BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Eighteen

I opened a wooden door to my office. I had purposely rented a back first-floor corner space of a Beverly Hills glass-and-steel high rise. I didn't want the building itself and its accoutrements to dominate or distract from what was being accomplished in my office. The wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling curtained office window faced both a residential side street and a small island of grass and trees which abutted a back-parking lot, the first two spaces of which were reserved for me and a patient. A security camera monitored my car parked in the back lot.

My office was intended to look professorial and studious. On book shelves were medical reference books and volumes by and about Freud and Jung. There were also copies of Madness and Civilization by Michel Foucault, Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Way of Zen by Alan Watts, and volumes on sailing, antique aircraft and romantic poets. Amid the diplomas and accreditations on one back wall were framed quotations:

"This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." -- Horace Walpole

"Ordinarily he is insane, but he has lucid moments when he is only stupid." -- Heinrich Heine

"Reality is frightening, superior to all fiction. All you need is the genius to know how to interpret it." -- Antonin Artaud

"And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the spirit." -- Romans 8:27

"Madness, in great ones, must not unwatched go." -- William Shakespeare in Hamlet

"No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness." -- Aristotle

"If you succeed, you're a genius. If you fail, you're a madman." -- Anonymous

"Keep on truckin'" -- R. Crumb

"I may be crazy but it just may be a lunatic your looking for." -- Billy Joel

"A schizophrenic is never alone." -- Adam Justus Holliman

The other two walls were painted white on which there were no pictures, accreditations, photographs or paintings. I didn't want patients trying to figure out why such items were there. My patients were why they were there, not my artwork. It was why I didn't have one of Mara's paintings hanging in my office. During potential down times, I didn't want to dwell on her reasons for painting it and then try to find some key to her inner psyche by studying her brushstrokes and color choices. In addition, if asked by a curious patient, I would have to explain its reason for being.

I had a square glass table in the corner of the room near the shelves which acted as my desk. Behind it was a small refrigerator and a wooden door to a utility closet. Against the long wall were an overstuffed brown leather couch bookended by two matching tables with matching Imari ginger jar lamps; in front of it was a glass coffee table, on either side of which was a matching brown leather wingback chair. I usually let patients choose first where to sit and then I sat next.

I opened the curtains to let some light into the room; the wall glass was mirrored so that people outside couldn't look inside my office, but my patients and I could still observe the streetscape, if it so interested them or me.

I retrieved a bottle of water from the refrigerator and downed much of it while I peered at my reflection in the office window. I admitted to myself that I could be vain. In the morning, I ran in the hills behind my house and did my fifty laps in the pool. I knew I looked ten years younger than my age. I had a full head of hair and the gray made me appear professional, knowledgeable and distinguished. My teeth were straight, my teenage orthodontia having held fast. And my eyes were peanut butter brown, which my college crew coach called "flood water mud." His comment about the color of my eyes indicated to me that he was gay.