Schizoaffective

Lake Michigan from Algoma, WI Sometime in the next decade, none of the three of us will have a reason to return to Green Bay. We grew up together there. One of my two friends, I have known since first grade, the other since about 8th. We sat masked for COVID on the back porch of the house of one of my friend's parents, a house I first visited 43 years ago in order to tape some Ted Nugent albums. We are all in our mid 50s. Our parents are either dead or not doing so well, and the in-laws or parents are all that keep us coming back. Soon, they won't be with us, and our siblings all live in other cities. I had the acute sense that, in spite of not having gotten together as the three of us in about 20 years, this was closing in on the end of something. One of my friend's father died almost 50 years ago. We were in Cub Scouts at the time. It was my first encounter with death. Our den mother led us scouts to his house, where we stood outside and sang. He came to the large picture...

 At my most rational, I approach being diagnosed with a mental illness as a chance event that happened to me. Based on what I know of current research, it had a lot to do with genetics and with something in my environment—perhaps a virus, perhaps stress, nobody knows for sure. But what is clear is that it is not my fault. I hardly intended this, and I have been trying to deal with its arising in a responsible way. So far so good. But I, like most people, am not always rational. Since having a bad bout of delusions and hallucinations five to seven years ago from which I've recovered, I have moments of searing shame. They are usually triggered by a memory of some minor rudeness or inconsideration on my part from years ago. I first cringe at my minor failing and then think, "Everybody hates me." I may partly think this from paranoia, I don't know. But then I need to work myself out of the hole. I was talking to my therapist about this last time we met. We concluded that ...

 Imagine a magical ball being used as a football at a large, outdoor athletic center. It is a normal football—oblong and brown. Now imagine it being thrown out of bounds and onto the baseball field. Immediately upon landing, it transforms into a white baseball with red stitching. The players there pick it up and pitch it and hit it and do what you normally do with a baseball. That is, until someone hits a homerun and knocks it onto the soccer field, where it transforms immediately upon landing into a soccer ball. The players kick it and head it as they do with any soccer ball, because it has become a soccer ball. Utterly. That is what it is now. And then someone kicks it out of bounds to the golf driving range. There, the ball becomes small and white and dimpled. A gold ball. And it acts just as you would expect a golf ball to act, because it is a golf ball. Utterly. Do balls behave like this? No, of course not. But we do. I find myself and others utterly transforming ourselves, on...

Since I usually post essays here, I should alert you that the following is a story-poem in order to orient your reading. Enjoy! _______________________________ by Jay Paul   in the summer walking down a residential street of two-story homes built in the 50s a little luxurious for the time but not too much a crow feasts on the carcass of a squirrel probably run over by a car as I get closer the crow speaks in a language I don’t realize I know and tells me to walk into a small cabin-like house set back from the road I try to respond in the language but find I can only make squeaks and grunts the crow tilts its head and looks at me oddly squirrel blood on its beak then it goes back to its feast   to be mute in the language of the streets you are on is to be both of the streets and off them   crows caw they don’t talk and boss people something was extraordinary   stability is a confluence of habit and luck   I feel compelled to obey the crow and walk up a narro...