JoseF’s recommended reading for JMac: John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg. Dis list havin been compiled wid my help in response to JMac’s latest written submission. He seems to have gone completely fictional on us.

Wait a second! Was dat JMac’s intake or Spark’s? Maro! Can you help me out here?
Spark feels dat he cannot make himself understood. Da’s what de’xpression on his face is tellin everybody. He is tryin to say, “I am not just a jock.” He is sayin dis quite slowly, but somehow dey all missin it. I s’pose cuz i’s completely outta context here, given de situation. Distinctly. I can hear him sayin dis quite distinctly. His eyes are closed. De whole room has gone silent. He is sayin, “I cannot make myself understood, now.” He is speakin slowly an distinctly, but no one is understandin at all, cept for me, dat is. “I am not just a boy who skateboards. I have an intricate history. Experiences and feelings. I’m complex.” He opens his eyes and says, “Please don’t think I don’t care.”
As Spark is lookin out and attemptin to rise from his chair, I can see d’horror expressed on de faces of everyone else in de room. I see jowls saggin, eyebrows spiked into thoroughly wrinkled foreheads, cheeks flushed and somehow sucked in. Suddenly the door opens and in walks a bunch o’people in white coats. Someone has pressed’panic button. At d’head o’dem all comes Kretschmar. She is a woman who looks to be about forty years of age, wid pleasant but very penetrating eyes and a polite manner. Dis entirely new entourage is poised to show Spark attention an respect, until dey see d’expression on his face.
“I’m fine,” Spark tries to tell dem, standing.
Yes, i’s quite obvious dat Kretschmar is in charge here, now.
“Please don’t worry,” Spark is saying. “I can explain.”
He is tryin to soothe d’air wid what he believes is a casual hand. But before he knows it, both of his arms are pinioned from behind, and he is wrestled roughly down to de floor.
Durin dis time, Kretschmar has seated herself upon a nearby stool. A man from her team also seats himself upon a stool, introduces himself to Spark as Doctor Stravinsky, all the while continuing to smile amiably at him.
Dey must have put together d’whole case already.
“Nothing is wrong,” Spark is continuing to attempt communication wid’ese people. His forehead is pressed into de floor. He has definitely been arrested. He is tryin to be perceived as limp an pliable. His face is mashed flat; dis makin it hard for him to breath, so dat his words come out even more mangled.
“Try to listen,” Spark says very slowly into de floor.
All de while maintainin his amiable smile, Dr. Stravinsky turns to Kretschmar an says, “WHAT are those... those SOUNDS?”
Spark is now raised up by his underarms, all de while sayin, “I am not what you see and hear.”
Spark is now encircled by a crude half nelson.
“I’m not,” Spark says. The disorder he has somehow caused revolves around him. He is half-dragged, still pinioned, through a loose mob of Administrative people. Spark is brought to Room 117, a cell situated in an otherwise cement corridor. It had formerly served as a sick-room for several patients. It has a high ceiling and gives d’impression o’bein spacious, dat is, until one spends all of one’s time in der. Spark is rolled over, until he is supine on de room’s biodegradable linoleum tile. Here one word makes him shudder (I can see his response), and dat is de word ‘schizophrenia’. De weary doctors look at him and discuss his condition listlessly, “Speech and motor excitation... delirious episodes... clearly a complicated case... Schizophrenia, one must assume. And alcoholism too... The boy needs care... here to enroll, compete...”
***
Oh, right. How could I get dem’ixed-up like dat? Didn’t’hey have completely different admissions? Right. Dey came in on de same night. Da’s why.

Der be peeps fillin in. I’m tryin to find a place to sit myself, and also remember dem all from der profiles. In da peanut gallery we got de Cock (who looks like he fallin asleep, maybe he’d be a good one to sit beside), and a bunch of other student reps. We also gotta couple o’staff members who bin sucked into takin notes.

Megan B. has been a Drug and Alcohol Counsellor at G. House since graduation.

Ted R. works in private practice and has also worked as a consultant to MSB-Health Canada -- Medical Services Branch, Ministry of Health and Social Services, P.W.A. Society, Workers Compensation Board.

Louisa G. is a counsellor at the Police Department under the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres.

