IN THE LAND OF DREAMS - Softcover

Swaim, Lawrence

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1785355996 ISBN 13: 9781785355998

Verlag: TOP HAT BOOKS, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In the Land of Dreams is the story of a man who believes he is being stalked by the ghost of an ancestor, who, for reasons unknown, has returned to lower Manhattan, where he owned a tavern in the 1680s. Eventually the ghostly stalker is taken into the city-sponsored residential program in which our narrator lives, and reveals himself to be his troubled ancestor. He tells a story of violent and irrevocable events that caused a curse to be placed on their family. Both men are looking for redemption, the ancestor through confessing his role in the long-ago troubles and the narrator by finding the right way to interpret these shocking events...

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Lawrence Swaim is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Freedom Foundation, a public-interest nonprofit advocating civil rights for religious minorities and religious liberty for all. Lawrence is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. He lives in California.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

In the Land of Dreams

By Lawrence Swaim

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Copyright © 2016 Lawrence Swaim
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78535-599-8

CHAPTER 1

Being of sound mind and disposing memory, and not acting under duress, menace, fraud or undue influence of any person whatsoever, I do hereby make, publish and declare this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all other former wills.

This document is not about California feelings, nor even the sure and certain hope of anything, and certainly not a better world; its subject is the honest nuclear-grade fuel of our country's East Coast, the loot, the booty, the very pelf of a Last Will and Testament! Money, and lots of it — that's what this Will is all about, and what you will soon receive!

For this reason, I am pleased to examine the odd spectral evidence that has already manifested itself to me. Who would have imagined I might suddenly receive these visitations of the literal essence of the immigrant ancestor's son — in a residential treatment program such as this one, in Lower Manhattan of New York City?

Could it be because of its physical proximity to Staten Island, where Thys Barentsen first served as magistrate under Pieter Stuyvesant?

I know the lies you've been told — that the much-discussed Old Money of the family is so old that it's already been spent! But the money exists, and it exists in amounts that would stagger the imagination!

Did I mention that it would stagger the imagination?

2.

I currently live in reduced circumstances, in a residential treatment program in Lower Manhattan, in New York City. There was once a farm where this residence is situated, I am reliably informed; after that there was a church, most likely Episcopal or Dutch Reformed. Then, for reasons unknown, the two houses here today were built — perhaps to house an extended family of some kind, huddled together in an increasingly nonresidential neighborhood. Today, the two abodes are surrounded by lofts, small- and medium-size businesses, a day-labor agency, a heavily padlocked space where professional dancers practice, a Chinese restaurant and a laundry — the latter two owned by the same family — and a three-story parking garage. At some point a catwalk was built between the two houses, bedrooms were renovated, a staff office was created in both residences, and voila! ... an aging but thoroughly respectable residential treatment program was created, just shabby enough to suggest the distress of its clients, but without such seediness as might add to it. At some point its funding nonprofit ennobled the two houses into a single mental health program, called Voyager House.

The house where I now live is set aside for transitional housing, whereas the house next door is an acute care program. Our neighbors were told a variety of things about the two abodes, including a vague story that the residents received advanced vocational training of some unspecified nature; but in reality, both houses constitute nothing more than a residential mental health program. (By the time I arrived, the appellation "group home" had fallen out of use.) I am not crazy enough for acute care, and my referral to transitional housing served my purposes in many ways — it is a long-term program, lasting from twelve to eighteen months, which means I might be able to remain a client for the full eighteen months, as long as I follow the rules.

My intake into Voyager House was done at night by a competent young counselor named Neil, who identified himself as a psychology student at City College of New York. He was the single overnight staff person in the transitional housing program on the night I arrived. Throughout my intake he shared small bits of information about himself, even as he extracted somewhat more substantial nuggets of information about me. The objective was to create the illusion of a conversation; but the difference between our situations, I quickly saw, was that his life story was in the present tense, whereas mine either resided comfortably in the past, or was experienced partially or wholly in my own imagination.

At some point, Neil mentioned that I had been accepted into Voyager House because of a municipal program for homeless seniors with chronic mental illness. There were currently five other clients in transitional housing, three men and two women. I was apparently the only person in the transitional housing program who didn't take psychotropic medications.

"Do the psych meds really help the clients?" I asked.

"Sure, when they're appropriately prescribed," he said, "but when a lot of these clients start to feel better, they stop taking the meds. Then they decompensate, and end up in acute care. Once we get them stabilized and back on their meds, they either go back to their lives in the community, or — if they've burned enough bridges — they come to transitional housing, where you are now."

"How does your program get away with dispensing medications? I thought only doctors and nurses were allowed to do that."

"We hand over their med boxes, and let them self-dispense their own meds. Then we check off the meds in the med book. That's how we get around the state regulations."

"And when they're discharged into the community, they go off their meds?"

"Well ... not always, but it's fair to say that most of the clients living here went off their meds at some point. But going off your medications isn't what got you into this program."

I wondered how much he knew about what I'd told the staff at Bellevue. To get a good referral to a community-based program, you had to talk about self-harm — or "suicidal ideation," as the Bellevue shrinks like to put it.

I told the psychiatrists at Bellevue Hospital Center that I had suicidal feelings, but that I would never act on them — or at least, I didn't want to act on them. That last twist was improvised, but effective, I'm happy to report, and I had good reason for using it, beside the fact that it was mainly true. It was November, and the chilly winds were blowing, so a referral to a decent residential program was my ticket to ride; it would enable me to survive the winter, and that fact alone would contribute greatly to my mental health. It was a simple, time-tested formula: you had to cop to suicidal feelings to gain admittance to a decent residential mental health program, but you had to be careful not to talk too much about it — or get too dramatic in the telling of it — or you might be put in a jacket and sent off to one of the forgotten backwards of Bedlam-by-the-Hudson.

It was a nervy play, but damned if I didn't pull it off. I was now in a reasonably nice residential program with actual beds and toilets and all the other accoutrement of civilized life.

"What are you thinking?" Neil asked.

"That I'm grateful that I still have enough balls to punch my own ticket."

He laughed. "Man, you don't need psych meds."

3.

The clinical director was a funny, somewhat manic woman named Clarissa Rowland. She came bustling in on the morning after I was admitted to the program. Neil, the young man who had done my intake, had apparently snoozed a bit during the wee hours, but had thoughtfully deployed three alarm clocks — not to mention his so-called "smart watch" — and was up and writing in the charts long before the boss lady arrived. She, in turn, was sporting what looked like an expensive but extremely...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TOP HAT BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1785355996
• ISBN 13: 9781785355998
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 408
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar