Ever wonder why during the 1930's all the way through the 1980's were free of school and mall shootings that claimed so many lives during the last few years. Gun control didn't even exist at that time, well, at least not in every part of the country. Heck, you can walk into a gas station in the 1940's and purchase a shotgun, rifle, or revolver. How come there were much fewer psychopaths shooting up shopping malls and schools filled with innocent people?
In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, the nation was dotted with psychiatric treatment centers such as Verden and Williard in Upstate New York. Revolutionary new techniques such as hydrotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and prefrontal lobotomy were the standard treatment for many dibilitating pshychiatric illnesses.
Then came the psychedelic 1960's. A wave of "self realization", and following the civil rights movement, there seems to be a movement for every kind of right that exist on the planet. Then came the hard-rocking 70's. Suddenly, there was new awareness programs going on, and things known as "de-institutionalization". By the time 1980 came to, the country's mental health program suddenly took a downward spiral. Almost overnight, overcome with lawsuits about patient abuse and neglect, many leading and state of the art psychiatric hospitals across the nation collapsed, and thousands of potentially unstable patients were released back into the streets. Many of the so called "bums" that you see lying on the pavements of massive urban centers are really patients that have been deinstitutionalized when these facilities shut down. Only the most violent patients were transferred to "rehabilitation centers" and prisons, but the rest were sent back into the streets and other people's daily lives. There they live every day, still haunted and tormented by the stifling claws of mental illness, the scars of past eruptions still fresh on their minds. To them, the working mechanism of everyday life has more to offer than simple views. To them, a darker world exists, a much darker world.
This is where sunlight fades and nightmares begin.
We live in parallel universes. The first universe that we live is the one that is familiar to everybody. Dogs bark as their owners walk down city streets. babies cry as they frolick within their strollers. The roar of an engine and heavy fumes as a bus rolls down the street. The musty aroma of the subway, the stiff wind of a passing train. People getting on and off. The hustle and bustle of everyday life.........
However, in the minds of certain people, this everyday world intersects with anotjher world, a much bleaker and terrifying world than ours. A world of demons and cannabalistic monsters, of shadows crawling up dimly lit walls and consuming the very essence of the human soul, the soul of sanity. The shadows tear and rip to shreds the images of kids laughing, a Sunday picnic, and they leave in their place a terrifying miasma of darkness and despair. This despair is strong enough to drive people to the upper limits of their mental tolerances.
. Just look carefully at the writing on this walls. What do you see? Sunlight?, or a more sinister image?
For us, we don't see anything more than the simple stroke of a pen, the single sound, or whisper of wind, as life goes by everyday. However, for certain people, so much despair floods them that they could not take it any more. Sadly, the nightmares they experience are merely figments of a dark imagination. In healthy people, we can suppress these feelings and keep it within the nethermost regions of our concious souls. However, in those people, darkness simple overwhelms them, just like how a septicaemia virus overwhelms the body of a patient already striken by advanced HIV disease. No matter how their friends and loved ones try to console, there is simply no escaping from this darkness.
Fast foward a couple of years, maybe months, maybe weeks, maybe days, maybe hours, maybe minutes...........maybe seconds.
Suddenly, the flow of everyday life is in chaos. Suddenly, everywhere, there is blood, screams, moans of terror, the wailing of police sirens and ambulances, the anguished cries of loved ones searching for their missing relatives...............A bit of the dark world just crept in. Darkness like a virus, using the body of a tormented patient, parasitic, predatory. Forcing him or her to buy a couple of tools, forcing him or her to choose a destination, forcing him or her to KILL. KILL WANTONLY. Fire until the weapons are empty. The virus that consumes and kills the patient once it is done with the body. The tormented soul finally rests, but not until it has brought a dozen or more innocent souls with it to rest. The virus is happy now. It has fed It ate Now it slinks back into the darkest and most mysterious places where it came from, and there, it waits, waiting for a new victim, another soul that is tormented with despair and has no hope left in this corporeal world any longer.
