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I need to tell you about a few things. before/after Ok, well. This will be a spew. All names changed. But it all more or less happened like this. I walked into the doors of the nursing home. Nursing home, alzheimers home, whatever. Some places seem to have a 'behavioral unit.' Others don't. I'm not sure this one does, but these cases all seem bad off. Shufflers and mumblers, schizos. Nobody really dangerous. None of them really were. Dangerous, that is. Maybe to themselves, mostly, and whatever wreckage they'd cause while making a flaming meteor of themselves into the abyss. Fuck, I'm not sure I can talk about this. I may have to bail. The light on my phone is flashing a message, and I know that's from the county. Someone wants something from me and I do not want to deliver. A man has a right to a day off, that's all that I'm saying here. Well, not all. And not all nursing homes, alzheimer's homes, whatever, smell like piss. If they do, well, junior, you found yourself a bad one. The one you can threaten your Boomer parents with if they don't behave. You'll send them to the one where the patients molest you and piss on the floor, and you'll never visit. Being real honest, a lot of good could probably be down with a machete there, but I'm not sure if such wanton aggression would be best focused on the patients or the help...or the owners. The Bedouins have a saying about the mentally ill: Be kind to them, their souls are with God. Which is to say that we should not hold that against them, nor count their actions in wanting of morality because they...and the phone message blinks disapprovingly. I kneeled close to the old man...he didn't really look that old. I read probably 62, but likely wasnt really even that. He didn't have the papery skin thing yet. Maybe someone faking? Who the fuck would want to choose to live here, though? It smelled like piss. People shuffled around. There was no peace, no rest here. There never was at places like this. Its as close as an approximation as I could likely come up with for a conception of 'purgatory.' Aside: I don't really mind purgatory in a cosmological or philosophical sense, at least as I understand it. Its a place you burn off your sins, so to speak, but realistically, there is a shot at redemption. You do your time and then you move on. Even if its a long time, there is an end to whatever it is, or it changes state or shape. Doing eternity in any one place to a creature, an energy accustomed to constant change or rather,change being the only constant...back up...let me amend that statement, because photons, allegedly, never age. They traverse the universe and never age because they move the speed of light. Good lord, my life has gotten fucking weird. I sit in this office, people come in. The court calls. I help everyone I can, bill who I can and come back. Its like this whirlwind around me. Or like the weather around me. I appreciate it so, so much, that people trust me to do what I do with them and for them. And, in a way, some of what I do is like counseling or taking confession... I know that guys like me who run a serious high-volume practice and are stressed af and move the ass through the door. And for what? They don't believe in the 'counselor' part of the job. They might as well run a car wash. I run a low volume, typically high-value client practice. And oddball cases that I just want to do. I work with the mentally ill a lot. Moreso on the oddball cases, but not necessarily. When you have money you are considered 'eccentric' not 'insane' nor a 'danger to self and others' when the people around you can 'make money off of you' to 'keep your happy ass out of trouble.' I like to give advice. Sometimes people listen. I need to tell you about a few things.
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