Diagnosis

In the battle to re-cure my insomnia, I spent another $77. Most of Thursday's fifty minutes was spent in tears, hysterical laughter spilling out of me, all because of a guy who threw his roommate out the window. Killed him, too.

That sort of thing isn't usually funny, but I was guessing the punch line. My Jewish-Buddhist-guitar-playing therapist likes to regale me with apt anecdotes, this one about his days working for the Center for the Criminally Insane (the other one, not the Bush White House). He said he'd developed a system and could pretty much guess the diagnosis of a patient within minutes of his arrival in the office. If the clinicians all felt lousy: depressed. If they felt good: manic.

Apparently, everyone was feeling good within minutes of this murderer's arrival. What was funny about his having pushed the roommate to his death was that, when it was all over, he went downstairs, reclaimed the roommate's body, brought it back up to the apartment, and did it again. "Once is evil," said my therapist. "Twice is crazy."

The story doesn't have much to do with me. But let's just say everybody in the room was happy.

I was already laughing when I arrived early at his office, October's Harper's in hand (guess what percentage of funds to get the Green Party senate candidate on Pennsylvania's ballot came from right-wingers? One hundred. Duh!). And I didn't stop for more than a minute.

I don't have to worry about reaching the murderous roommmate stage, or even the tiny-handwriting, full-page stage. But I am a little high. Nothing that a couple of Bass ales in the evening and two twenty-minute meditation sessions can't correct.

Truth is: I'm kind of getting a kick out of it. If I could only funnel some of my creative energy toward the completion of my thesis, rather than adding to my collection of mental-illness-inspired self-portraits.