Some remarks

DOCUMENT, LYNDA COLDRIDGE.
(No. 17, this Report.)
I am writing this for Doctor Hebert. I keep telling him I can't write, I never write, I never have. He says I must. So I am. He says if other people read it they will be helped. But the reason he wants me to write things is that I will be helped. That is what he thinks. Well he will read this first so he will find out what I think. Although I do keep telling him. Doctor Hebert is a nice man. (You are a nice man!) But you don't listen. Doctors are always like this. (Not only doctors.) I often talk to Doctor Hebert for hours at a time. But he wants me to write my thoughts down. That seems to me funny. Crazy. But it is me who is crazy, not Doctor Hebert. Doctor Hebert knows everything that ever happened to me. He knows more about me than any other doctor. More than Mark does. Well that goes without saying. Or Martha. Or even Sandra or Dorothy did. Doctor Hebert says it is important that he knows about me. He says I have had every form of treatment ever used in mental hospitals. He says I have survived them. This is wrong. I have not survived them. I tell him how I was when I was a girl. I was mad then. According to their ideas. Then I tell him how I was mad when I was mad in the way I was mad when they started giving me treatments and putting me into hospitals. Because the two kinds of madness are different, not the same. Do you understand this Doctor Hebert? (You say I should call you John but I don't see why. Calling you John doesn't make you mad or me sane.) When I was a girl all kinds of things went on in my head, and now I know that was mad. Because so many people have said so. But it was lovely. I often think about that. I have not known that niceness since. (But sometimes I do get little flashes but I'll write that later. If I ever get to it.) And when they began the machines and the injections and the dreadfulness what was in my head was different from before. But they wouldn't see that. Do you, Doctor Hebert? Do you? I am telling you. In words. Words, but on paper. I shall begin again here. I get muddled. I meant to say something else first of all.
Doctor Hebert has ideas of all kinds. Some of them, are good. I applaud them. I applaud you Doctor Hebert. Clap Clap. This is one of my childish days. Doctor Hebert says that I feel myself to be useless. (But I am. Anyone would see that at once.) He says that I can be of use to people who have just gone mad and who don't understand what is happening to them. He says I should go to such a person and say This is what is happening to you. He says that then they will feel better. And make me feel better because they feel better. But what he doesn't understand is, what will make them feel better is that they feel better. I.e., it all stops, it goes away, they aren't crazy any longer. He says I must say to some poor loon, all shaking and crying and hearing voices, sometimes coming out of walls, or seeing horrible things that aren't there (but perhaps they are!) I must say... new sentence. Look, I must say. Do not be afraid. You see, it is like this. (I am talking to this poor loon now.) We have senses adjusted to a very small range of sight or hearing. All the time sounds are coming in from everywhere, like a waterfall. But we are machines set to accept only let us say 5 percent. If the machine goes wrong then we hear more than we need. We see more than we need. Your machine has gone wrong. Instead of seeing just daylight and night and your cousin Fanny and the cat and your ever-loving husband, which is all you need to get along, you are seeing a lot more i.e. all these horrors and peculiar colours and visions and things. The reason they are horrors and not nice is that your machine is distorting what is there, which is really nice. (So says Doctor Hebert, but he is a nice man. You are a nice man Doctor Hebert, and how do you know?) And instead of hearing your husband saying he loves you or your wife or a bus going past you are hearing what your husband is really thinking. Like, you are an ugly old bag. Or what your children think. Or the dog. (I can hear what the dog belonging to the caretaker thinks. I like him better than most people. Does he like me better than most dogs? I shall ask him. If people knew what dogs are thinking they would be surprised. Just as well, really.) Well, if I say all this to the poor loons, they will cheer up and feel better. Says Doctor Hebert. To understand all is to forgive all. But I say to Doctor Hebert, that is not so. If you have voices sometimes it seems a hundred of them hammering away in your head, then you don't