Green Eyes

  My detractors have addressed with especial venom what one of them has termed my ‘unprofessional obsession with Jocundra Verret,’ and have laid the blame for all consequent tragedy at my feet. In this I admit to some complicity, yet if I am to shoulder the blame, then surely I must take credit for all that has been gained. While I do not discount my colleagues’ responsibility, and while Ms Verret herself has testified that she acted for reasons of her own, if they are insistent I will accept full blame and credit, and leave history to confer final judgement on the worth of my contribution. Yes, I took chances! I flew by the seat of my pants. I was willing for all hell to break loose in order to learn the patients’ secrets, and perhaps a measure of hell was necessary for the truth to emerge. We were cartographers, not healers; it was our duty to explore the wilderness of this new human preserve, and I could not accept as Brauer seemingly could, my role as being merely that of babysitter to the undead.

  Though my case study of the relationship between Harrison and Verret - and never has a courtship been so thoroughly documented as theirs, recorded on videotape and footnoted by in-depth interviews of the participants -though this study revealed much of value, as the weeks passed I came to regard the relationship primarily as a star by which I navigated, one whose unwavering light signaled the Tightness of my course. This may seem an overly romantic attitude for a member of my profession to hold, and perhaps it was, but I believe I can justify having held it in terms of my own emotional needs. The pressures on me were enormous, and I was only able to cope with them by commuting to and from New Orleans on the weekends and spending the nights in my own home. Project officials screamed for results, my colleagues continually questioned my concern for the patients’ well-being. My concern? Because I refused to indulge in banal Freudian dissections and quasi-metaphysical coffee klatches with these second-rate theoreticians, did I lack concern? I stimulated the patients, encouraged them, tried to provide them with a pride in their occupations. Should I, instead, have pampered them, patted them on the head and admired the fact that they actually breathed? This was Ezawa’s attitude: having made them, he was well pleased, looking upon them as mere monumentsto his cleverness.

  But, of course, the greatest pressure was that exerted by the patients themselves. Imagine, if you will, indwelling with a group of brilliant and charismatic individuals, thoroughly dominant, whose vivid character suppresses and dulls your own. It was a constant strain to be around them; I cannot think of a single person who did not suffer a severe depression at some time or another as a result. They were mesmeric figures: green-eyed monsters with the capacities of angels. Harrison’s poems, Monroe’s ballet, even Richmond’s howled dirge… these were powerful expressions, dispiriting to those of us incapable of emulating them, especially dispiriting because of the wan light their productions appeared to shed on the nature of creativity, demystifying it, relegating it to something on the order of a technological twitch, like the galvanic response of a dissected frog. And yet neither could we totally disabuse ourselves of mystical notions concerning the patients. At times it seemed to me that we were a strange monastic order committed to the care and feeding of crippled, green-eyed saints whose least pronouncement sent us running to examine the entrails for proof of their prophetic insight. All the therapists stood in awe of them, or - as did Laura Petit - maintained an artificial distance; all, that is, except Jocundra Verret.