Who? – just the story of a man in a psych ward.

EVERCLEAR PSYCHIATRIC WARD
TRANSCRIPT #43503A
SUBJECT: Jacob Montgomery

The following is the request of Jacob for immediate release, typed by Janice from his statement to Doctor Robinshaw and is submitted to the board.

Sometimes it seems to me that no one’s ever asking the questions that really matter, that mean something. I’d call it a conspiracy, but that’s just to make it grand and glorious, a cipher only I have cracked, a dream – no, not a dream. If you’re cold on a hot summer night, how can you hope to be warm during winter? Sometimes – sometimes I think there are more answers than questions, as if every asking was the same question over and over, just in a different form, or syntax, or accent. “Why? Why? Why?” Only question there is. Without it, the how becomes meaningless, the what superficial, the when irrelevant. Without what is behind it, without why it is …

It’s why I killed the owl. Hung it, in fact. Hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully, as someone famous once said. All it could say was “Who.” Over and over and over and over and over. Not when, or what, or where, or even how for god sakes. Just who.

I thought I could broaden it’s vocabulary.

But all it said was who, even dying. Who. Who. Who? Who was I to do that, maybe? But the why – why it was saying that, the reason it was saying that – I don’t know, and now I never will. Dead owls don’t tell tells, and couldn’t anyhow. Except to say who, which I don’t think most courts would accept as admissible evidence. And it’s dead now, so I’ll never know. Where do owls go when they die?

I remembered my youth after I killed the owl, hunting in the woods, being a big man with a big gun. Freud would have loved it, I imagine, for the symbology. I just knew the gun was power, and could scare. It’s what weapons do. They’re bigger than they seem, need to be big to be weapons, to intimidate, and maybe to be intimate. And I remembered what I wanted to do with my life, the grand and glorious dreams of kids before we wake up and realise someone has to serve the food at McDonalds, someone has to be the school janitor, and that it very well could be me. To make the dream come true (who rhymes with true, ever notice that?) you need to be it, live it, love it. Forget family, forget all loves except it – if you want to succeed, you have to succeed to want, to need. Nothing else should matter, and then you make it. And after that? After you’ve got the dream, and it begins to tarnish or fray, what then? Why did it want it? Why are you trapped?

Why. Why. Why. Or, as Hamlet would say: Words. Words. Words.

So I was wondering where dreams went when they died. In me, or outside, or because of me, or because of the world that doesn’t like dreams realises. Hard to justify being the school Janitor when some damn mental midget is making a fortune throwing base balls or hitting people with a hockey stick. It hurts to see successful dreams, and maybe that’s why they’re so rare; and the rewards for such a dreaming are great because so few of us will succeed, can even be bothered to honestly try. I mean, really succeed, hold to the dream, to something noble, to something bigger than you.

I lied.

I didn’t kill the owl for saying Who? The who – the who is God. It’s what’s beyond the why, and how. It is the why, the reason, the how and when and what and where. I killed the owl because I heard it speak my name.

The Lord is in his holy temple; he has his throne in heaven. He watches people everywhere and knows what they are doing. Psalms 11:4, you know? He knows when we’ve been bad or good. He knows. I thought I could kill the owl and he’d never know, that I wouldn’t die soon and it wouldn’t be punished for saying more than who, for saying that I was the who, that I was God. I thought that would piss Him off.

I don’t think dreams go anywhere, except to death like everything else; eventually unremembered, unlost, unmourned, and unloved. We become the past, the unknown and undiscovered country, because no one knows about us, or knows us, after we’re gone. I killed the owl to love it, to remember it, so that it was understood. It always comes down to blood, and pain. I made sure the owl’s sacrifice was honoured – I even tried to give it the stigmata – and those servants of banality, those cops – they locked me up here for it. I was just responding to the miracle of life by offering the miracle of death.

Proverbs three, verses five and six tells us to “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct your paths.” I don’t see any paths out of here, and there are no owls here. Why? Who, more like. Who is responsible, if not God? I transgressed, so I have to leave, to find another owl, a bigger one, to bring a dream back to life so I can die.

I just need to help a hurt owl, to work at a bird sanctuary until my name is called again. So, as you can cleary see, I’m cured. Can I go now? Who are you to disagree? Who?