“He has nothing to hide. What you see is what you get with him.”
“Sherri is, yes.”
“Well, she did, but I think they dissolved that. She’s very talented, very smart.”
“It’s intimate.”
“Special seats for special people.”
“Even better.”
“It was a department lunch.”
“A lawyer, law firm event.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you doing?”
“I was seating you.”
“You were trying to seat me but you blocked me.”
“I suggest you leave it to that...”
“Oh, was it?”
“Just one night.”
“Not by us.”
“We need somebody to wack’im.”
“Can I put this beside you there?”

[Rebecca Neumann -guest of the evening lookin very beautiful sittin off in the corner by herself.]

“Momentarily... one day and then alluva sudden it’s gone.”
“No, it’s like that.”

[or maybe that isn’t her at all?]

“D’you know what?...”

[I don’t think she would wear jeans. She’s d’one wearin d’huge gold pendant.]

“Doing it justice... big identity crisis.”
“Oh yeah. Yeah, ate there last night. I don’t do restaurants. Don’t go to fancy restaurants.”

[I’s gettin loud. Too many conversations to keep track of. But she IS wearin jeans.]

“Please sit here. Please do. I’ve been fighting people off. They try to sit here and I say, ‘No! Goddammit!’”
“Because you said you would try. It’s a good thing I wasn’t looking for you then.”
[Da’s Kretschmar. I’d know dat crotchety voice anywhere.]
“So there’s going to be a good crowd here. And there’s going to be people who wouldn’t normally come.”
“Wanted! If you see this woman, we want her liver!”

[She’s not wearin jeans. Da’s a look-alike wid buns.]

“Socratic notions of what it means to be an educated person...”

[President has now taken de stage.]

“... Scholarship... If you haven’t received the directions for the reception afterwards... history, place and memory... nationally and internationally...”

[Rebecca Neumann, in turn, introduces her sidekick. She IS wearin jeans.]

“I shall speak neither as an artist nor as an art critic; I shall not even speak of the artistic phenomena with which I come into contact... as a psychologist... the more or less artistic productions which arise in the course of analytical therapy. Our present inquiry lies within the psychology of culture; it aims at an understanding of art as a psychological phenomenon of central importance to the collectivity as well as the individual. We shall start from the creative function of the unconscious, which produces its forms spontaneously...”

[Reminds me of some o’my own writin. I wish I could remember my dreams a bit better.]

“Because this substratum and background of the psychophysical world is forever bringing forth forms, we call it creative... So, that is the video component of... ”

[I still remember de night dey brought K Jan in.
It was getting light outside. The streetlights along the tunnel were casting a glow that was both unnecessary and unpleasant. The driver was angry that the night had been wasted, and he drove the van so hard that it skidded on turns. As they neared Townsend, the surrounding forest fell away and the river disappeared to the side. A highly varied panorama came out to meet the van: fences with sentry boxes, stacks of wood, and of course, the Towers.

I could see that K Jan was having a bumpy ride. The recycled, fake, plastic stump he was seated on in the back of the van kept trying to slide out from underneath him (even though it was bolted to the floor), despite the fact that he ass was safety-belted to it. Attendants don’t really care about this sort of thing.

It’s obvious that his visit to Townsend will have a most oppressive effect on him. I am trying to understand what is tormenting K Jan so. If this is how he takes the ride in, then how will he handle the corridor with the blue lights? Perhaps it’s the thought that there is nothing worse in the world than losing one’s mind. Does K Jan believe that he has lost his mind? Yes, yes, of course there is that. Perhaps it is the insult. Yes, that’s more like it. It’s the insult to his person that bothers him so. We have injured his notion of autonomy. He no longer knows what is in his own best interest. We are here to tell him. Staring at the dirty, rattling floor of the van, he begins to mutter and whine, gnawing away at his restraints. K Jan lurches forward as the floor beneath him stops shaking. He raises his head and sees that he has long since arrived. Now K Jan raises his fist and shouts, “What did I do?!! I don’t get it!!!! I’m unlucky! That’s all!” K Jan concludes with sudden venom as Kretschmar and the attendants step into the back of the van. They've arrived. He looks into Kretschmar’s face and sees that she is completely indifferent to his fate. She does not even feel sorry for him. Day was beginning to bear down upon him with full force.

“Bandits!” he shouts, becoming hoarse, trying to bite anyone he can grab. K Jan screams, “So those are the kind of windows you have here! Let me go! Let me go!”
They have carried him kicking and screaming out of the van. A hypodermic syringe flashes in Kretschmar’s hands, and in a single motion the woman has ripped open one of K Jan’s bedraggled sleeves. There is the smell of ether. K Jan goes weak in the arms of four attendants. An agile Dr. Kretschmar takes advantage of this moment to plunge her needle into K Jan’s arm. They hold on to K Jan for a few seconds longer before lowering him on to a couch in the nearest rubber room.

