Winter 2008

Congratulations to Michelle Mukai and Joe Guppy, whose works were chosen from the Hugo Writing Classes winter end-of-term reading. Each quarter, we highlight the work of two of our talented students. Excerpts from their work appear in Rewrite; below are the works in their entirety.

Michelle Mukai finds her greatest inspiration from “the multilayered world we are all a part of.” Through her poetry she hopes to act as a bridge between the layers in order to “deepen our connection and shed light to the parallels all beings share.” “The branch of a dying tree” was written from a prompt given in Deborah Woodard's class, “Generating Poems.” Michelle looks forward to taking more classes, and to poems yet to come.

the branch of a dying tree
By Michelle Mukai

under the shade of a whitewashed wall
she called upon bee medicine
she remembers this

surrounding every table
on sugar bowls and cups
empty coke bottles
the folly of our dying bees
where sweet sodas
appeal more to tongues
than crimson blossoms

plates may be used
to serve rice and plums
but this poem
will offer you poison
something you will not forget

i collected these words and salted them
like the motion between the floor
and the plate that came crashing
she remembers this

the nest that once was
on the branch of a dying tree
held four small eggs
three would one day open
one would still remain

i climbed to claim the unborn
soft skin perfection
but winged mother was watching
so i climbed down empty handed

on the corner i sat and watched
as they all came by
winged elders and two brothers
stooped together to say goodbye

let there be wind
to guide this child home
bones and liquid body
calcified eyes and heart

do you hear the songs we sing
do you know this voice
will you find me on the other side

white washed wall and medicine
poison, rice, and plums
the branch of a dying tree
i remember this

Joe Guppy wrote “My Two Psychiatrists,” in Roberta Brown Root's “Writing the Personal Essay” class. The story tells about the time Joe spent in a Seattle mental ward in 1979. Joe plans to write more about this turning point experience, possibly creating a book. In the 1980s, when New City Theater occupied the space that is now Hugo House, Joe helped write and perform original comedy/improv shows as a founding member of the “Off the Wall Players.” He is now a psychotherapist in Fremont.

 
My Two Psychiatrists
By Joe Guppy

“Who's the President of the United States?” asks Dr. Nelson, looking at me through owl-eyed spectacles. It's 1979 and I'm meeting my psychiatrist for the first time in a narrow room in the mental ward of a Seattle hospital.

I give the answer in a flat voice. The question is bizarre but he's so serious. He masks his receding hairline with a slight comb-over.

“Count backwards from 100 by 7s.”

I am overdosed on both a powerful hallucinogen and the accumulated drama of my 23 years, but I do the subtractions until he tells me to stop. These insane inquisitions must be part of my punishment. At any moment he will give a demonic laugh and call forth torturers.

Dr. Nelson prescribes a large dose of an antipsychotic called Haldol, which arrives liquid in a paper cup. It has a bitter, chemical tang. Within a few hours there is a high whine in my head and my limbs tingle with restless tension.

In group therapy, half the patients puff away, filling the room with clouds of gray smoke. My nose is soon plugged and my throat raw.

I escape to the restroom at the far end of the ward, sit on the toilet lid and contemplate the three-inch crack of open window, which lets in the refreshing January night air. I stand up and push my palms against the bottom of the window to raise it more. It keeps going up and up.

“This is too easy,” I think as I climb up on the sill, look down at the sidewalk one floor below, and make my escape.

“Sometimes when you miss your freeway exit, it takes a long time to get back on the right route,” Dr. Nelson says when we meet in the narrow room following my recapture.

One day I show Dr. Nelson the small, dried-up cuts I had made on my hand with a safety razor prior to my admission, a successful attempt to prove to myself that I could still bleed.

“What do you think those are?” I ask him.

“They look like cat scratches,” he says, and changes the subject.

To test my theory that he is an unfeeling robot, I stand on his foot, encased in a shiny black dress shoe. I press down as hard as I dare, trying to crunch his toes, but he doesn't react.

Tuesday mornings I watch the hallway slowly fill up with my fellow patients, following their shock treatment. They are laid out to recover on rollaway beds. I am looking down at Linda, a woman in her 40s. Tears stream down her cheeks as she tells me of the excruciating pain in her head.

When Dr. Nelson's chemicals fail to reach me he proposes shock treatment.

In my delusions I see myself as the inevitable victim of imaginary torturers, but this is real. With images of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” in mind, I am surprisingly confident as I call my parents to fire Dr. Nelson and ask for a new psychiatrist.

I sit in the center of the small couch in Dr. Earle's therapy room and look over at him.

Dr. Earle has the moustache of a Louis L'Amour character, a slow Texas drawl, and longish black hair. Like all the psychiatrists at the hospital, including Dr. Nelson, he wears a three-piece suit, but Dr. Earle's is powder blue.

I feel safe enough in Dr. Earle's informal presence to reveal my secret fears. He listens and then gently questions my ideas. That evening, as I am walking to the TV room, I wonder what happened to the notion that phantom torturers were lurking just around the corner somewhere.

The bedrock of Dr. Earle's therapy is his oft-repeated statement:

“I like you Joe, and I believe you are going to get better.”

Getting better was not entirely smooth. One day Dr. Earle tells me, looking down and writing in my chart: “I'm taking you off the tranquilizer. You don't need it any more.”

“Well, can't we just taper it off…?” I plead meekly. Dr. Earle mumbles something about blood levels as he continues to focus on my file.

In an instant, the lighting becomes harsh and the shadows deepen. Dr. Earle looks up. He has dark circles under his eyes and every flaw in his skin stands out starkly. Once again I am the helpless victim.

But in a later session, he listens as I tell him I feel frustrated and ignored. I again experience his warmth and confidence. We talk a lot about the fact that my actions can be effective. At discharge time, I point out with a smile that the window I jumped out is now blocked.

With the hospital adventure behind me, I plunged into life with vigor, beginning a 15-year career as a writer. In 1996, I turned to a different creative field and became a psychotherapist.

It's 2008 and I am meeting with a 23-year-old patient of my own, a young man who has had a lot of trouble with alcohol and drugs. He tells me:

“I just can't stand the idea of being the dork at the party with the 7-Up in his hand.”

I listen and ask a few questions. And although I've never spoken Dr. Earle's exact words to him, I do like him and I believe he's getting better.