depression.”  

Lori’s father, Marvin Schiller, refused to accept the fact that she was gravely ill. Something very common in the afflicted persons themselves and their families as well. The issue of stigma is of course one of the major motivators in this scenario. Lori’s dad wrote, “I didn’t want my daughter to be stigmatized by some temporary rash act.” Mr. Shiller thought that it was his fault that Lori was sick.

He wrote that when he was studying psychology back in the 1950’s, the cause of mental illness was determined to be “…a faulty upbringing.” Of course, as he stated, there were other theories.

For example, the Freudian model which focused on the intrapersonal (within oneself) ideologies that the id, ego and superego were the root causes of everything. Carl Jung’s concepts of unconscious myths were also considered, but most of the population believed that “…early life experiences…were behind mental disorders” Marvin Schiller wrote.

Today most of us know the root causes of mental illness operates under a more holistic framework in that it has both a biological (nature) and environmental (nurture) origins. As Lori strived to survive her illness, some of her actions made it painfully obvious that she had a defiant need to transcend her “voices” or demons that threatened her very being. She struggles to grab some remnants of sanity in the midst of the insanity of her ailment. She felt that she was only a shadow of who she once was and thought that she would never return to a normal life again.

However, she was determined to keep trying. Resiliency is one of the core coping strategies people often use during intense periods of trauma and strife.

Hope and the Possibility for Ongoing Recovery

Lori has hoped for something more than just being given a raw deal in the diagnosis of a disease.

She foresaw a future decorated with options and opportunities. The following theories directly coincide with these innate needs and desires in the social context.

Unlike Freud, who focuses on the “intrapersonal” or “within oneself” concepts, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung and Carl Rogers all offer the more practical, I think, approach in looking at the individual in relation to a more “holistic” context of their lives, particularly Jung and Adler’s ideology involving spirituality which I will refer to later.

Adler proposes a “holistic wholeness” ideology. One of the major life tasks he purports is finding where one fits in society, which includes vocation, contribution and spirituality.

Jung proposes a similar concept of “individuation”. He describes it as “…developing wholeness through integrating all the various parts of the psyche. However, Yung “…ignored the negative, maladaptive side of human nature.” Nonetheless, in modern times, an increased interest in “human consciousness and human potential” has catapulted a resurrection of curiosity in Jung’s ideas.

Carl Rogers also makes a similar point in that he sees the individual as heading in the path of “…wholeness, integration, [essentially] and a unified life.” He believes that consciousness is engaging in the broader “…creative, formative tendency.” By this he means a “directional” or “actualizing tendency”, a tendency on the way to achievement, on the way to actualization that entails not only the preservation but also the improvement of the individual.

Lori made many repeated unsuccessful attempts to find and keep employment in her community. She persevered until she was able to stabilize and made small steps to getting back to the work force and feeling like a contributing member of her community and essentially her world.

She found some solace in the use of prayer. Both Jung and Adler promote the idea of “spirituality” as a way to mental health recovery, and I completely agree. I know that the power of prayer, patience and perseverance have helped many on the path of recovery from mental illness.  Existentialist ideations dictate “life is meaningless or meaningful as one experiences it.”

Furthermore, it defines “…regret in existentialist terms, is grief and loss over a life not lived. The best way to deal with …regret is to discover what is worth dying for is that is worth living for.” So by Lori risking her life to try the then new drug Clozapine, she decided to risk dying so that she could live a fruitful life. She found meaning in suffering in that it has broadened her perspectives and enhanced her as a human being. For some, 90% of recovery can be attributed to the integration of spirituality (i.e. activities in their communities) and 10% medicinal (drug therapy).  

In The Quiet Room, Lori Shiller wrote that her successful recovery process was due to the love and support that she received from family, friends and her general community; which have essentially put her on the track back from mental hell to mental health.

Jacques Fleury is a Haitian-American poet, author, educator and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His book “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self”  & other titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Amazon etc…

                                            PIPEDREAMS

		
I dream of a landscape where greetings don’t flash fangs.
		
A family table where discussion is civil; folks listen—
		
don’t just wait to break in and berate those they hate.

		
I dream of a climate of inquiry; fair, open-minded,
		
where research is key, and critical thinking weighs facts.
		
Yes it’s a fantasy. Courtesy, tolerance, trust—

		
trampled to dust by the name-calling, self-righteous rants
		
of shock-jocks who rage about enemies, dangers from                      immigrants,
		
Muslims and Buddhists, gay couples, uppity women…

		
I dream of a land where the “great” days weren’t back in 

the ‘50’s,
		
and no one is trying to turn back the clock with grim laws—
		
rather, pursues equal rights, equal justice for all.

		
I dream.  Dream and hope. Harmony. Healing. I vote.