My Salt Mine's Breath Tastes Like Salt

I go back to work tomorrow.

My wife had two babies, so I stayed home for a bit.

It's been nine weeks.

NEIN!

I was supposed to be gone for eight weeks, but I freaked out (NEIN!) and extended my leave by a week. Work didn't care. Hey, what's another week of not paying me to them?

(The answer: not much.)

I'm gold that most husbands/partners/S.O.'s don't take so much time off when their wives/partners/S.O.'s, Baby Mamma, Bitches have children. Of course, most people have single babies. Twins are kind of more complicated. More screaming. More shitting. More... there.

There there, they're there.

And they're definitely there. And, tomorrow, from roughly 5:45am when I leave the house until 3:45pm when I return, I'll be here, and they'll be there. My wife'll be there, too, until April 2nd, and she's got a couple intrepid people coming in sporadically to assist but, for the most part, she's going to be a solo act while I'm deeply entrenched in the psychiatric salt mine.

I was thinking about writing this next paragraph about how I'm preparing myself to go back. But, see, there really is no way to prepare yourself to go back to a job after nine weeks of being away. What am I supposed to do? Zen out? Read up on Clozaril? Do mental push-ups? Please-- it's bull-cock. It's like preparing to have twins in your house every waking and sleeping (HA!) second of every day.

(NEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIN!)

Can't be done.

Stupid.

No.

SO, why try?

I'm just going to wake up tomorrow and pilot the car a little less mindlessly than I've been doing for the last year-and-a-half, and hope I remember how to interact appropriately not only with patients, but with coworkers. I hope I remember which little checkboxes to tic off and which ones to leave alone. I hope I remember to sign my name, stamp my name, and write the time-- specifying a.m. or p.m. I hope the new photocopier likes me. The old one didn't. Antisemitic piece of shit.

Faced with my inevitable return to the working world-- I'm angry more than anything. I thought I would be more hysterical and panicked, but I'm not. I'm just mad. At myself. At me. Mad at my meager earning potential. Mad at my schedule that necessitates my being at work every other weekend. Mad at the fact that we don't have gobs and gobs of money and cocaine stashed away under the floorboards that might facilitate a life of leisure for my wife and my children. Mad at this country that punishes procreatin' mothafuckas by offering them unpaid leave at a time when expenses rise dramatically and unendingly.

I'm one angry little blogger-boo.

Roar.

I suppose it's going to be alright, though. People always say that, usually when they have absolutely no idea if it's true. I suppose my wife will be alright and my kids will be alright and, if I can get through the door without bursting into tears, I'll be alright, too. I know that, in some ways, I've lost my facility-- that breezy ease with which I strolled down the hallways and knocked on patients' doors and knew everybody's name and everybody's story-- who washed their pants yesterday with cigarettes in the pocket and had a meltdown, who assaulted whom, who's on fall precautions, who's being discharged soon-- who isn't.

Well. I suppose it'll all come back. People say that to people, too. After all: working in a psychiatric hospital's just like riding a bicycle.

Isn't it?

Goal!

If you happen to be sort of lolling around at 10:00am, EST today-- think of me. I'll be at work, running a group on Goal Setting. I was thinking that maybe there should be a dash between "Goal" and "Setting," but it didn't look quite right, but I'm still unsure about it. And then I was thinking, should a person who isn't even sure if he should hyphenate "goal setting" be running a group on goal setting?

Probably not-- but there we are.

There's a lot of things that I probably shouldn't be doing, but I do them, either because they're my job, or because I feel compelled to do them, or because no one else seems to be doing them, or because we're out of toilet paper in the second floor bathroom, or because there's something in between my teeth, or because I love my wife, or because there's traffic or intense humidity or external expectations.

Or threat of imminent per/prosecution.

Goal setting might end up being a tricky thing for me to teach, even at a psych hospital, because my goals are murky at best, non-existent at worse. It's hard for me to articulate what my goals are, to be honest with you, and that's kind of a scary thing to confront about oneself. Obviously, one of my goals is to be a competent, nurturing, gentle, insightful father. One of the things I will be talking about in group will be about how a goal is like a puzzle, and the steps that one must take in order to achieve one's goal are the pieces to that puzzle, and it's a matter of seeing where and how those pieces fit together.

