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She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me, in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic.
“It’s the sea,” his father said, a hand lightly rubbing Teddy’s back as they leaned against the stern. “Some men take to it. Some men it takes.”
“But do we lose our past to assure our future?” Chuck flicked his cigarette out into the foam. “That’s the question. What do you lose when you sweep a floor, Teddy? Dust. Crumbs that would otherwise draw ants.
But it was like Chuck’s scar, he supposed—the story that had to be dispensed with before they could move on, or otherwise it would always be between them. The hows. The wheres. The whys.
“There is no facility like this in the United States. We take only the most damaged patients. We take the ones no other facility can manage.”
“Now we treat them. Morally. We try to heal, to cure. And if that fails, we at least provide them with a measure of calm in their lives.”
She had to keep the structure in her head from collapsing, and to do that, she had to be thinking always.
Gotta be able to see who’s coming, grab us a mop right quick.” Chuck smiled. “Bet you move fast too.” “You ever seen lightning in August?” “Yeah.” “Slow compared to me getting on that mop.”
“Believe it or not, Marshal, I believe in talk therapy, basic interpersonal skills. I have this radical idea that if you treat a patient with respect and listen to what he’s trying to tell you, you just might reach him.”
“Well, yes, many of these patients need to be medicated and some need to be manacled. No argument. But it’s a slippery slope. Once you introduce the poison into the well, how do you ever get it out of the water?”
.
“The mind,” he said. “Mine, yours, anyone’s. It’s an engine essentially. That’s what it is. A very delicate, intricate motor. And it’s got all these pieces, all these gears and bolts and hinges. And we don’t even know what half of them do. But if just one gear slips, just one…Have you thought about that?”
“You’ve been here. You’ll stay here.” Maggie sniffed the air. “It’s your future and your past and it cycles like the moon cycles around the earth.”
“They keep secrets. That’s what feeds this hell.”
Future’s something you put on layaway,’ he’d say. ’I pay cash.’”
when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you’d been born for only one moment, and this, for whatever reason, was it.
and the back of his shoulders and neck tingled, and he knew this was, outside of love, the greatest feeling in the world. To have escaped.
“If you are deemed insane, then all actions that would otherwise prove you are not do, in actuality, fall into the framework of an insane person’s actions. Your sound protests constitute denial. Your valid fears are deemed paranoia. Your survival instincts are labeled defense mechanisms.
