The Old, Deserted Insane Asylum! Part 3

A THOUGHTFUL NOTE: In the telling of this very true story, and recalling these times long past, I cannot help but realize how we have come to a new day in this country, with so much more hope than we had back then.  In those days, the standby painter truly loathed and feared the government and the power of this country’s president to do incredible wrongs to the people and the planet.  Today the standby painter is finally glad that the president of this country possesses such power, and has given his word he will use it for the good of the people and the planet.  For the first time since the days of Camelot, she really believes that, “Yes, we can!”

Now, let us discover some of the back-story to our story…

LOCATIONS OF THE DAMNED: Featuring the Old, Deserted Insane Asylum! Part 3

Many years before the standby painter and her friends came to work at the old, deserted insane asylum, the great land of her birth had suffered under the rule of a bizarre despot who had begun his career in the very same Business as that of the standby painter.  He had worked as an Actor and had even costarred with a talented chimpanzee. Eventually, through voodoo politics, he became president of the United States.

During his time in Washington he began the budget cuts that changed the streets of the gigantic metropolis, which some called “Los Angeles”, and others called “The Basin”, and still others—most others, actually—called “LA”.  One of his most lasting achievements was that he brought about the tremendous flowering of the homeless population in LA and its surrounding environs, including the environs around the government-owned complex that housed the insane asylum.

To change the government to fit his ideas, the president decided to save money by reducing government programs that helped the people, and spend money by shooting weapons into outer space.  He also dictated that any mental patients above a certain level of functioning had to be turned out onto the streets.  The trouble was, those people weren’t really all that functional, and when they were released, they drifted close to their former home, wandered up and down Santa Monica Boulevard, crawled into boxes and under freeway overpasses, and edged out to the deserted beaches at night, unable to make a life “outside” with what they didn’t have.

No longer having a home, they didn’t know where to go, except back to where they had come from.  It was either that, the streets, or the cold, heartless ocean, which took care of her own, such a dolphins and fishes, but rebuffed humanity. The insane asylum that had sheltered them was the safest place they had known for many years, in some cases.  They really, really wanted to get back there, where they felt safe, no matter how hard the people who had once taken care of them had now made it for them to get back.

There was an emerald oasis in the city, where green meadows rolled in a lazy way under gentle palms and tiny streams trickled blue and gold in the sunlight and cat tails grew artistically here and there.  Everything was so beautiful in the oasis that it all looked as if it had been created by an artist.  And indeed, it had been.

Now the oasis was maintained by a gardening staff who had come secretly from another foreign country away to the south and who were paid half the amount of the current minimum wage to keep the golf course perfect for the top 1% of the wealthy in this country who would play golf there and take meetings while strolling and hitting and swinging and missing.

It was a crazy system, this oasis.  But it worked, somehow.  And it was quite possibly powered by irony.  In money and in status, the lowest of the people and the highest of the people, both, came here to work or play or both.  Being the meeting ground of opposites who never met, the golf course was a paradox.  It was also a kind of place between worlds, you might say, where the boundaries were warped and thin.  In truth, the oasis was a paradox and a multidimensional portal for those who knew its secret doorways.  The most secret doorway was inside a tunnel that started at the end of a culvert that began with a pond which appeared to be only a water trap, and it was, but it was also more.  The doorway was padlocked, chained and never meant to be used.  But it was used, every night.

To Be Continued…