Does that sound a bit camp? Probably. It kind of sounds like it came out of a self-help book I should have read at some point but didn't because I was too busy listening to Amber Rubarth songs.

(Seriously-- she's good. And hot.)

I don't have very many long-range goals other than the whole father thing. Which, again, is scary. I'll be talking about short and long-range goals in group, too. I'm pretty good with short-range goals, I think, though, sometimes, it's hard to tell. When you work at an inpatient psych hospital, where some patients are delusional, psychotic, assaultive, aggressive, and/or unpredictable, my immediate, short-range, eight-hour goal is, in the words of Andy Breckman: don't get killed.

(Seriously-- he's good. And Jewish, but decidedly not hot.)

Obviously, my short-range goals at work are to be as useful to the patients as humanly possible, to lend a helping hand and an empathic ear, to proffer support and positive reinforcement, and redirection as required, but, mostly, I'm trying to go home in one piece. Because, if I can't do that, then I won't be able to come back and be of the same level of use the next day. And because me with traumatic brain injury would probably not be so pretty.

I suppose I have things that I want to accomplish before I die, and I guess that makes them goals.

I want to own (another) antique Volkswagen Beetle.

I want to be published (again).

I want to star in a drama, or a comedy-- something without music, something written by a noted playwright-- preferably Sam Shepard or Harold Pinter.

Oh, and I want to play Salieri in "Amadeus".

I want to grow a real motherfucker of a walrus mustache, like a real full, bushy, Mark Twain-style bastard, that sweeps all the way down to my jawline-- but I know I'll have to wait till I'm old to do it so people will take me seriously.

I want to shake hands with a Python. And there's only five left...

I want to play the highland bagpipes.

I want to perform a leading patter role in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia with the Savoy Opera Company, even though they're basically a bunch of lushes with inflated egos.

I want to retire to the country with the woman I love, where the nearest neighbor will be so far away s/he won't be able to hear us having gross, creaky old people sex.

I want healthy, eccentric, affectionate, relatively stable children. (Two, please.)

Wish me luck as I spend the remainder of my days searching for the pieces to these puzzles. But not today. Today it's my job to help some other folks do the same for themselves.

Bonny Blue

Tomorrow is the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. Confederate guns blasting the bejesus out of Fort Sumter. Hurrah, boys.

Hurrah.

My favorite Civil War tune is the "Bonnie Blue Flag."

I used to whistle this song as I made my gimpy way down the halls of my prestigious, public high school in between classes, blissfully unaware of, or indifferent to, the fact that openly expressing a fervor for Civil War marches and ballads was a way to remain utterly sexless.

Of course, I tell myself now that high schoolers back in the late nineties were, as a general rule, having far less sex than high schoolers are today. I'm not aware of any empirical data that either proves this statement right or wrong. I could probably Google it, but we all know I'm far too lazy for that. Besides, I only employ stats when I'm sure they're going to prove my point, and when they're relatively easy to understand.

It's a Southern song, one of the most popular during the course of the war, and after, perhaps only superceded in Southern-fried love by "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." I used to whistle that one a lot in high school, too. It is perhaps old folklore I am repeating that there is still a law on the books in our nation's capital that you can be arrested for whistling "Dixie" on Federal grounds. Fortunately, such a brazen act was permitted at my Pennsylvania high school, and I faced no grievous repercussions for my mini-treason.

Civil War songs beg to be sung, hummed, and whistled. If they were good enough to keep thousands of young men from going absolutely insane on thirty mile a day marches in 100+ degree heat, you can pretty much rest assured they can be of service anywhere, at any time. To my ear, the Southern songs pack more of a punch, but "The Battle Cry of Freedom" is as stirring a song as I've ever heard.

"For although he may be poor,
No man shall be a slave,
That is the battle cry of freedom."

Can I get an "A-men?"

