Alice: I don’t want to go among mad people
Cat: Oh, you can’t help that. We’re all mad here . . . I’m mad. You’re mad.
Alice: How do you know I’m mad?
Cat: You must be, or you wouldn’t have come here.
from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
BEWARE. Savannah is a mad city with a gallant and southern manner — inhabited for the most part by the mildly insane, who drink crazy amounts of distilled spirits, and whose women possess a remarkable, mind-bending beauty, many of whom carry lethal weaponry in discretely concealed fashion. It is also full of smiling, beguiling Cheshire cats and hookah puffing caterpillars.
Statistically speaking, most Americans have a mad half-hour in us once a month. Savannah residents’ allotment required-minimum-dose exceeds several hours a week. Newcomers to town are either potential lunatics, reformed madmen, or in brief remission.
In this low country, I have discovered not only prototypes of advanced modern thinkers but the romantically disabled. While they are both quite interesting, several of those afflicted with romantic madness appear at times dangerously unhinged, where I’m really not sure they’re going to be reliable minute-to-minute.
This has been observed to be true in local pubs, one aptly named Lone Wolf Lounge. Flirting with madness on a Friday night is one thing; but, should madness start flirting darkly back . . . perhaps it’s time to call a time out, if not the whole thing off. Or maybe these stricken are chasing a myth that a prospective lover can grasp like a wolf who must chase the moon in the night. They love and live like they’re obsessed and possessed.
We love the town’s viper-fanged wordsmiths, the movie/music/art dream weavers, the endearing cranks thwarted in ambition, the whack jobs aging gracefully, and the sundry madmen angry at the cosmos and assorted nonbelievers. They are one and all quite dear.
I can’t imagine any emptier way to spend what remains of my life secluded in the quiet of the country, out of touch with the mad hatters and gonzo dives of Savannah. These neighbors of ours do not lust for place or power; and, their lives are not focused on carefully arranging and preserving all those things which Wall Street demands we plant, water, till and harvest. If they are worth anything to them, it is only so because of the pleasure with which they can abandon it all. “We are off our rockers,” they might admit, only to shout “but it feels so good.”
If you look further, you will discover in Savannah’s dusty back lanes those who struggle, stumble and strive for shelter, food, respite as well as the hollow things of momentary pleasure or stuff to fence to feed their habits.
Locals say the Devil is the reason why these fools have head and body aches that cause their cloudy thinking and lead them to poor choices and the ensuing craziness. Long ago, we blamed the Devil for many things. For reasons still unclear, we were taught not to say that capital D word. I think today we are supposed to say the Enemy. Sorta impersonal and generic, eh? Most certainly not accurate. I still think we mix evil and crazy up. Thinking both are the same thing leads us to incarcerate them together. Big mistake. Evil has its own smell, sound, feel and most importantly it needs destroying.
Most of us would expect these madness afflicted street people to display indicators like incessant toe-tapping, jittery or repetitive motions, and very dreadful nervousness of mind. Not so. Madness can intensify or sharpen the senses, or destroy or dull them. But many sufferers seem to have an acute sense of hearing.
When W and I walk our neighborhood, we come upon these folks sitting on street side benches or summer sun hot curbstones from time to time. Most look away or keep to themselves. Others make up some wild pretense and commence a full on psycho rant. It’s as if they’ve gone into their heads and made up a whole life with us like some wretchedly crazed ex-spouse. Even they don’t understand why they’re mad at us. We’re like . . . “Dude don’t know us.” If stupidity saves us from going blind-ass bonkers, what is the deal with their continuous Season of Madness? Yet, there’s a lot of sadness in there.
Mankind used to think “the gods” were trying to destroy poor defenseless souls like these by first making them crazy. Modern science says it’s highly likely it’s the darkness in their lives, bodies and minds that prevents them from seeing the night sky’s starlight. Life has taught me to respect both opinions.
