...
No one knows how to use words on Planet Psychotherapy. That is, everyone certainly knows how to use words. Words are the currency of the planet. Apart from a few hicks on the margins, down in the outlaw lands of the weird and the doings. No sorry, actually no one knows really how to use words. There are so many words on the Planet that everyone knows how to use them but not at all. There are more words on the Planet that rest unused than words that are unrested.
There are people on the planet that appear utterly mute. Highly skilled mutes, they grunt, nod and exercise their verbal ticks without passing a single word. Oral constipation rules. But in the inhabitants’ heads, what whirligigs of incandescent phrase exist. Catherine wheels of lexicon. Roman fountains of pulsing thesauri bouncing off solid walls of bone, never finding the exit, building up behind bulging eyes and ringing tinnitus.
Words enter the Planet from outside. Visitors seeking succour and enlightenment deposit their words to be sucked up by the inhabitants as gunpowder for their personal firework displays. Experimental hypotheses connect these words to imagined events. Projected onto internal movie screens, the inhabitants of the Planet interpret words, connect them together and build towers of elaborate displays. They use the displays to explain what they hear. As the touch paper is lit, flames leap from word to word, igniting each in turn, lighting the cranial landscape of the inhabitants.
Rarely is the show a shared one. The display is secret, a place only for the initiates. The inhabitants of the Planet are wary of sharing with each other and almost totally averse to opening the doors of the display to visitors. Each of the inhabitants is an expert wordsmith but only the occasional traitor lets the visitor stay for the display. So although everyone on the Planet is bound by their words, few actually know how to use words on Planet Psychotherapy.
The planet has no word for either its inhabitants or its visitors. Nor does it have a word for what it does. Vicious turf wars simmer perpetually and frequently break out into outright feuding. Counsellors, talking therapists, psychiatrists, psychological therapists, psychologists, psychotherapists, personal enlightenment coaches all vie for descriptive dominance. To construct a list of names of activities would be pointless and so time-consuming that the story of Big M’s experiment would be rapidly buried beneath a slag heap of scrap terms, constantly being replaced by new metal.
Big M’s lieutenant, Cap’n Old calls the visitors to the Planet, ‘stock’. Crumbly white haired psychiatric circus performers and their bright eyed thrusting acrobat acolytes call them ‘patients’. The faceless, unimaginative, burrowing bureaucrats of the state who rule entry to the Planet call them ‘service users’. Most curious of all, the resolutely unregulated counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologists refer to each visitor as a ‘client’. On other planets, only two types of people do business with clients – solicitors and prostitutes. Both solicitors and prostitutes relieve their clients of considerable amounts of money for dubious or short term gain. The similarities are obvious.
Welcome to Planet Psychotherapy.
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Tuesday 22 September 2009
Saturday 5 September 2009
Chapter 4: The Sluices
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Voices. Screaming, wailing, imploring. Sobbing, stabbing, striving. Melding into one huge caterwaul of utter, utter, abject distress.
At the sluices.
A journey of note, of age, of desperation. No journeys of joy here. To travel hopefully. To arrive.
At the sluices.
An endless, massed jungle of voices, climbing high. Climbing upon other voices. Clawing ever higher. A mountaineering mass of misery. Mountainous misery crying in a medley of misfortune. A tormented tower of torment.
At the sluices.
Behind the sluices, the Guilds. Listening only to the carefully chosen voices. Carefully constructing their firework displays, converting voices to paper. Never hearing the sound of suffering sorrow on the outside.
Beyond the sluices
Great iron and wooden walls. Reinforced over aeons by the faceless, unimaginative, burrowing bureaucrats of the state. Keep the voices to a trickle. Keep the Guilds controlled. Feed them, divide them, humour them. Small succour lacking sufficiency.
And the voices. In the dark, crying for comfort. None here but the nails of the sluices. Present your papers. Sorry, wrong words. Away in anguish. Return in rage. New words? Sorry no pass for the sluiceport. Return again. Energy rewarded? No Guild for the energetic. Away again. The gossamer cover of the Planet strong as steel.
At the sluices
A Guild member, a novice, blinking in the early morning light. Duty calls. Crank the hidden handle. Enter the code, arcane ritual, signs in the early morning light. A nod to the master waiting behind. Slowly a crack opens.