The earliest memory I have of falling for Civil War ballads was when I was ten years old. In a thrift shop somewhere, I randomly purchased, for the weighty cost of $0.50, a tape of Civil War marches and folksongs. I played it for my father one Saturday morning in his Pontiac Bonneville as he drove me to his factory. He and I spent lots of Saturdays together when I was a boy. He would go for 1/2-a-day on Saturdays and take me with him. I would play on the conveyor belt (not a good idea, in hindsight), take the messages from his answering machine, screw around with the time-clock and the tape-dispensing machine, basically touch anything that had buttons, and, on the long commute, I'd play my Civil War music for him.

"Where the hell did you get to like this music?" my father asked me one morning.

"I don't know," I said.

And, really, I didn't. I still don't. Sometimes I wonder if I've been somehow genetically programmed to store an affection for the Victorian era and its trappings:

pocketwatches
eccentric facial hair
bowler hats
three-piece suits
antique eyeglasses
antique typewriters
The Civil War
Gilbert & Sullivan
Mark Twain

I mean, I could go on. Really.

Sometimes, in the mornings, when I go into work early, the first assignment I have is "Personal Care." All it consists of is unlocking the cabinets in the day room for the ladies, putting out the mirrors, hair styling gel, curling irons and hair dryers and supervising their use, while I sit back in a wicker chair and drink my coffee and make sure no one's strangling themselves (or anyone else) with a hair dryer).

It's one of my favorite assignments, and not just because it's basically me getting paid to sit on my keister, it's because I get to play my Victorian music, because, let's face it: that shit's pretty therapeutic. The two CDs I favor are the Gilbert & Sullivan overtures, and a CD called "Mark Twain's America."

The latter CD is all piano music played by Jacqueline Schwab (if you've ever seen a Ken Burns documentary, you've heard her) performing songs that either Sam Clemens professed in a journal or book that he personally liked, or just songs that were popular while he was alive.

"I love this version of 'Beautiful Dreamer'," a patient will inevitably say to me, at least once a week. Without fail, somebody (always a female) recognizes "Beautiful Dreamer." It always surprises me when some 50-year-old woman with schizophrenia, wearing a bathrobe, pieces of tissue stuck inside her ears, and three pair of pants picks out "Beautiful Dreamer" amongst the Civil War-era ballads and melodies.

Every once in a while, a patient will ask me to write down the title of the CD for them. I don't harbor delusions that they're racing each other to Amazon to purchase it, but it's nice to be asked. It's nice to see them sitting in their wicker chairs, with their eyes closed, and a contented smile crossing their lips-- even if it's just for a moment.

They're my beautiful dreamers. They're bonny blue.

Contemplation

On Thursday night, I bought a book-- an actual 8" x 5 1/4" paperback book at Borders. That's right. Pin a medal on my shirtfront at a ceremony featuring a marching band and ditheringly platitudinous speeches made by gray-sideburned men in frockcoats and tophats. I am doing my part to keep a sinking vessel afloat. I am the savior of the ship.

$14.99, plus $.90 to account for Pennsylvania's 6% sales tax, doesn't get you much at Borders these days. Yes, it will get you a fru-fru drink from the café and a rather untowardly-sized chunk of coffee cake, and it'll also get you some horseshit stationery pack-- not that anybody actually writes letters or cards anymore. It'll get you probably a small amount of actual books-- "The Abridged History of the American Firearm" from the discount section, or perhaps a paperback school edition of "Hard Times."

It got me "The Center Cannot Hold," by Elyn R. Saks. I'm 280 pages out of 336 in, and I'm frankly surprised that I've been able to take a break long enough to write a blog post. But, hey-- it's Sunday night and I've got work due on Monday morning, at 7:18am. Great expectations.

It's a remarkable book by a remarkable lady. A graduate of a Masters program at Oxford University and Yale Law School, Elyn Saks also suffered from grave mental illness, causing her to experience hallucinations and delusions, resulting in her being hospitalized both in England and America. She had countless encounters with full leather restraints, as well as countless encounters with psychiatrists, analysts, therapists and doctors who did what they thought was best to help her. Some were on the right track, some not so much so. Her book is heartbreaking, inspiring, frightening, unsettling and glorious, for she is able to elucidate and describe what a psychotic break looks like, feels like, sounds like, smells like, and talks like.