There are a few of these alleyway denizens who are mean, controlling, cunning and manipulative. They are unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere along our street can go from Spanish moss-draped, tree lined, southern charm to super-charged with fear because you never knew what just happened to make one of these folks madness go high order.
Most of the time, we do our best to ignore them and not make eye contact. Rarely are we compelled to fix these aggressive ones with the silent death stare that contains more than a pinch of “I’m violently more crazy than you.” You know the ones — they look at the world for situations or marks to go mad ape-shit crazy. These street dog creatures will bite you. They don’t respect humility, sorrow or kindness.
Sometimes you can see a few trying so hard to chill, but once they open their mouths, ceasing the struggle to hide their madness, the crazy comes off the short chain. They then go snarling, snapping-at-strangers mad.
One, whom I’d describe as a quiet storm, is chiefly remarkable for muttering incoherencies at nothing and no one in particular whatsoever and arcing madly about only to come to a screeching stop in silence like a cat does before it gets to where it was going.
At other times in the past when W was at work, a simple “Hey man, wassup? You hungry? Want something to eat?” sufficed to becalm the more peaceable ones. Calm reassuring talk ensued. A sandwich was made/bought and then delivered. They always departed on their way in quiet, secure fashion.
Much if not most of humankind is but a finger width away from going black-and-blue, blind and paralytically insane. Mad with hunger, thirst, pain, sorrow, want, desire, confusion, ignorance and loneliness.
We lucky few, saner folks are all deputized doctors, called to minister to these sisters and brothers. As physicians we should not be angry at the intemperance of these madmen cum patients, nor should we take ill to be yelled at by a street person in full fever. It ain’t catching. We should look upon them only as sick and sometimes bit extravagant since it’s possible to treat their ailments and calm their chaos, if only for a moment.
Otherwise the world will use our indifference to go madder still as it continues taking selfies while moonwalking backwards unknowingly towards the cliff’s edge.
The weekend is nigh, Happy Hour approaches and it’s time for my madness meds. I wonder what we might see in tonight’s observatories — perhaps a cycling or two through madness — from the discovery, through the bliss and the loss, and then into the despair. We are much like planets circling our own suns. We each have unique gravities, forces, attractions, atmospheres, moons and shooting stars. We tilt our axes this way and that with our seasons varying in rapid, unpredictable ways and orders. Meteor showers are not infrequent visitors. We are happily unaware of asteroids that are zinging about and their existential threat.
Regardless, Saturday’s morning will come with a warming dawn, a blue sky over our side garden and its blooming flowers. The online weekend papers will be filled with Friday night’s records dump of some craziness that people have been feverishly working on in secret for years. Arrangements will be made to meet those that were allowed to gently poke around in the other’s ebbing heart after last night’s intros. The park just down the street will be filled with farmers market shoppers, sobering up all-night partiers, and lovers walking round the park, hand in hand laughing out loud.
Meanwhile just off the park, Savannah’s back lane sad boys will be at loose ends alternately walking numbly round and round, poking in trash cans out back and sitting in bus stop shelters just wanting to make it through the day.
Signing off from my electronic Dell typewriter from the nervous hospital called Savannah . . . Marlow
PS If perchance I am able to fix the exact boundary between sane and insane tonight — American politics not included, I will call or better yet text you, should I find something definitive. Hopefully it won’t be too narrow thus becoming meaningless or too wide thus forcing me to issue an APB launching a citywide, human race dragnet. In the event the second is the case, who should get the keys to the asylum? Please text me their particulars. should you find out.
PPS I was almost out the door when the following absurdity popped into my head — surely the sanity-madness boundary line can’t just be some financial craziness logic train like (a) if you have money, you’re eccentric, (b) if you have none, you’re insane, (c) get paid for being crazy otherwise you’ll be locked up. So, in the end, does it all depend on who has whom locked up, for what and where? It’s time to go out now, since I’ve been alone too long with my mind today; and, the hour has arrived to feel the wind under the wings of Savannah’s Friday night madness.
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