Memories of a Hospice

I once lived for a time, in what we called the actual maniacal place, “Hospice”. I had a very rich experience there in the year of 1966. As a patient I stayed for fifteen days at the Hospital Santa Clara, which was a three star place of reasonably good quality, situated where the modern hospital Life Center would later be built.  That hospital is literally “so crazy!” localized in an upscale neighborhood of Belo Horizonte. I have stories and more stories to tell, that would comprise of at least a “trilogy”: equality, love and solidarity. Who knows if, stimulated by my friend, the psychologist Ana Maria Leandro, I might still publicize these memories?

One of the situations that caught my attention in that “House of Health”, as it was called at the time when it still existed, were the outside world jokes that permeated the jokes that we ourselves made about crazy people. And sometimes we all sure got a good laugh about it.

I remember one time, in the scorching heat of the sun that day, on the patio with its heavy cement benches concreted into the ground for safety reasons, refreshing in open air where we spent hours reading or simply staring either at the ground or into the clouds, since we didn’t have the habit of looking at one another for any time. It was a hot afternoon in the month of October.

Meireles, of whose first name I never memorized, and who was the son of an ex-mayor of Belo Horizonte, read in tranquility his collection of Oscar Wilde, while the banker, whose name I believe was Camilo, suddenly climbed onto the other end of the bench and posed there frozen as a statue. I found it strange and asked him why he poised himself there like that. Promptly, he responded to me that he was a light-post, which shined light unto the applied reader. He then convinced me that all the light which illuminated the patio and its adjacencies was “his light”.

I asked Meirelles, my roommate, why he didn’t ask the fellow to come down from there and he responded to me in a serious tone: “Do you want me to read in the dark?”. Another day, I saw one of the inmates using a hat made of newspaper and I asked him why he used such a costume. “No”, said the “crazy” colleague, “I am Napoleon Bonaparte, King of France.” Another “nut” who overheard what was said, asked: “Who named you King of France?” He answered, “It was God, I am of divine origin!” To which, a little old man who had always kept to himself retorted: “I didn’t name anyone this!”

There were dozens of jokes, and we kept making more throughout the following days. Most of them actually, in the time since, have become known throughout the world and are available on the world-wide-web.

My interest is to “analyze” the craziness that happens throughout the world all the time. For instance, on one occasion, a crazy person decided to write up a piece of paper which he called “money” and claimed that such a piece of paper was worth many objects which it could be traded for.  And it was not long after, that other crazies from around the world began to believe it. I for one never accepted the value that they say these notes and coins have.

Then there was another fool who went even further; he declared on a sheet of paper that a good chunk of land was his and no one else’s. The other crazies bonded the “title” genuine and even helped the fool defend the idea by fencing in the proclaimed area.

There was something in that little hospice which we called “The folk of Caucaso” where the crazies, inside a circle of caucasian chalk drawn on the ground, developed bumps on their heads trying to pass underneath the line.

One of the more well known cases of intense craziness is well known throughout the world and whose central base, the great Maniacal, is in itself a craziness that entitled itself an entire country ostentatiously as the Vatican. There, the people, in their insane imagination, believe that they are “legitimate representations of God”. According to them, “His Holiness, The Pope”, as they call him, without any exhibition of proof, is the only mouth piece of the Lord here on Earth. He is above all criticism or contestations and is said to be infallible. A great many people believe this and, in their collective craziness, come to elect the dead that previously occupied this holy position as saints, all powerful as the God that they themselves invented.

Now, we see the craziness of this particular young couple, whom believe themselves to be future King and Queen of England; Duke William and Duchess Kate, with the right to palace, food, and much stewardship, all paid for by the people whom they consider to be their subjects. This is because, in a collective hallucination, they believe that young William has a special type of blood. Some say it is blue blood. The laboratories that did the prenuptial exams claim that the composition of the blood that flows through the veins of the noble inheritor of the kingdom is that which they call “plebian”. Catherine’s constitution is of the same physical-chemical-biological nature.

So then, all of England stopped and gathered together with people from around the world to watch the Royal court exhibit its craziness for the City of London, surrounded by the sound of Pump and Circumstances, lots of bizarreness, and to give a serious air to it all, a super security parade.

It is time to intensify the anti-maniacal fight and open the doors to the hospices, the “Houses of Health”, and any other euphemism alike, and to amplify our frontiers: the entire world is our big hospice. In the end it’s just a bunch of crazy jokes and laughs from these crazies who call themselves “normal”.

I close with this popular proverb:

“There is a little of a doctor, a poet and a fool in all of us”.

Participate as well in this insanity: