seventeentimes

I dream of quiet places, of vast places.

I dream of mud clinging to my boots, of frost on my breath.
I dream of looking out over miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles.
I dream of so many trees, of rocks and cliffs, of lakes.
I dream of skies above bigger than everything else, so big I might fall through them.

I love the face of my dog, the eyes of my cat, the words of my family, the arms of my husband, the laughter of my friends.

I love stories and music and paintings and films and good television and good wine.

Nothing else seems real or important.

I smell of Green Tea body lotion, my room smells of Amber incense. Both are gifts. My stomach is empty, my tea is cold, the washing is drying on the line. I am alone and it is quiet and these things are just what I need.

I beg you to read part of this New York Times article by Rebecca Skloot featuring a wonderful story about a man and his parrot. The section with Jim and Sadie is on the second page of ‘Creature Comforts’

“A few months ago, in a cafe in St. Louis, I met a man named Jim Eggers, who uses an assistance parrot, Sadie, to help control his psychotic tendencies. Eggers looks like a man who has been fighting his whole life. He is muscular, with a buzz cut, several knocked-out teeth and many scars, including one that runs ear-to-chin from surgery to repair a broken jaw. Eggers avoids eye contact in public — he walks fast down streets and through stores staring at the ground, jaw clenched. “I have bipolar disorder with psychotic tendencies,” he told me as he sucked down a green-apple smoothie. “Homicidal feelings too.”

Eggers’s condition has landed him in court several times: a disturbing-the-peace charge for pouring scalding coffee onto a man under his apartment window who annoyed him; one-year probation for threatening to kill the archbishop of St. Louis because of news reports about church money and molestations by priests in other cities (which the archbishop had nothing to do with). In describing his condition, Eggers says it’s like when the Incredible Hulk changes from man to monster. His vision blurs, his body tingles and he can barely hear. According to his friend Larry Gower, who often serves as a public liaison for him, in those moments, Eggers gets extremely loud. They both agree that Sadie is one of the few things keeping Eggers from snapping. (more…)