...................It was a blustery and cold winter day, typical snow day in a seemingly typical Northeast township. A car rolls down a lonely road, it's headlamps illuminating the grey and chilly air in front of it. It passes a little police station, a little fire station, a couple of houses, a few people braving the cold to walk their dogs or take their children to see the snow. The car continue to hum along the main road until it disappears entirely from the view of the town. It inches over a couple of railroad tracks and continues on, leaving only a faint whisper of exhaust in it's wake. The driver inches foward until he came out of the tree line. Suddenly, a great and looming structure towered just a few hundred yards ahead. It is shaped just like a medieval castle. But there were no knights upon the battlements, nor any fair ladies listening to the songs of their suitors. The landscape was dead as ever, as all of the spring and summer bulbs slumber deep under a layer of hard frost.
The car slows to a stop and the driver switches the engine off. He got out of the heated interior of his vehicle, and was almost startled to have a frigid wind blow out of seemingly nowhere and strike him full in the face. The blast brought little snowflakes and icicles that bounced off his skin and scuttering about like tiny icy fairies. He tightened the scarf around his greatcoat. That man was...............ME.
Just a few days ago, I took a trip, well more of a detour around one of the most infamous landmarks in New York State. Just a few hours outside New York City, located on the fringes of a tiny village called Kings Park, with an ancient railroad as it's only main line of communication lies a megalith forgotten by time and Nature. One hundred years ago, this place was one of the most technically advanced and state of the art psychiatric facilities in the entire United States. It has a total of 50 buildings on it's sprawling campus, so big that the nearby SUNY Stony Brook University seems tiny when compared to it. It has room to hold over 10,000 patients, and in the following decades after the ending of the War of Northern Aggression, violent mental patients from the Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Nassau and Suffolk areas were transported to this sprawling hospital. By the turn of the century, Kings Park Psychiatric Facility was nationally acknowledged for it's breakthroughs in thr treatment of several dibilitating illnesses, and for the care it provides to patients there were termed "incurably ill".
However, after the 1950's, the hospital began to face a serious crunch in budget. The United States has just provoked and suffered terribly from the effects of two very unpopular wars. Suddenly, money became as scarce as Muscari hyacinths in a bleak wintry meadow. Overcrowding was another serious issue. In the late 1960's the call for individual rights and deinstitutionalization dealt the hospital it's final death blow. By 1973, the most advanced mental institution in the entire state, if not the entire nation, closed it's doors. Thousands of still uncured patients were released. Today, if you walk around the SoHo District of Midtown Manhattan and look carefully, some of the homeless people bundled up in blankets besides the sidewalks and brownstones may seem "elderly" and "withered". These are actually patients from the the now defunct institution. Wandering all over the place, still clawed by the torments of their untreatable mental illnesses. Some of them actually went back to the ruins of the ancient psychiatric hospital to live and sleep. Most of them went back to New York City, it's streets, subways, and public libraries. There they wander, like grey ghosts of early morning drifting amongst the daily rush and frolick of daily life.
Somewhere in the darkest regions of the human mind, the killer parasite waits, ready to strike. All it needs is a host, a temporary living body which it can kill after it has done...............And the city's streets are filled with potential hosts. The parasite has already claimed a man named Seung-Choi. It found his body a welcome and warm place for it to set seed. Set seed it did, and bloomed quickly. We have all seen and witnessed how poisonous are the flowers of this parasitic creature that blossomed rather quickly in the tormented body of this man. It was gone as quick as it came, taking him with it. But it's effects would be felt for a lifetime. Just yesterday, it struck again..............................
When will it strike next? What has happened to the places where these tormented people can live under state protection and could pose no danger to themselves and others. While we read through this passage, Kings Park Psychiatric Facility continues to molder. Little by little, fungi break up it's structural integrity. They are followed by plants such as dandelions and fireweed. Soon, blazing star and loosetrife. Finally, trees. In the east, the sun is rising. A new day has begun...................