care why. You can do without original thoughts about percentages believe me. You want them to stop. And if you keep seeing monsters and terrible things you want them to go away. Is it going to cheer them up? I mean, knowing that we (people and for all I know dogs too) are geared to see only Aunt Fanny and the cat and the street because outside this everything is horrors? (Doctor Hebert why are you so positive the horrors aren't there? I mean, why? I really want to know. I mean, what world are you living in, Doctor Hebert, because I don't think it is the same as mine. Well I suppose that goes without saying, because you aren't rnad and I am.) I shall start again. What you are wrong about is this, that people will feel better if I or you say things like this. Because nearly everyone has been brought to believe that the 5 percent is all there is. Five percent is the whole universe. And if they think anything else, they are peculiar. And if the machine then goes wrong and in comes let us say 10 percent then as well as being frightened about voices coming out of someone's elbow or the door handle, and what these voices say which is nearly always silly, then they will know they are bad. Wicked. Because you can't change people's ideas. Not just like that. Not suddenly. As it is, the poor loons are coping with silly voices that they know are silly, which is bad enough, but the voices are saying they are wicked and disgusting. Nearly always. And then on top of that, they have to cope with knowing that they are open to more than 5 percent, which is bad by definition. When they were children it is more than likely they saw and heard all kinds of things more than the 5 percent, like having friends they could see others couldn't, and their parents when they told them said they were lying and wicked. I am getting upset. I shall stop now.
Last night a poor loon was brought in. She was frightened. Doctor Hebert asked me to sit with her. So I did. She is schizophrenic. Well that goes without saying I suppose. She loved a friend and they were going to marry this week. He broke it off. She was upset. She didn't eat. She didn't sleep. She cried a lot. Yesterday she was walking across Waterloo Bridge and then suddenly she was about twenty feet up looking down at herself walking across the bridge. It happens to me quite often. What it means is this. We are several people fitted inside each other. Chinese boxes. Our bodies are the outside box. Or the inside one if you like. If you get a shock, like your best friend saying no I won't marry you I am going to marry your friend Arabella instead then anything can happen. I like watching myself from outside. It makes this living on and on and on and on seem not important. I look at me, poor old bag, which is what I am (Doctor Hebert says I must put on my nice dresses and make my face up.) But little does he realise, little do you realise Doctor Hebert that the Chinese box that stands outside and looks at poor bag Lynda doesn't care. What I really am is not poor bag Lynda all bones and the shakes and the shivers. I stand outside her and look at her and think, Well cry if you like, why not? I don't care. But this poor loon yesterday night. Her name is Anne. I suppose Doctor Hebert you think she would feel better if I said to her, You are a set of Chinese boxes, and when you walked across Waterloo Bridge all miserable and ill, they got separated for a bit, and so one of them looked down at the others, or other. Because Doctor Hebert it takes a lot of getting used to. You can't just say it, announcing good news. If she is religious yes perhaps. The soul. But this Anne is not religious, I asked her. She might be frightened if religious but it would be an idea she had heard of. I'd say soul and not Chinese box. But most religious people anyway think about the most unimportant Chinese box and about burying it or laying it out and how it will be in the grave or cremating it or something. So if they are like this then even soul would not be much good, let alone Chinese box. Words. Chinese box bad. Soul good. If Christian. Sometimes some poor loon comes in and I can talk to him. Her. A child is best. I mean, they are often not frightened when they see themselves walking away in front or something like that. It's second nature to some. It is a game. But they must keep quiet. I did it when I was a child. My parents quarrelled. When they started I used to take myself off outside the room. Of course they thought I was there with them but I wasn't. I sat there with a silly grin on my face but I was away outside, thinking other thoughts. I shall stop now.