"Head explosions and people trying to kill. Is it OK if I totally trash your office?" Saks queried one of the physicians she'd been working with during a particularly bad break. Eating, bathing-- what was that? There were anonymous people trying to kill her everywhere she looked and her own "head explosions" to deal with every second of the day.

As a person who works with people who suffer from mental illness, who has had very little educational or clinical experience prior to this job, it is absolutely essential (for my well-being and for the patients) that I soak up whatever knowledge and experiences I can. Christ knows I am not going back to school for psychology at age 30, and I've already been to numerous trainings on trauma and Stage of Change theory and roundtable discussions with psychologists and psychiatrists, but I have learned more plowing through 2/3rds of Elyn R. Saks book than I have from all of those trainings and packets and handouts and motherfucking PowerPoint presentations.

Of course, I learn from my patients, too. I learn from what they tell me, and what they don't tell me, what they hear and what they think they're hearing. In the psychoeducational groups that I run, I learn as much as I teach-- maybe more. I learn from the interactions I witness between staff and patients-- the good interactions and the poor interactions, and I'm getting so I can differentiate between the two.

Really, it's not too hard.

I do a lot at work. I teach the groups. I interview patients. I counsel, I talk-- but the most important thing I do is listen. The opportunities patients get to talk-- to really talk-- to staff are few and far between, and some days they give me twenty patients to see, so the temptation is to wham-bam, thank you, ma'am. But I can't do that. I'm not that downtrodden yet. So I make more time. I come into work half-an-hour early, even though I do not get paid for it. I have an hour lunch, but, most days, I wolf down my food in fifteen minutes and head back into the building. I'm no martyr and I'm no saint, but what's the point in my being there if I'm not giving all I can?

While I do a lot at work, the one thing I really don't witness or participate in are the therapy sessions-- because they're between the patient and the psychologist, of course. I would love, though, to be a fly on the wall during some of those sessions-- to see how the psychologists handle some of the most challenging patients in the state, to see how the patients react-- to maybe gain something vicariously for myself-- some little snippet of wisdom or a seed to plant in my own little garden.

My garden.

I feel like I've neglected it a little bit. The last time I sat across from a therapist was ten years ago-- in college. It made sense for me to go to therapy as an undergraduate, after all, college is the most selfish time in a person's life: it almost seemed a sin to go through college not spending at least fifty minutes a week talking about yourself. I went for just over two years-- spending a year-and-a-half with the same therapist, whom I adored. The sentiments were reciprocated, and it was good. Of course, at the same time, it wasn't good.

"I was seducing him," I told my wife at the kitchen table yesterday morning. She raised an eyebrow. "You know what I mean-- not like that. Like, getting him to believe I'm special, like I was entertaining and good and funny and nice." And he bought it. "I've got to tell you," he said to me one time, "I almost feel guilty about how much I enjoy the time you and I share together each week."

What a thing for a patient to hear. I ate it up like Borders Café coffee cake. The fact that I remember that and not much of the actual counseling shows you how much his sentiments meant to me.

I've been thinking lately, perhaps spurred by Elyn Saks' innumerable therapeutic contacts, perhaps by the recent turmoil and depression that has hovered like a raincloud over my family, about a return to the couch. Or the chair, depending on the modality of choice, and I don't know how I feel about it. I now have insurance that covers in-network mental health services-- up to a point, of course. I'm not rehearsing for a show, so I'm kind of out of "time excuses." But I don't want to spend time and money... performing for someone, trying to reel them in and seduce them, and I don't know if I'm powerful enough to make myself not do that.

And I don't know if it matters, if I'm also getting the help I want or may need.

I guess you could say I'm in Contemplation, to use the language of my current trade. And I've gone in and out of that stage every so often during the last decade. I don't know what I'll end up deciding on, or if I'll move out of that stage into something new. For now, because I have reality-based thought processes, a supportive, loving wife, a relatively non-clinical family, and you, my center is holding fast. And, one way or another, I am determined to be the savior of my own ship.