In the sluices
The voices, hurling great gobs of phlegm, know. This is it. The Selection. Volume rising. Who will gain entry this selection? The loudest, the quietest, the prostrate, the erect. Rules unknown, arbitrary anguish allowed, silent suffering sent down. This time the mute, next time the garrulous. Voices guessing. Select only the voices to charge the Guild’s empty papers today. Gaps, voices as filler, sealant, shore up the halls.
Beyond the sluices
A hand reaches through the tiny crack in the sluice gates. Desperate, it clutches a crumpled piece of paper. A letter from a referee. The letter asks the Guilds to hear this voice, to allocate a Guild member to listen, probe, provide succour and hope to this hopeless sole. There is no recognisable feature but a hand and the scrap of paper. The hand is shaking, desperate to find a way for the voice to be heard. To come here, to this point, the voice has travelled a long way. Many pleas to its referee have produced this most valuable piece of paper, a possibility of entry to the Planet. But only if the referee has been clever. Only if the voice has been articulate. Only if the referee knows the rituals, the codes, the words. Only if between them, the voice and the referee can manufacture a story which will fit the preoccupation of the Guilds, any Guild.
But all Guilds are different, who is opening the sluice this morning? Will the story fit the selection?
The novice takes the paper. The hand shakes more violently. The paper moves from novice to master. The paper. The Master. The voices quieten. Success or failure? For the hand success means a hearing, for the voices success means failure. The hand waits, shaking ever more violently. The master moves to one side, whispers behind his hand to an invisible ally. The sign is made. The decision. The Selection.
At the sluices. Entry gates to the Planet.
....
Voices. Screaming, wailing, imploring. Sobbing, stabbing, striving. Melding into one huge caterwaul of utter, utter, abject distress.
At the sluices.
A journey of note, of age, of desperation. No journeys of joy here. To travel hopefully. To arrive.
At the sluices.
An endless, massed jungle of voices, climbing high. Climbing upon other voices. Clawing ever higher. A mountaineering mass of misery. Mountainous misery crying in a medley of misfortune. A tormented tower of torment.
At the sluices.
Behind the sluices, the Guilds. Listening only to the carefully chosen voices. Carefully constructing their firework displays, converting voices to paper. Never hearing the sound of suffering sorrow on the outside.
Beyond the sluices
Great iron and wooden walls. Reinforced over aeons by the faceless, unimaginative, burrowing bureaucrats of the state. Keep the voices to a trickle. Keep the Guilds controlled. Feed them, divide them, humour them. Small succour lacking sufficiency.
And the voices. In the dark, crying for comfort. None here but the nails of the sluices. Present your papers. Sorry, wrong words. Away in anguish. Return in rage. New words? Sorry no pass for the sluiceport. Return again. Energy rewarded? No Guild for the energetic. Away again. The gossamer cover of the Planet strong as steel.
At the sluices
A Guild member, a novice, blinking in the early morning light. Duty calls. Crank the hidden handle. Enter the code, arcane ritual, signs in the early morning light. A nod to the master waiting behind. Slowly a crack opens.
In the sluices
The voices, hurling great gobs of phlegm, know. This is it. The Selection. Volume rising. Who will gain entry this selection? The loudest, the quietest, the prostrate, the erect. Rules unknown, arbitrary anguish allowed, silent suffering sent down. This time the mute, next time the garrulous. Voices guessing. Select only the voices to charge the Guild’s empty papers today. Gaps, voices as filler, sealant, shore up the halls.
Beyond the sluices
A hand reaches through the tiny crack in the sluice gates. Desperate, it clutches a crumpled piece of paper. A letter from a referee. The letter asks the Guilds to hear this voice, to allocate a Guild member to listen, probe, provide succour and hope to this hopeless sole. There is no recognisable feature but a hand and the scrap of paper. The hand is shaking, desperate to find a way for the voice to be heard. To come here, to this point, the voice has travelled a long way. Many pleas to its referee have produced this most valuable piece of paper, a possibility of entry to the Planet. But only if the referee has been clever. Only if the voice has been articulate. Only if the referee knows the rituals, the codes, the words. Only if between them, the voice and the referee can manufacture a story which will fit the preoccupation of the Guilds, any Guild.
But all Guilds are different, who is opening the sluice this morning? Will the story fit the selection?
The novice takes the paper. The hand shakes more violently. The paper moves from novice to master. The paper. The Master. The voices quieten. Success or failure? For the hand success means a hearing, for the voices success means failure. The hand waits, shaking ever more violently. The master moves to one side, whispers behind his hand to an invisible ally. The sign is made. The decision. The Selection.
At the sluices. Entry gates to the Planet.
....
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