Anne is very bad. I have been sitting with her. She is frightened more than anything. She hears the usual voices saying she is bad and wicked and all that. Also she keeps seeing her friend who is marrying Arabella. She sees them talking. Also making love. She told me this. She is frightened to tell Doctor Hebert. I told her not to tell Doctor Hebert. I am telling Doctor Hebert now. Doctor Hebert is one thing but there are other doctors here. This way Doctor Hebert will know but the other doctors won't. I told her that all she was doing was using "second sight" and she must have heard of that. I said a lot of people have it. I asked her if she saw things when she was a child. She said she did. I said it is like playing the piano or riding a bicycle. Practice makes perfect. I said all that kind of thing. Sensible. Second sight that's all it is! Looking down at yourself from twenty feet up, think nothing of it! Well it didn't make her feel better at all. Because when these things happen strongly enough to make people ill it is because the 6 percent of whatever is a wavelength. It is a voltage. It is a thousand volts instead of one. It is not just that you are the same as normal and then suddenly looking at yourself from outside or hearing voices, which can happen like a sort of glide sideways or up from where you were, and not an increase in voltage, but then at other times or with other people the voltage goes up suddenly and you feel you will shake to pieces. The 5 percent of sight hearing etc is energies. That is the whole point. So much voltage of sight, hearing. And if it is a bit more the machine shakes to pieces. That is the point. This is the point Doctor Hebert. Anne wants it to stop. She can't bear it.
Last night Doctor Hebert and I had one of our sessions. After lights out. In his office. He was on night. He had read all this. He had a sensible thought. It is this. When some person, let us say a Scottish lady in the Highlands like an old nurse I had once has second sight, and she says: A tall dark stranger will cross your path, and he does, or Someone will die this week and he does, then this person isn't shaking to pieces because the voltage is too high. Or children looking down from the branch of a tree at themselves sitting on the ground playing in the dust. They aren't shaking to pieces. They aren't shaking and crying and screaming and wishing it would stop on the contrary it all seems the most normal thing in the world.
The answer is some people are born to receive not 5 percent but perhaps 6 percent. Or 7 percent. Or even more. But if you are a 5 percent person and suddenly a shock opens you to 6 then you are "mad." I am sure I was born a 6 percent person, not mad at all. But they made me mad because I told what I knew. If I had kept my mouth shut I would have lived a peaceful life. With Mark. Poor Mark. Oh poor Mark. He is in North Africa with Rita. He writes to me. He loves me. He loves Rita. He loves Martha. Love love love love love. If I had liked it when he slobbered all over me and stuck his hands and things into me then that would have meant I loved him I suppose. That is how he looked at it.
The talks I have with Doctor Hebert are like the talks I used to have with Martha. Not as long, not all night or days at a time because Doctor Hebert works hard. He has to look after things. But we talk about the same things. Doctor Hebert says I have learned so much and I don't use it. He says what is the point of Martha and me finding out so much, and then not doing anything. Doing what? Writing a letter to The Times. (That is Mark talking.) Standing on platforms? (Arthur. Phoebe.) I told him that when Martha writes to me again I'll ask her to come and see me and then he and Martha can talk too. Martha is in the commune place. I've been there to visit Francis. I suppose it is all right. But why do people have to get into one place and live together?
Like dogs curled up in a basket licking each other. Lick, lick. People who are like each other are together anyway. That is what I think. They don't have to go lick lick.
Doctor Hebert wants to come with me and visit Martha and Francis and talk the whole night through. I don't mind.
Doctor Hebert wants me to work every day on my "faculties." I say to him (I am saying to you now) that sometimes my "faculties" are strong and sometimes not and it is no good talking about "every day" like office work. But he is very keen on 9 to 5, or maybe 2 to 4. Mondays to Fridays? Do I get Saturdays and Sundays off? He says people who come in here and who are not too frightened should join. Join what? He is very curious about "what I know." Suppose what I know isn't very nice? Suppose I know things about what is going to happen, but I would much rather not know. Doctor Hebert talks very easily about knowing this or that. I ask him (I am asking you again Doctor Hebert) why do you suppose we are all set or most of us for 5 percent, with a few people set to 6 percent and even fewer to 7 or 8? (But we wouldn't know about those, would we? They would be like Gods, I think. Taking it from our point of view.) Do you think the reason might be that whoever sets us poor little machines knows very well how much we can stand? Because Doctor Hebert I can't stand it, and I try hard not to think about what I know.