On Icarus

They say that, overwhelmingly, the last phrase most frequently uttered inside of a commercial airplane's cockpit about to be demolished in a crash are, "Oh, shit."

The NTSB, the governing body charged by the United States government with investigating airplane accidents, reviews all cockpit voice recordings (CVRs) that are recovered after a fatal aviation accident. During the course of its investigations, this body frequently administers a test to measure stress in the voice of individuals in the cockpit, such as the pilot, the copilot, or the first officer. It is a neat way to tell if the pilots were surprised by whatever weather-related anomaly or mechanical failure or explosion that started the inevitably fatal chain-of-events, and it measures how calm they are able to remain as they struggle to reclaim control of a doomed airliner, whether they are working in concert with, or at cross-purposes, with each other in the final seconds of their lives. And the lives of everyone else onboard.

As a result of these stress tests, it has been determined that this often-uttered final utterance, "Oh, shit" isn't frequently said with high stress, with great force, or even as just a regular, run-of-the-mill exclamation. It is often said dryly, flatly, in a resigned way that indicates an experienced pilot knows, in the final milliseconds of his or her life, that this plane cannot be reclaimed, and into the Pacific Ocean, or mountaintop, or field beyond the desired runway it will go. It will just go.

Oh, shit.

Through circuitious circumstances, I got to thinking about Icarus yesterday. These things tend to happen when I have a week-day off. I'm here in the house, alone, noodling around-- tending to this or that, listening to taciturn, introspective folk music, and it just... happens. I hadn't thought of Icarus since 5th grade, when we all studied our mythology. I was assigned Hades, and I came to school dressed as him for the culminating project. I loved Hades, because he was dark and terrifying, and he embodied everything that I found dark and terrifying-- so I embraced him. I'll show you, mortals. Dip your toe in my little River of Styx and we'll see what's what.

Oh, shit-- right?

I don't remember which of my classmates were assigned the tale of Icarus and Daedalus, but I remember being impressed by-- and probably a little jealous of-- the wings-- fashioned out of string and popsicle sticks, glue, feathers, and sticks. I don't think Daedalus himself could have done better. I was sure their parents had helped them. But what of that? My mother made my Hades hat.

The morals of the tale of Icarus and Daedalus are plenty, and uninspired, and done and done over again.

Listen to your parents.

Don't fly too high.

Remember, you're only human.

Be mindful of danger.

Don't be prideful.

The sun is dangerous. Don't forget your Lancome Bienfait Super Fluid Facial, SPF-50.

Icarus is easy to dump on, from the comfort of an armchair firmly entrenched in reality's living room. Stupid shit-for-brains: what did you think was going to happen?

Well. I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for the kid. And I would think that anybody who is an enthusiastic participant in the uniquely American rat-race for popularity, for "Likes", for "Friends", for advancement, for prominence, for a legacy might do well to smile kindly on this poor, broken body whose wings are besmirched with melted wax.

I wonder what his last words were. Probably something more eloquent than, "Oh, shit." After all, this is mythology we're talking about here-- a high art-- meant to lift us up, ascending towards Phoebus.

On Monday, a well-intentioned coworker asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. "Surely you don't want to do this-- work here in a psych hospital-- for the rest of your life," she, a nurse, said.

"God," I sighed, "I don't know, Mary. I just don't know."

And my mind drifted away to the relaxation group I run for the patients. Seated on floral cushions in wicker rockers, they gently drift off to sleep as light Victorian piano music plays for them on the CD player, and I take them on a guided visualization. I always start by having them imagine they're on the beach, all alone, lying on their backs on the warm sand, the glorious sun warming their faces. Through the journey, they end up under water, gliding amongst the fish and the coral, and, the way I tell it, they inevitably end up giving the water a gentle kick and they soar up, up, and up as their heads break through the waves and they soar through the sky-- upwards towards the sun.

"I don't know," I said, smiling faintly, "but, for now, I love what I do."

"Well," she said, "I'm glad you're here."


Me, too.