BS: stay afloat while others don't

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 02 Nov 20 - 10:13 AM

I am reminded of my nephew losing his keys and not finding them though he had taken the cushions off the armchair he'd conked out in and thoroughly searched, then months later picked up the armchair to carry it upstairs and it jingled. The keys had fallen through an invisible and impalpable hole and were *inside* the armchair, not just under the cushions.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Nov 20 - 09:41 PM

... and, in fact, it was only after stripping the bed
that I looked at the mattress sitting loosely
in an ill-fitting wooden bed frame,
and saw the key lying inside the wooden frame,
above the floor.
I had of course crawled all over the floor looking there for the key.
No wonder I couldn't find the thing.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Nov 20 - 04:05 PM

Well, the laugh is on me, this time.
I am in my bedroom here; I let myself into the room using my room key on its keyring with the little plastic room-number tag.
So I have not locked myself OUT of my room,
as I am in my room, however:
I can't find the key.
I'm taking the room apart, I know the key is here SOMEWHERE,
but can I find the key? NOWHERE.
Emptied and shook out all the tote bags, handbags, luggage, pockets of everything ...
the only thing left to do is to strip the linens off the mattress, and inspect the stripped bed and the sheets, spread, blanket, pillows and pillowcases ...

I just picked up the room phone, and reported to the nurses' station
that I'm in my room and I can't find my room key.
Do I ever feel STOOPID.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Oct 20 - 11:41 PM

Well, the predictions of a second pandemic spike
appear to be coming true,
and the clinic administration and staff
are talking about another
'shelter-in-place' -- in other words, another lockdown --
before year's end.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Oct 20 - 06:29 PM

Good on yer keb!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 11:19 PM

That vote should give a hefty boost to your psyche!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Oct 20 - 07:48 PM

In spite of everything, I cast my vote amongst the other early voters in my town.
I had a weekend to drive from the clinic back to where I live,
so I looked up the early-voting schedule for this year's election
which schedule can be referenced on the Internet.
Turned out that early-voting hours had been arranged
for Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning!

So I showed up at Town Hall, duly face-masked,
and there was a policeman on duty by the voting booths.
I filled out my ballot and signed the official envelope, and I was done.
Then headed back to the clinic, which feels more and more,
these days, like my home, than my apartment does.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Oct 20 - 05:16 PM

But hopefully they are treacle-free threads to begin with.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Oct 20 - 05:05 PM

I did pick threads where there was actually something to say, otherwise it would be as bad as the one being pushed down the page. :)

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Oct 20 - 04:51 PM

Well done, SRS. If you want to use this thread to push down the treacle, I'm all for it, thank you so much.

Hmmm. Treacle, and entertainment.

Two successes that come to mind are:

the Dormouse, in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland
... "it was a TREACLE WELL."

Discworld, courtesy of Sir Terry Pratchett.
Many many layers and facets has the Discworld.
On the one hand, you have got four elephants standing upon ... erm ...
what are they standing upon again?
The back of a cosmic tortoise?
Or is the tortoise on the backs of the four elephants?
You must realize, fellow Mudcatters, that
here at the mental health clinic
I have no Discworld and no Terry Pratchett books so I can't look it up.
But then you have Ankh-Morpork and environs,
where there are not merely treacle wells,
but TREACLE MINES! Remember the treacle mines?

I'm wondering if Pratchett didn't start with
Alice in Wonderland's Dormouse, and decide,
Well, if Lewis Carroll can write about treacle wells,
then I shall write about treacle mines. So there.

And I end with the recollection of the sleepy dormouse singing
twinkle twinkle ...
twinkle twinkle ...
twinkle twinkle ...

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 25 Oct 20 - 04:27 PM

It looks like some of the cable channels have decided that wall-to-wall holiday movies is the cure for what ails us. I'm seeing ads about them starting this weekend. Most of those movies aren't worth watching, but every now and then a good old one pops up.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 10:14 PM

Tell the admin. Better fewer naked skulls than fewer living heads.

But it sounds like fun, enjoy!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 06:56 PM

The fake spiders, I hasten to explain, are too humunguous (sp?)
to fit in ANYBODY's mouth. They can be measured in MANY inches.
You might bust your jaw just trying to cram them between your teeth ...
(poor Senoufou!)

Well, something actually did get taken down, and
it wasn't what I would have stopped to think of:
there were "fairy lights", as they call them in the UK,
like Christmas decoration lights, on a long electric cord,
except these were orange with black Halloween decorative touches.
The patients who did the Sunday decorating
had wound the "fairy lights" around a stair bannister.
The lights are gone now,
and the bannister is once again un-adorned.

Human skull decorations in every conceivable size are sprinkled about, however,
and somebody could more easily choke themselves
on one of the tiniest skull thingies, now I think of it ...

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 22 Oct 20 - 09:44 AM

Oh, no, I meant where I was would not have allowed plastic inflatable anything or chokable-on spiders or anything I could have used to kill myself back when it was all I could think of, which is why I was there.

The ghoulish death stuff would have been great, though. When I was obsessively thinking about death I would have relished a societally-acceptable reason to do so, and especially to have others join me. As it was, it was isolating.

Hope your staff is monitoring, keberoxu, and that you and your fellows enjoy yourselves as much as you can!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Helen
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 02:39 PM

At my last ever workplace i.e. before I retired, a group of people in a different area to mine decided to decorate for Halloween and went OTT (over the top) with dark and ghoulish props like pretend dead bodies and fake blood etc. It was set up like a murder scene. They were asked to remove a lot of the items because it was not good for workplace morale. I saw the display before it was removed. I realise that they thought it was a clever idea, but it wasn't appropriate for a workplace. Especially a government workplace with strict guidelines on what is or isn't appropriate.

As a result, I interpreted Mrrzy's comment in relation to the possible effect of dark and ghoulish decorations on our psychological state, rather than as potential tools for self harm.

Having said all that, I'm not into Halloween at all. It's mostly viewed here as an unwanted American intrusion into Aussie culture. Sorry!! :-D

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 09:38 AM

Yes, Mrrzy, I take your meaning -- seriously.
Well, this clinic, although it has to meet the accreditation standards of a hospital,
does not have a locked unit/ward.
That makes the place, I would say, vigilant after a different fashion.
This clinic has to have good close well-working relationships with the hospital at the county seat, up the road, which DOES have one or two locked units.

As to the decorations themselves, hmmm:
cardboard flat skeletons; big plastic three-dimensional skeletons;
inflatable pumpkins; plastic Jack-o-Lanterns;
some of the skeleton bones are hanging off of fake plastic chains that have been strung from the second floor landing so they
are hanging next to the staircase and the bannister ...
let's see: big phony spiders in big phony spiderwebs ...
I don't see any other hanging stuff,
I don't see how the phony chains, which look very breakable and lightweight,
could be used for suicide...

yes, interesting questions.
All these decorations came from the clinic itself, stored away in a box by housekeeping/maintenance from year to year.

Yes it's a good question, and
one that I had not thought through until this moment.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 20 Oct 20 - 09:14 AM

What about suicide hazards? I ask seriously. Depending on what is being used for decoration; my last place wouldn't have allowed most stuff.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 19 Oct 20 - 03:45 PM

The chief in-patient residence at this clinic
does, indeed, store holiday decorations of different types in its storage room boxes and such.

All the Halloween decorations came out yesterday afternoon,
and now the place is groaning under their weight, almost.
The Facilities/Safety supervisor was in the residence lobby
at lunchtime, evaluating the risk of fire hazard. Seriously.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 05:15 PM

Yeah, mad is a lot better than apathetic.

Or maybe I should say angry, heh heh.

Les Barker said something like depression is just anger without enthusiasm.

Nice to see this thread back.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Oct 20 - 08:19 AM

I'm still in treatment at the clinic.
Will be for months more, unless something unforeseen occurs.
For now, it's all right.

Not sure, though, if I can manage to vote this year.
At this rate, probably not.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Donuel
Date: 17 Sep 20 - 10:25 PM

You sound pissed off. Thats what healthy people do when intimidation, or lack of communication or trust occurs. When you are sure you can trust yourself you can tell them where to go and go into the world, as diminished as it is for everyone now. Wise people can't be intimidated or harrassed or pissed off. Dissappointed maybe.
Anyway it feels like I'm trespassing on your diary.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 17 Sep 20 - 10:00 PM

Feeling like somebody pulled the plug.
Actually, when someone greeted me with
the how-are-you-doing,
what I told them today was,
I feel like the pencil that wants sharpening --
worn down to a nub.
Such fatigue and weariness.
And so, to bed.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 15 Sep 20 - 09:34 PM

Meanwhile, back at the clinic ...
better not to dwell on the particulars of the latest drama.
Suffice to say that there is communication which the higher-ups ought to have passed on, about how we are required to minimize the risk of infection ON THE CAMPUS and in the common areas,
which, well, somebody in administration dropped the ball somewhere.

A certain percentage of us patients on campus just discovered said information/decisions this very week,
and these decisions went into effect here three months ago.
There are a select few who knew about this thing.
Nobody thought to tell the rest of us.
But it blew up in the last few days, and some of US blew up as well.
As in,
When were you going to get around to informing the rest of us?

It will sound so trivial if I spell it out. I won't --
i've said enough.
The worst of it is that failure-to-communicate thing.
These are stressful enough times for the healthy people.
We have people here with presentations ranging from
high anxiety to suicidal ideation, getting intensive treatment,
and some of us really, so to speak,
freak out when we get a nasty surprise like this one.

We feel betrayed and we wonder whom to trust, generally speaking.
Of course there are individuals on staff who are
universally trusted, because they have proven themselves,
like the very best of the nurses at the nurses' station.
One of the nurses who retired, this very summer, after working here for thirty-seven years (!),
said on her last day, to this small huddle of patients
who lingered around her, unwilling to see her go:
"You have my utmost respect." And we believed her.

It's those managers and coordinators and office administrators
who pass the buck and cover each other's you-know-wheres,
that's who we are upset with just now.
Things will be negotiated, they always are;
it's just that right now emotions are running really high.
Thanks for listening.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Sep 20 - 07:58 PM

It's a positive thing, apparently, when people come to group
and talk about suicide there for the whole meeting ...
as opposed to keeping the issue to themselves.

My only real contribution to meeting this evening
was to mention the despair that goes with a long-term pandemic.
Interesting how that dovetailed with the suicidality topic.
What gave me personally a moment of relief was that
one of the group members who had spoke resignedly about suicide
was able to move beyond resignation, with the new topic,
and express vivid rage and anger about the pandemic.
Maybe this is misguided on my part, but it seems to me
that where there is anger, there is, in a sense, hope.

It's the fellow patients who show no emotion about anything
whom I fear for.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 09:56 PM

Second time out, in truth.
In July, before several of us patients began
making classical music together,
I drove back to the apartment which I continue to rent,
in order to get some summer clothing
which I didn't pack out at admissions in late February.

Both times I was relieved to return to treatment.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 02:07 PM

Ooh, your first outing?

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 03 Sep 20 - 11:37 AM

Spending the Labor Day holiday weekend here in the clinic,
and grateful for it.
After months of procrastination, however,
earlier this week I had to take my car
and get it serviced,
which meant driving out of town.
I was so relieved to get the car fixed and come on back.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Charmion
Date: 02 Sep 20 - 10:25 AM

I would much rather watch the avian kind of blue jay, to be sure.

Their performances take place free of charge in the tree outside our bedroom window, and are not punctuated by the stadium organ and snatches of rock music played at ear-busting volume.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 06:12 PM

Well, you can forget about the Red Sox, I fear;
the Yankees did quite a number on them this season.
Now the locals are eyeing the Boston Celtics,
pronounced 'seltics with an s',
to see if basketball will be any more gratifying.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 04:06 PM

Hi, Andrew! Nah.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 01 Sep 20 - 10:37 AM

"How about them Blue Jays?"

Charmion, should we not both stick to blue jays? :)

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Thompson
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 05:50 AM

Good stuff.

Maybe, too, the secret is not to blurt out reactively from within your own prejudices, but to see the other person, and so sideline your own reactive boorishness. Hard to do, though.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 30 Aug 20 - 01:30 AM

Maybe someone can help out Charmion and me with this one:
my recall fails me, but I remember
learning THINK years and years ago.
What's missing here?

T is for, is it True?
H is for, is it Helpful?
I ?
N ?
K is for, is it Kind?

Important and Necessary, perhaps?

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Aug 20 - 09:44 AM

I, too, suffer from a sharp tongue and a tendency to shoot from the lip.

I have often read that personal remarks should meet a three-point standard: Is it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind?

These qualities are highly subjective. My fact is the other guy's blatant lie or misunderstanding. I may think a piece of advice is helpful when the recipient takes it as sheer meddling. And kindness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Usually, when I have thought it through, I change the subject.

How about them Blue Jays?

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 10:46 PM

Nicely fished!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 09:26 PM

Found it!


... cruelty is the worst of all human sins.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 08:18 PM

Neil Miller Gunn, more simply Neil M. Gunn, of Scotland,
is a writer whose book,
The Green Isle of the Great Deep, fascinates me.

"For love is the creator
and cruelty is that which destroys."

And he has written elsewhere, though I could not locate the quote,
that cruelty is the greatest -- hmm, what?
the greatest something ... evil maybe?

And the paradox on which I meditate, is that
honesty can be cruel,
and kindness, dishonest.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 05:03 PM

Here being the covid mess, not murrica in general.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 28 Aug 20 - 05:03 PM

Ooh *good* questions. Philosophers, chime in.

I don't consider myself unkind when I fail to respect people's ignorance. Especially nowadays, especially here in Murruca where respecting people's ignorance is how we *got* here.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 27 Aug 20 - 08:03 PM

I feel superstitious about posting this, like saying it out loud.

Before treatment I have messed up so many times
when interacting with people,
expressing myself, saying things that I can't take back.

I've been here six months and I've been working diligently
to allow others breathing space, not to crowd or frustrate anyone.
There have been corrections and feedback from fellow patients,
usually welcome and helpful.

I've been at the clinic long enough to see patients come and go.
More often I have seen patients leaving who were here when I arrived.
And there has been no shortage of conflict, drama, misunderstanding, disappointment.
I hope I have been successful not to contribute to much to the problems.
Sometimes I have to know when to hold my tongue, honestly.

There is a lot of talk, in treatment and at large, at the clinic
about honesty.
The people who chatter the most about honesty, in fact
are likely to be the people
who hurt other people with their big mouths and quick tongues.
They leave hard feelings behind them when they go.

Is kindness or compassion dishonest?
Is it dishonest to keep one's opinion to oneself?
I ask myself these questions nearly every day.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 25 Aug 20 - 05:41 PM

Reporting from the clinic, facemask in place
before the computer terminal.
One can only guess how much longer the coronavirus pandemic will keep us all, inside or outside the clinic, under siege.

Dreadful as it is, I am steeling myself quietly for
a second spike in COVID-19 infection nationwide.
Is nationwide the wrong term?
According to different regions within the nation,
the infection rate rises and flattens differently.

Here in New England things have, I guess, flattened somewhat,
but the infections could so readily flare up again,
and such might yet happen in the near future.
I'll be an inpatient here for more months yet,
don't even have a discharge date at this point.
Wonder if I will be "in" or "out"
during the dreaded second spike in infection rates?

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 23 Aug 20 - 06:35 PM

Well, the patient who got caught/busted
is headed for rehab, which is to say,
transferring this week to a different institution.
One characteristic of this clinic,
although "dual diagnoses" turn up in applicants and admitted patients all the time and indeed are welcome,
is that this is no detox place.
Before an applicant with "dual diagnosis" issues may be admitted here,
there has to be a successfully concluded detox/rehab elsewhere.
I don't know which institution is this patient's destination.

Sadly, we are counting the HOURS until we see the back of this fellow,
because, well, as much as the patient needed to be here,
we all need some distance from this person,
who has worn out their welcome and then some.
Very bad aftertaste for a lot of us.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 21 Aug 20 - 08:43 AM

Keep on truckin' k!

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Aug 20 - 06:18 PM

... and she misses us, as it turns out.
I never did get acquainted with her well enough
to ask what diagnosis she had,
for what she was being treated.

Having her e-mail address, I updated her with all the gossip since she discharged,
and I IMMEDIATELY received an e-mail response (she was probably using her smartphone to access her e-mail)
saying how badly she misses being at the clinic and in treatment and misses all of us!
Back at university, many of her classes are virtual
and she is spending a lot of time on ZOOM. Not very social.
And she is a fairly sociable young woman, and misses people.

She and I have since exchanged posts back and forth,
and we concur on how well the nurses do their work here at the clinic
and how under-appreciated their hard work is.
So when the chance arose, I told one of her favorite nurses
that I had heard from this former patient, and she was delighted.
When I told her that the former patient confessed
that she missed the clinic, and treatment,
much much more than she actually expected to miss it,
the nurse sighed knowingly:
"I knew it would be tough for her to adjust.
She has jumped from the fire-pit into the flames!"

Draw from that, if you will,
what conclusions you wish about
the presentation for which our violinist was here to have treated.
She is in another state at her university,
and it is hard to imagine how our paths will cross in future,
but who knows? Things might come to pass
in ways that I can't possible foresee at the moment.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 18 Aug 20 - 11:13 AM

The post in this thread dated 11 May describes
my volunteer efforts to welcome a newly admitted patient,
a big deal at the time because
this state was just coming out of the lockdown period,
during which clinic admissions were suspended for a good two months.

As it has turned out, the new admit described in the May 11 post
is the violinist in our chamber music group,
who ought to be safely back at university this week,
having discharged from the clinic.

We miss her, and her dry, deadpan sense of humor.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 16 Aug 20 - 01:50 PM

The 'first performance" thread in the above-the-line Mudcat Music thread section
will tell more about the performance
here at the psychiatric clinic,
which did happen and was well received, if far from perfectly executed.

The day after the performance, going to therapy and continuing
my usual weekday schedule of treatment,
my emotions, which are rather numb as a rule (depression),
were alive and kicking.
I think my therapist has never seen me as happy as I was in that session.
And then I had to sit through a patient-community meeting later that day.
Providentially, I didn't have to be in the meeting room.
The in-patient residence has provided a set-up to help with the meetings, which, before the pandemic and social distancing,
were in-person meetings with all the attendees crowded into one big room -- and these meetings happen five days a week, EVERY week.
Comes coronavirus and the attendant restrictions,
especially upon indoor gatherings of more than six people.

Now, at the clinic, these five-day-a-week meetings are
mostly in a "hybrid" format.
There is still a physical meeting room which is wired for ZOOM
and can have only a limited number of warm breathing bodies in it.
All the community members who have access to computers of their own
are encouraged to ZOOM into the five-day-a-week meetings from outside that meeting room.
And finally, fortunately,
the clinic facilities department had pity on some of us who can't ZOOM as we don't have computers.
A conference room, smaller than the meeting room,
was wired up for ZOOM with a computer and a large screen monitor.
And there, half-a-dozen people can sit in the room,
without computers of their own,
and ZOOM into that meeting without having to
cram into the big meeting room.