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I want to thank everybody who took the time to read this passage that I wrote and come to terms with a very serious threat.
(Pictures are linked from http://www.opacity.us Photographer: Mr. Motts)
In the earlier decades of the twentieth century, the nation was dotted with psychiatric treatment centers such as Verden and Williard in Upstate New York. Revolutionary new techniques such as hydrotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, and prefrontal lobotomy were the standard treatment for many dibilitating pshychiatric illnesses.
Then came the psychedelic 1960's. A wave of "self realization", and following the civil rights movement, there seems to be a movement for every kind of right that exist on the planet. Then came the hard-rocking 70's. Suddenly, there was new awareness programs going on, and things known as "de-institutionalization". By the time 1980 came to, the country's mental health program suddenly took a downward spiral. Almost overnight, overcome with lawsuits about patient abuse and neglect, many leading and state of the art psychiatric hospitals across the nation collapsed, and thousands of potentially unstable patients were released back into the streets. Many of the so called "bums" that you see lying on the pavements of massive urban centers are really patients that have been deinstitutionalized when these facilities shut down. Only the most violent patients were transferred to "rehabilitation centers" and prisons, but the rest were sent back into the streets and other people's daily lives. There they live every day, still haunted and tormented by the stifling claws of mental illness, the scars of past eruptions still fresh on their minds. To them, the working mechanism of everyday life has more to offer than simple views. To them, a darker world exists, a much darker world.
This is where sunlight fades and nightmares begin.
We live in parallel universes. The first universe that we live is the one that is familiar to everybody. Dogs bark as their owners walk down city streets. babies cry as they frolick within their strollers. The roar of an engine and heavy fumes as a bus rolls down the street. The musty aroma of the subway, the stiff wind of a passing train. People getting on and off. The hustle and bustle of everyday life.........
However, in the minds of certain people, this everyday world intersects with anotjher world, a much bleaker and terrifying world than ours. A world of demons and cannabalistic monsters, of shadows crawling up dimly lit walls and consuming the very essence of the human soul, the soul of sanity. The shadows tear and rip to shreds the images of kids laughing, a Sunday picnic, and they leave in their place a terrifying miasma of darkness and despair. This despair is strong enough to drive people to the upper limits of their mental tolerances.
For us, we don't see anything more than the simple stroke of a pen, the single sound, or whisper of wind, as life goes by everyday. However, for certain people, so much despair floods them that they could not take it any more. Sadly, the nightmares they experience are merely figments of a dark imagination. In healthy people, we can suppress these feelings and keep it within the nethermost regions of our concious souls. However, in those people, darkness simple overwhelms them, just like how a septicaemia virus overwhelms the body of a patient already striken by advanced HIV disease. No matter how their friends and loved ones try to console, there is simply no escaping from this darkness.
Fast foward a couple of years, maybe months, maybe weeks, maybe days, maybe hours, maybe minutes...........maybe seconds.
Suddenly, the flow of everyday life is in chaos. Suddenly, everywhere, there is blood, screams, moans of terror, the wailing of police sirens and ambulances, the anguished cries of loved ones searching for their missing relatives...............A bit of the dark world just crept in. Darkness like a virus, using the body of a tormented patient, parasitic, predatory. Forcing him or her to buy a couple of tools, forcing him or her to choose a destination, forcing him or her to KILL. KILL WANTONLY. Fire until the weapons are empty. The virus that consumes and kills the patient once it is done with the body. The tormented soul finally rests, but not until it has brought a dozen or more innocent souls with it to rest. The virus is happy now. It has fed It ate Now it slinks back into the darkest and most mysterious places where it came from, and there, it waits, waiting for a new victim, another soul that is tormented with despair and has no hope left in this corporeal world any longer.
