On such a busy GD-P day, wanted to post something a dear friend posted years ago.

[moriah]

It was entitled Lunatics.

Date: Tuesday, August 1, 1995 10:04am Forum: Classic
From: Bitti Msg#: 402231
To: ** ALL **
Re: lunatics
(Copy by Autox)

I have a new kitchen, with fine oak cabinets and handsome countertops,
installed by a man who talks to angels.

He is a genuine, court- and psychiatrist-certified lunatic, a madman who
shuns his medication, preferring his daily walks with demons to the
dullness of chemically imposed sanity. He's the older brother of a
friend, and he asked if I had any work that needed doing.

I've lived in this house six years and I'd not, to date, even bothered
to hang curtains in the kitchen. So I told him I wanted a better
kitchen, one with cupboards with doors and drawers that had bottoms that
wouldn't fall out and a faucet that didn't drip in time with whatever
band was on the box.

So he handed me catalogs of sinks to choose from, catalogs of formica
to pick through, catalogs of cabinetry to peruse, and went to work
painting the soffits and fascia outside (amazing how one's vocabulary
expands with every new task).

I could hear him, scraping and painting and carrying on a conversation
with Hugo the Dog, who apparently was answering but in at a wavelength I
couldn't perceive. They talked of how red diesel was a government plot
to drug America into dullness, how Thorazine was part of that plot and
how Clinton and the pope were in league with the devil.

With my catalog-searching done and the stack of stuff delivered, the
MadHandyman went to work on the kitchen, ripping out old stuff and
putting in new. Within a day, he had the new cabinetry in; within two he
had the plumbing working beautifully; within three he had the first coat
of stain and sealant. All the while, he continued his ravings, this time
to Andre and Bitti the cats, who also apparently had the heretofore
undiscovered capacity to respond. The Japanese were taking over, yes,
and the Arabs, and we would all be safe only in the hills north of
Shirley.

And finally, after a week, the crazy man was done, the kitchen was
complete and the exterior painted; in the off hours he'd cleaned out my
storeroom, even unearthing a treasure of books ("Hey, are these Carlos
Castaneda books good to read?" "Uhh, Randy, I don't think you'd better
be reading those now.") Another friend had another project, something to
keep him in cheap wine and off the streets, give him a little wandering
around money and some he could send to his children.

And so he's gone, and the house is quiet, and the animals have no one
to talk politics with. I think of him when I stand at the coffee pot and
look out the window, through new curtains, over new countertop: a man
with a mind badly bent, who could cut a straight line with a circular
saw, who saw demons and talked to angels.

I hope science catches up to him one day, finds something that will
keep the delusions at bay but not wrap his mind in cotton batting. I
hope he doesn't let go of those few thin threads holding him to reality.
I hope our tolerance for his abberrations doesn't run dry.

I hope his angels overcome his demons.

I hope he finds this kind of quiet.


---------

Miss you, Bitti. Wherever you have gone.

[marzipanni]

1. Uh-oh.

I was just discussing Condi and Poland with my dog before I read this. :blush:

[moriah]

2. Were they answering back? n/t