The Flattening

The Flattening Sept. 1987 It’s happening again. No, please, God, don’t let this be happening again. “Let go of me!” These orderlies are grabbing me and they’re hurting me. What are they so afraid of? What is so frightening about me? Why are they hurting me? “Miss, you are clearly agitated. We need to – ” “You need to what? Do you not see how damaging this is to my Soul? Do you not comprehend that it is you who are Lost Ones? Do you not see?” They’re hurting me and I’m kicking and they won’t let me go. Why do they keep doing this to me? And here come the restraints. Those make me crazy, and they would make any sane person crazy. My Soul is dying. “Stop it! Would you just stop hurting me? I’m not a criminal! God, what is wrong with you people? Why must you treat me like I’m the Devil? What are you so afraid of? Why is there such fear on your faces? Cannot you see that my Envelope has been opened and now my Soul is spilling out? And opening someone’s mail is a federal offense! Can you not see that by opening the Envelope my Spirit is swirling? It doesn’t know where to go!” “Ma’am, we need to get you into the hospital and then we can give you something to calm you down. You are not thinking clearly.” Thinking clearly. Thinking clearly? Who can think clearly when you’re being grabbed and wrestled and pinned down and tied up in restraints? What are they thinking – are they thinking clearly to treat another Soul this way? Why must it always be turned upside down? Why must the hospitals and the doctors tell me what thinking clearly is? I know what is clear. I know that my Soul is undergoing a Spiritual Emergency, and that it is damaging for my Soul to be treated this way. It is damaging to me and it is damaging to them because they are certainly not going to feel they deserve the Karma that is building. They are just “following orders,” but somehow they are going to undergo torture like I am undergoing, whether it happens in this life or another. And they will know not that they are paying for this that they have done unto me. And perhaps that is it. Perhaps I am simply paying off a Karmic Debt. Perhaps I was a vicious ruler in another life and I tortured people and now I have to pay off this Debt and I am going to have to go from one mental institution to the next for the rest of my life to pay off the Debt. Oh God. Please let this be the last one. I’ve already been to at least two dozen psych wards. Can I be done with the Debt? Oh, God. What if this is it? What if this is my Destiny and this life is simply a huge Payment? What if I keep going back and back and back to these places and I keep getting tortured and orderlies keep wrestling with me and doctors keep shooting me up with drugs and they all keep telling me I’m just agitated and that this is for my own good… “Oh, God! Oh, help! Just help - Just come Down Here and do something.” “Hold still, ma’am! Stop it! You need something to calm you down.” “Here - pull those down and give it to her there.” And now they might as well be raping me. They’re pulling my pants down and I can’t do anything about it and I told them not to pull my pants down. And now they are sending poison into me. Here they come. The drugs. Now all my Real thoughts are going to be swallowed and my mind will enter The Flattening. My Soul will get lost once again beneath the Flattening. It’s starting. I can feel my jaw locking and my stomach convulsing because that is what happens when the Doctor’s Poison goes into my open Envelope. Who tore open my Envelope and let my Sprit swirl? Dixie Land “Miss, you need to take your meds. Here you go.” Here I am, back in Dixie Land. The world where they tie your brain in knots by giving you Doctor’s Poison in little dixie cups. My Soul. Where is my Soul? Where is my Spirit? They cannot live in Dixie Land! I must escape Dixie Land! Where is the nearest escape? I have done this before and I’ll do it again. I am not going to let my envelope get crumpled and ripped and returned to Sender. My Soul is going to fix the envelope. It is going to fix it from the inside out. It is going to put Cosmic Krazy glue into the gulches. The Cosmic Krazy Glue will win when the Doctor’s Poison is swirling in my veins. It will make little rips in my veins for the Poison to leak out and then be transmitted into the Receptacle of Doctor’s Poison which in turn will be eliminated into the toilet. I need to remember water. The water will be the vehicle by which the Doctor’s Poison is transmitted into the Receptacle. “Nurse! I need some more water! Can I please have lots and lots of water?” This room is white and there is nothing in it except this cot I am on with the four leather straps holding my wrists and ankles. There are holes in each tile of the ceiling and I have counted these before so I know the number to be a consistent 235. There are always 235 holes in the ceiling tiles of mental institutions. That is the law. There is the knowledge that these places are really conceived by the Almost-Devil and instead of being really obvious and making everything 666 which would give it away, the AlmostDevil is more crafty. There is not Devil per se because the angels Lucifer and Michael and did the Experiment of Time because God told them to. They didn’t intend to do anything evil, but when the people of the Earth School Experiment began to believe and worship Time, Lucifer and Michael tried to fix it. But there was that moment when one thing came before and one thing came after that they couldn’t unmake. We therefore worship time, and the end of Time will be a beauteous thing because it won’t be the end of Earth School; it will be the end of the Illusion of Time. So Lucifer and Michael have been helping the people of the Experiment experience everything for the Highest Good, even though there is pain. Earth School doesn’t tell its students that. We have to remember. But when we do remember, we know that the AlmostDevil is just Us. We’re the people of the Experiment who create Heaven on Earth or Hell on Earth. And that’s what they are. There’s no literal fire down below. That’s a crock of shit. It’s so obvious. The fire is below the surface of each Soul and it is up to us to fight the Fire and tame it and wield its power for the force of Good. So the AlmostDevil has materialized in the form of whomever decides they have other’s Best Interest in mind. Because this is an Illusion. To tell someone you’re doing something mean or spiteful “because it’s for your own good” is an Illusion, and it is not for the Greatest Good. It is the AlmostDevil. It is what makes Capital Punishment. It is what makes War, especially War in the name of God. It is what makes Persecution, and White Supremacy, and Prisons, and Juvenile Detention Centers, and Crucifixion. It is what makes Doctor’s Poison ... for your own good… “Ms…. Gripe-o? The doctor would like to see you. I will have some nurses come and take you to his office.” “You mean, you will have some friendly folks come untie me? How lovely. Yes, that would be lovely. I’d love to chat with the doctor.” For my own good. ShrinkRap This office is in such stark contrast to the seclusion room that I’m on sensory overload. There is a big mahogany desk with a swivel chair. There is an expensive desk set – the paper-holder matches the pencil-holder and they look like real marble. There is a marble paperweight which makes me think of Jerry Seinfeld and I laugh. (“Where are these people working that they have such great gusts of wind and need weights to hold down their papers”) “This is a lovely office, Doctor. It’s almost as nice as the suite I stayed in last night. Same motif. Marble. Mahogany… ” “Let’s see. Your chart says…” These doctors are all the same. No sense of humor. It’s like they can’t even fathom that a nut-case might say something witty so they pretend they don’t even hear. He’s fumbling around, flipping through the papers on his clipboard. He has no idea who I am. He’s around forty, I’d say, and he has a mustache and beard and probably grew a mustache in the seventies thinking it was really cool, and then he probably grew a beard a little later when he was doing his residency and he wanted to look like Grizzly Adams. He probably wanted to be Grizzly Adams and do a bunch of mountain-man things but is too uncoordinated so he just kept his beard and fantasized that he was a manly man. He probably hasn’t had sex in 2 ½ years and is impotent. He’s probably been married twice, once to his high school sweetheart who got bored as shit and left him. Then he married a residency groupie, some student who worshipped him, and she got bored as shit and left him too. He probably masturbates to JC Penny’s catalogues and blames his impotency on Deseril. Which is actually pretty accurate since it takes about three days to achieve orgasm on Deseril. So here we are, I can psychoanalyze the shit out of him in three seconds and he is still flipping through my chart like a dumbass and can’t even see that I’m a person over here. He’s so much more interested in that chart. That fucking chart. That chart can be your demise. If some orderly is in a bad mood – if you remind him of his ex-girlfriend who cheated on him – he can seriously fuck up your life by saying you displayed certain kinds of behavior. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s his word against yours. And you’re a nutcase, so who’s going to believe you? According to what that chart says, they can inject inordinate amounts of Doctor’s Poison into you. They can tie you up in restraints and put you in seclusion for however long they feel like it. It’s all up to the chart. It’s their Bible. And it’s not unlike the fundamentalist interpretation. No room for negotiation. No concept of metaphor or parable. It’s written: It’s Law. “So, doctor, what did you find? Can you cure me?” “Uh, Miss, miss Deborah Gr” “It’s Diana. Diana Grippo. You can look at me. I’m actually breathing over here. I could probably tell you what’s going on. I know you’re attached to my chart, but – ” “It says in your chart that you’ve been agitated. It says that when they brought you in, you were shouting obscenities and were generally uncooperative – ” “Doctor, let me ask you something: If you had three large men attacking you and you weren’t sure why, and then they began tying you up and shooting you up with drugs, would your first reaction be to cooperate?” “What I hear you saying is – ” “ ‘What I hear you saying’? What I hear you saying! Did you actually say that? You are such a cliché. I can’t even believe you just said that. Shrinkrap. Did they teach you that in shrink school? How can you possibly think I am going to respect your intelligence when you speak to me in Shrinkrap? How can you possibly expect me to listen to anything you have to say?” “I hear some agitation in your voice – ” “Can’t you think of another fucking word? I’m so sick of you people saying I’m agitated. Of course I’m agitated. You don’t even give a fuck what’s going on with me. All you care about is that chart and the insurance money. You’ve got a great gig going here. You don’t even have to feed nutcases like me, because what can I do? Who will believe me when I tell them I was treated like shit? Who will be on my side? How will I even figure out a way to tell anybody? How will I even be able to get through the red tape to be able to do anything like file a complaint? It’s so beyond reprehensible. It’s for my own good…” “Well, yes, Deborah –” “It’s Diana, you moron.” “It is for your own good. You were displaying psychotic behavior and we needed to make sure you weren’t a danger to –” “Oh, like you really give a fuck if I’m a danger to myself or others. First of all, how dangerous am I? Look at me? How much fucking damage could I do to three orderlies attacking me? And I was not a danger to myself. I was having a spritual experience before you assholes came along and administered The Flattening.” “The flattening?” “Yes, Haldol. Thorazine. Whatever. All of it flattens the emotions and swallows the Soul’s voice. You have no idea what I’m talking about but I am not delusional. I am perfectly clear. I am clear and sane and mad. I am so mad. I can’t even tell you what little respect I have for you and the other doctors who work in places like this. You don’t know jack. You don’t know about the Soul.” “It says here in your chart that…” I can’t stay here with this stupidfuck one second longer. I am out of here. I get up and begin to walk out – perfectly calmly – and he pushes the button. I hear people running from down the hall and they are getting closer. My three friends are now standing in front of me, blocking the doorway. Here they are, these bouncers, standing before me, and there’s the other one with the needle, and they’re all ready to put me back in the restraints, back in seclusion, just because the doctor is a stupidfuck. Oh God. Please come down here. “LET GO OF ME!”