Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Pee, Poetry, Baseball and a Slice of Roast Beef
Yesderday I took my schizophrenic, poet pal (I'll call him Pee)to K&W and the Grasshoppers' day game. Pee paid for lunch, he made me promise to take him to a Wake football game in return for lunch. (He's really a Tarheel fan, but his schizophrenia took hold when he was a freshman at Chapel Hill. "I don't think the Lord wants me to go back to Chapel Hill," he said, "that's where my illness started."
This time we went to the left line and yes- the roast beef lady saw Pee and said, "Praise the Lord." Pee didn't need prayer, but he told me at lunch that that lady has a real prayer ministry. "If you ever need someone to pray with, she (roast beef slicer, left side) is the one to go to. She's a real blessing."
Pee has a bad foot and can't drive, so getting away from the retirement home was really good for him. He said during the game that this was the most relaxed he'd been in a long while. We sat behind the parents of 2cd baseman Gary Roche. They are from Venezuela, "no speak English", but we danced and cheered Gary on anyway.
Pee asked me if I thought he'd ever be cured. Then he asked, "If I was healed- say over 20 years ago- what do you think I'd have done professionally." I didn't hesitate, "you'd be writer, maybe a reporter to make a buck, but you'd write." Pee feels he would be a clinical physcologist, but I think it is because he knows so much about mental illness.
On the way home Pee asked me stop by an old friend's home in Irving Park. We did. The man had a small, thin, leather-bound book of poetry by Pee. (Pee has promised to let me borrow his book so I can read and share his poetry, but he wanted to first offer it to the library at his retirement home.) So on the way home, I asked him to read a few selections.
His hands slowly shook as he held the little red book, but he managed to read well anyway. He read a poem about basketball, Elvis, the greatest poem and my favorite, a poem about schizophrenia. We didn't have enough time, but in that poem he wrote about how he knows people view him in reality and how he prefers his own make believe world to that reality. Amazing stuff.
What a blessed day!
This time we went to the left line and yes- the roast beef lady saw Pee and said, "Praise the Lord." Pee didn't need prayer, but he told me at lunch that that lady has a real prayer ministry. "If you ever need someone to pray with, she (roast beef slicer, left side) is the one to go to. She's a real blessing."
Pee has a bad foot and can't drive, so getting away from the retirement home was really good for him. He said during the game that this was the most relaxed he'd been in a long while. We sat behind the parents of 2cd baseman Gary Roche. They are from Venezuela, "no speak English", but we danced and cheered Gary on anyway.
Pee asked me if I thought he'd ever be cured. Then he asked, "If I was healed- say over 20 years ago- what do you think I'd have done professionally." I didn't hesitate, "you'd be writer, maybe a reporter to make a buck, but you'd write." Pee feels he would be a clinical physcologist, but I think it is because he knows so much about mental illness.
On the way home Pee asked me stop by an old friend's home in Irving Park. We did. The man had a small, thin, leather-bound book of poetry by Pee. (Pee has promised to let me borrow his book so I can read and share his poetry, but he wanted to first offer it to the library at his retirement home.) So on the way home, I asked him to read a few selections.
His hands slowly shook as he held the little red book, but he managed to read well anyway. He read a poem about basketball, Elvis, the greatest poem and my favorite, a poem about schizophrenia. We didn't have enough time, but in that poem he wrote about how he knows people view him in reality and how he prefers his own make believe world to that reality. Amazing stuff.
What a blessed day!
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