“Bandits!” K Jan shouts again as he jumps up from the couch. Just as quickly he was deposited back down on to it by four pairs of heavy arms. As soon as they let go of him, he was about to jump up again, but this time he sits back down himself. He falls silent for a moment, looking around wildly, then yawns suddenly, and grins maliciously.

“So they’ve locked me up after all,” he says, yawns again, and lays down. He puts his head on the pillow and his fist under his cheek like a child. In a sleepy voice, free of his former malice, he mumbles, “Well, and very good too... You’ll pay for what you’ve done. I warned you, so now do as you wish!... Right now what interests me most is...”

“A bath, Room 117- private - and post a guard,” orders Kretschmar while putting on her glasses.

Stress and the Development of Aggressive Behaviour
Studies testing the role and effect of environmental factors (such as social stress) on the devolopment and neurobiology of aggressive behaviour.]

“Um in a different manner than it was... projected on to water... basically impossible to document... It’s interesting to me... strange magic in that... projected on to water itself... to somehow... take an aggressive performance... although it would be exceedingly interesting to show, for example, how the archetypal world of Egypt was shaped by a static conception of eternity and time... mist on your skin... very powerful presence... strength... visceral live action... Art is at this stage of a collective phenomenon, which cannot be isolated from the context of collective existence but is integrated with the life of the group... also the works of other... and I think that it’s the strength of my work... Well, is there life after... Aughhh, you guys are so into art... fountains originated in that part of the world... of political significance to me...”

“… We thought… she was making… work… we wanted… a strong emotional impact… intense, political message…”

“It’s my role to articulate and speak about…”

“It’s kinda like a privilege…”

“Um… just to refresh my memory as to how insane that experience was… I had no idea what to expect… so intense… Before I was… I remember… it’s my most personal way of communicating through artistic expression… my identity… aboriginal female body in this place at this time… could be in the middle of nowhere… a way of really examining… just there to witness…”

“... garden? Back to the garden?”
[She has so much courage.]
“… As they fade into the distance… I think at the same time to look at the work… I like to keep it simple… I like to work outside. I like to wash things… and have them feel comfortable… I think that’s how… y’know we all watch movies… I’ve done many, many… and people remind me of what I did… in the body… communicating to other people in their bodies… I created this… while in residence… I chose to work… an abandoned concrete base I thought that was a good site to work… president of the university was having some kinda do… Anishnabe… and yes I do have a very specific… we all have our own histories, our own concerns… to go from being… Am I Anishnabe first? Are we all equal? Or am I just lucky?... There’s this whole… how you want to be with it… confusing… we have to do our work… I see myself… This is all I know how to do now… And sometimes I think society doesn’t want to see that…”

[I wonder where she got that drumstick from. Quite de sidekick she has der. I doubt Maro would ever do anything like dat for me, eh man?]

“… the backdrop that you see… beautiful flowers… It was huge… That day… I had to shift gears… It took about an hour and a half… I think that’s all… tonight… have a conversation… No, they wouldn’t allow me to do that…”

[HEY! (without sponsor) #20033007
- floor o’scholars an research, etc.
- exhibits essential features of steriotypy/habit disorder: intentional repetitive, nonfunctional behaviours (body-rocking, hair-pulling); noncommunicative, repetitive vocalizations performed in a certain rhythm/pattern
-exhibits spontaneous muscle twitching, hands assume position of main d’accoucheur, feet are extended with toes flexed, laryngeal spasms with convulsions
Chap got in de room somehow. I’m gonna hafta kick dat guy’s ass now. So much for de reception.]

“… I think… it made sense… the idea of a naked female body… is very disturbing… shining through the net that held the roses… a seediness, a weirdness to vehicles. They’re like another presence… There can only be one queen bee… Yet you’re documenting… something to be viewed separately… versus seeing in a video format… I think that I’m trying to examine myself… It’s there and then it’s gone… But it’s not the same… I think to try and maybe answer your question… Ok… I’m going to do my thing… And I’m going to try to give it the quality that… the water became the performer… It’s the water that’s moving… So that’s… But I think… I never paid attention to documentation… myth and rumour… I think that’s what I had… mostly… I’ve shifted to now paying more attention to documentation. I think that for me… light bulbs in the screen… good documentation… he was the documentor… He really captured the piece very well… That’s how I started to think… people who weren’t there… that piece is a video where I’m not in the piece… maybe that’s the way I’m heading.”
“Blood?”