As Providence would have it, that day's meeting had low attendance
and I had that little conference room ALL TO MYSELF.
Which is why I felt free,
when all my buried anger came to life,
to sit there, with the door shut, and the ZOOM link on 'mute',
and shout SHUT UP! SHUT UP! at the ZOOM screen when
certain people who shall not be identified
were hogging the meeting time and doing all the talking.
The fact is that I am terrified of presenting my anger in front of others.
Had there been fellow patients in the room with me,
I would have kept my big mouth shut
and I would have sat there seething.

But I had the room to myself for the whole meeting,
and I could sit there insulting the meeting speakers
and talking furiously to myself
and letting the anger vibrate through me
without letting anybody else see how nuts I am.
It was simply wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 05 Aug 20 - 09:53 AM

Should you feel remotely curious about
Schubert's Trout Quintet,
the song "Die Forelle" on which it is based,
and the god-awful lyrics to the song,
there's a thread above the line titled
"my first performance in thirty years"
to document the musical side of things.

If we are actually going to perform with this violinist,
we have barely seven days to do so, as it turns out;
she's very young, she was admitted in May after school let out,
and the plan all along was for her to spend the summer in treatment
and then discharge in order to go back to school.
Which starts, if I hear right, very shortly.
So the best we can do:

is to organize a little performance here in order
to send the violinist off and say goodbye and good luck.
Still don't know if this will happen or not.
But we rehearsed at length this past Sunday,
and we may not be ready for prime-time
but we can probably get away with an
in-patient send-off here.
Oh, my nerves.

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 04 Aug 20 - 08:16 AM

I tend to enjoy things that might cause apoplexy...

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: keberoxu
Date: 02 Aug 20 - 09:56 PM

Tonight the four of us got together around the grand piano
and had at the Trout Theme and Variations again.
God help me, I sound SO BAD
and they are so nice to me.

The violinist discharges in about ten days' time to go back to school. So if we are going to perform this thing here, we have to do it soon, before we lose the violinist.
Don't know if it will happen or not --
but the violin player is game, and she will talk to somebody.


OH! I didn't tell you about the Trout?! Sorry ...
It's the Forelle Quintette, Forelle is German for Trout.
Franz Schubert. First, he wrote charming music to a truly atrocious poem
about how sorry the poet is to see the angler hook the trout.
Then, he took the charming tune and music
and wrote a theme and variations on it, with NO singing:
violin,
viola,
cello,
double-bass viol,
and piano.

Well, we don't have a double-bass player.
It's just the four of us.
So I play the piano part in one hand mostly
and in the other hand I alternate the double-bass bass line
and the rest of the piano part.
The classical music purists would have apoplexy.
But this makes it possible
for the violin, viola, and cello players, my fellow patients,
to play this spirited music,
and it's worth it to see them enjoying themselves and each other.

We're just doing the Theme and Variations which amounts to
one internal movement out of five movements total:
the entire Forelle Quintette is a long difficult piece,
especially hard on the seated rear end, I can tell you.
But this one movement doesn't last long
(for all the hard work we put into it)
and it's easy on the audience's ears
(if we don't utterly butcher it, that is).

Subject: RE: BS: stay afloat while others don't
From: Mrrzy
Date: 31 Jul 20 - 08:08 AM

Your user fellow-inmate sounds as if they really need to be there, k, so good that they weren't immediately banned, imo.

Meanwhile in other news my son is, as I write, in front of a magistrate for a decision on whether to commit said son involuntarily for longer than the 3-day hold he's already on. That is the independent evaluator's recommendation, and my fervent hope. I am also [after 5 1/2 months] no longer Completely Fine... Considering going back on meds. Sigh. It was a good run, though, and I do still feel *mostly* fine. Some physical zoominess akin to overcaffeination [I consume no caffeine but chocolate], my [mental? Metaphorical?] hamster seems to be getting out the exercise wheel again [I have named it Scaramouche], overuse of brackets, difficulty working on anything tedious... But I have been worried sick about my adult child, too. If he actually gets committed I will feel a lot better, and maybe it will all Just Go Away.