When I wrote that I forgot to put in something important. If a person is a set of Chinese boxes, one inside another, then is that what the world is? I am writing this down because it is important. When I take a look at myself from outside I want to laugh. I see Lynda the old bag all bones with bleeding fingers. But that isn't what the person is who looks. It is not important about the old bag in a not very nice dress. (I couldn't get into the ironing room again today, the key was lost, Doctor Hebert if you really mean about looking nice because of self-respect.) So perhaps there is another world that looks at our world, this dreadful place. Hell. Did you know this was hell Doctor Hebert? Do you? I said it and you smiled. It is her illness you thought. But this is hell, Doctor Hebert. But supposing what I thought is true, another world, a sort of lighter replica of this heavy lump of misery in the chains of gravity, gravity, it is so heavy and so thick - suppose this other world slips off like a glove and looks back at hell and shrugs its shoulders. And another world, and another. Round Chinese boxes. Does that amuse you? I feel a smile on my face so I suppose it is amusing.
Sometimes Martha and I sat and laughed and laughed. Sometimes Dorothy laughed. Not often though. Sandra didn't laugh, not ever. But Dorothy killed herself and Sandra got better. No one liked Sandra. It was because they said she was common. Well she was. Being in all these hospitals I haven't cared about that. Not for years and years. What matters is, you say something and then it is understood. Mark was my husband. He isn't now because I told him he must divorce me so that Rita could have children properly. Mark loved me. He loved me. He drove me mad loving me. I used to listen to how he loved. He wanted to wrap my filthy dirty smelly hair around his hands. Love. Darling Lynda I love you. But he never understood anything I said to him. Meanwhile he was loving Martha. Well good luck to them. I thought so then and I think so now. Then Rita came. Kiss kiss lick lick gobble gobble. Rita never understood a word Mark said. But never mind that, when it was Rita and Mark the house had a good feel, it was different from before. So from that I conclude there is no point my trying to understand about sex. Love so called. It is a waste of time. I'm not equipped, that's obvious.
Doctor Hebert has taken in what I said about 9 to 5, office hours. He wants me to come to him when I am in the mood, so that I don't waste anything, and he can make experiments on me. He didn't say experiments because he believes I am frightened of that sort of thing. Doctor Hebert you don't listen when I say things. I can never be frightened again, because if bad things happen, I just step outside my body and go off somewhere else. I don't mind if you want to make experiments. But it won't make any difference. Are you going to convince your confreres? Is that what you have in mind? I'm not going to be a guinea pig at conferences or meetings of doctors. No, no. What you don't understand is, people never believe these things. Not until they experience them. Then when they experience them they become people other people don't believe. Hard lines. Martha and Francis say the military do research into this kind of thing and use it. Why don't you ask the army? They don't tell the truth to ordinary people. Death is more important.
Doctor Hebert is being transferred to another hospital. He says I can go with him. I shall go with him. I want to stay in hospital. They say I could leave and manage, but I am too badly deteriorated and I shall stick to that. I could live in that commune place but I'd have to behave all the time. Lick lick lick. I shall leave here next week to go with Doctor Hebert. One hospital is like another. Doctor Hebert says he wants to go on working with me.
Since Doctor Hebert, I have been sometimes just for short moments like I was when I was a girl. Before they grabbed me and forced me into the hospitals. The voices when I was a child were friendly. It was a friend talking to me. They would say: Yes Lynda, it is all right, do that. Or this. Or, Have you thought about doing that, because you can if you try. Lynda, Lynda, don't be sad. Don't be unhappy. And once when I was crying and crying because my parents quarrelled all the time, the voice said right through all that fuss I was making, What is the matter, Lynda? Meaning, what a fuss about nothing. All these years I have remembered the friendliness, and wondered where it had gone to. Since the doctors all I heard was voices saying I was wicked, horrible, cruel. But now it is coming back. That is because Doctor Hebert is a kind man. I mean kind in himself, not just his words. Words are nothing. The thing that is there, the friendly thing in a person or place is sweet. It is a sort of sweetness and closeness. I keep telling Doctor Hebert, the voices that torment poor loons, saying you are horrible and all that, I will punish you, could just as well be saying, I am your friend, trust me.