“Uh, that’s a good question. I like what you said bout the idea of washing away… It’s the idea of applying blood… turning water into blood and blood into water… being alive… We need water, but water doesn’t need us… the colour white… something for me to think about. Thankyou.”

“Body?”

“… went to art school… found myself using my physical self… I fell into it naturally just through the nature of my personality… the vehicle of the body…”

“… materials talk to you?”
“Yeah, uh… You’ll see sculptural works or installation works… I have a tendency to keep things pretty clean… sculptures or objects that are much more pared down… less messy… harness the material in some way… red cedar log… looks beautiful to me… y’know if you make it too beautiful then it sucks… I want to say something about how we are as human beings… have some purpose…”

“…Images where you’re constrained… always fighting something?”

“I think it’s a human condition… restraining myself… people will feel the struggle… I like that, setting up a difficult situation for myself… that’s just why I need to do it in front of people…”

[She’s fuckin awesome!]

Kretschmar took a big bite outta my soul today. Why? Just because she could. She felt that I had questioned her authority one too many times in the past week. She needed to take me down a notch. It happened during a BOARD meeting. I was doing a presentation that someone had actually requested.

"If anything, these two definitions illustrate how difficult it is to give non-circular, non-contradictory descriptions of both the conscious and unconscious minds. Indeed, at the end of his definition of consciousness Sutherland proclaims that nothing worth reading has been written on consciousness (we can only assume that he meant to include his own definition in this set, and it would seem that he would be correct in doing so). Sutherland even acknowledges that it is impossible to specify what consciousness is, what it does, or why it evolved.”

This is when Kretschmar pipes up, “What can you tell us, Dr. X, about consciousness from your own personal perspective?”
And I thought, what de fuck is dis about? So I jus carried on wid my presentation.
“In addition to housing the superego, the unconscious holds ‘all the material that a person cannot bring to consciousness because it has been repressed’. Assuming that this definition is indicative of a general psychoanalytic approach to consciousness, then a number of questions might be raised regarding such a description of the mind. How exactly does material come to be repressed?”

Everyone seemed to be enjoyin demselves, even Ellenberger was fascinated, interrupting me to state, “The assumption that a part of psychic life escapes man’s conscious knowledge has been held for many centuries. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it attracted more attention; in the nineteenth, as one of the most highly debated problems, it became finally one of the cornerstones of modern dynamic psychiatry.”
An’den good ol’Kretschy went off again.
“What we want to know, Dr. X, is what consciousness is like from your first person perspective.”
And again, I thought, what de fuck?! Why is’he bringin dis up in a fuckin BOARD meetin? Seems like she’s tryin to humiliate me from her own personal perspective. So, I brought out my Heidegger.

“Essentially, Dasein is a being for whom Being is an issue. This issue becomes lost in the shuffle of its average-everday life. In order to live an authentic life Dasein must own up to its existence. A Dasein that is fully immersed in the They has no idea that anything is wrong. The moment before death (when Dasein alone, is inescapably confronted with the finiteness of its own Being and the groundlessness of its existence) might bring about a sudden revelation of mineness that will expose the veil of inauthenticity. The inauthentic Dasein will come to the realization that all actions and decisions up to that point were made in relation to a They that is really no one at all. This Dasein will experience a few seconds of anguish and then its entire existence will be over. Where the real trouble lies is with the capacitated, full-life-ahead-of-it Dasein that somehow catches a brief glimpse of the veil or becomes fully aware of the veil of the They (perhaps during a mid-life crisis, or through reading Being and Time). This Dasein is then cursed with the difficult task of establishing an authentic existence in the face of the They. Once the veil is revealed Dasein is faced with the conscious choice of living behind it. The real sin lies not in losing the Self (for that is inevitable) but in the choosing of an inauthentic life over an authentic one.”

A slight murmur came up from the audience. And den Kretschmar was shakin her head at me. She attacked again.
“We know all about what you’ve written on the subject of Heidegger’s Being and Time, Dr. X. But what can you tell us about how you feel?”

And I wanted to burn holes into her eyes. I wanted to stab her heart, rip it open. I remember saying, “Well, I can tell you dat I ain’t no fuckin tool,” right before I was shut down.