...................It was a blustery and cold winter day, typical snow day in a seemingly typical Northeast township. A car rolls down a lonely road, it's headlamps illuminating the grey and chilly air in front of it. It passes a little police station, a little fire station, a couple of houses, a few people braving the cold to walk their dogs or take their children to see the snow. The car continue to hum along the main road until it disappears entirely from the view of the town. It inches over a couple of railroad tracks and continues on, leaving only a faint whisper of exhaust in it's wake. The driver inches foward until he came out of the tree line. Suddenly, a great and looming structure towered just a few hundred yards ahead. It is shaped just like a medieval castle. But there were no knights upon the battlements, nor any fair ladies listening to the songs of their suitors. The landscape was dead as ever, as all of the spring and summer bulbs slumber deep under a layer of hard frost.
The car slows to a stop and the driver switches the engine off. He got out of the heated interior of his vehicle, and was almost startled to have a frigid wind blow out of seemingly nowhere and strike him full in the face. The blast brought little snowflakes and icicles that bounced off his skin and scuttering about like tiny icy fairies. He tightened the scarf around his greatcoat. That man was...............ME.
Just a few days ago, I took a trip, well more of a detour around one of the most infamous landmarks in New York State. Just a few hours outside New York City, located on the fringes of a tiny village called Kings Park, with an ancient railroad as it's only main line of communication lies a megalith forgotten by time and Nature. One hundred years ago, this place was one of the most technically advanced and state of the art psychiatric facilities in the entire United States. It has a total of 50 buildings on it's sprawling campus, so big that the nearby SUNY Stony Brook University seems tiny when compared to it. It has room to hold over 10,000 patients, and in the following decades after the ending of the War of Northern Aggression, violent mental patients from the Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Nassau and Suffolk areas were transported to this sprawling hospital. By the turn of the century, Kings Park Psychiatric Facility was nationally acknowledged for it's breakthroughs in thr treatment of several dibilitating illnesses, and for the care it provides to patients there were termed "incurably ill".
However, after the 1950's, the hospital began to face a serious crunch in budget. The United States has just provoked and suffered terribly from the effects of two very unpopular wars. Suddenly, money became as scarce as Muscari hyacinths in a bleak wintry meadow. Overcrowding was another serious issue. In the late 1960's the call for individual rights and deinstitutionalization dealt the hospital it's final death blow. By 1973, the most advanced mental institution in the entire state, if not the entire nation, closed it's doors. Thousands of still uncured patients were released. Today, if you walk around the SoHo District of Midtown Manhattan and look carefully, some of the homeless people bundled up in blankets besides the sidewalks and brownstones may seem "elderly" and "withered". These are actually patients from the the now defunct institution. Wandering all over the place, still clawed by the torments of their untreatable mental illnesses. Some of them actually went back to the ruins of the ancient psychiatric hospital to live and sleep. Most of them went back to New York City, it's streets, subways, and public libraries. There they wander, like grey ghosts of early morning drifting amongst the daily rush and frolick of daily life.
Somewhere in the darkest regions of the human mind, the killer parasite waits, ready to strike. All it needs is a host, a temporary living body which it can kill after it has done...............And the city's streets are filled with potential hosts. The parasite has already claimed a man named Seung-Choi. It found his body a welcome and warm place for it to set seed. Set seed it did, and bloomed quickly. We have all seen and witnessed how poisonous are the flowers of this parasitic creature that blossomed rather quickly in the tormented body of this man. It was gone as quick as it came, taking him with it. But it's effects would be felt for a lifetime. Just yesterday, it struck again..............................
When will it strike next? What has happened to the places where these tormented people can live under state protection and could pose no danger to themselves and others. While we read through this passage, Kings Park Psychiatric Facility continues to molder. Little by little, fungi break up it's structural integrity. They are followed by plants such as dandelions and fireweed. Soon, blazing star and loosetrife. Finally, trees. In the east, the sun is rising. A new day has begun...................
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I want to thank everybody who took the time to read this passage that I wrote and come to terms with a very serious threat.
(Pictures are linked from http://www.opacity.us Photographer: Mr. Motts)
Last edited:
Be serious. How much money did we waste there?