Accompany Eugene Uttley on a mythological "hero's journey" to another world and back again, and join him as he articulates the prize that he won there -- The Ultimate Boon.
Through his struggles in coping with schizophrenia, Uttley has come to know what he wants. Now he just needs to figure out how to get it.
In 2006, Eugene Uttley was in his fourth year of teaching English as a Second Language in South Korea. At the end of that year, he experienced late onset schizophrenia. Walking away from a good job, a car, and an apartment full of possessions, he followed his voices and delusions into the streets of Seoul, where he became an illegal alien. A month later, he made it back to the USA, but continued in a psychotic break with reality, untreated, for almost an entire year, traveling coast-to-coast, driven by his disturbed mind. Now, five stable years later, he has written two books about coping with schizophrenia. The Boon, his second, is an open letter or case history - primarily concerned with recovery and his thinking about the disorder and what it means to heal psychologically and spiritually and to be whole.
The Boon: Thoughts of a Schizophrenic in Remission draws broadly from thinkers, psychologists, and artists, quoting and commenting on excerpts from a wide array of works and touching on a number of subjects. For all its various sources and types of material, however, this book manages to maintain a brisk, light pace. It is an entertaining as well as an informative read. It also contains original works of poetry, prose, and dialogue written in the years building up to Uttley's psychotic break, with commentary about his mindset and the themes and images he used at that precarious time. Uttley regales the reader with wild anecdotes from his psychosis and crafts calm sketches of his current-day life as a survivor of this debilitating condition.
The Boon provides an intriguing portrait of a mind and soul before, during, and after the ravages of mental illness. It is the author's hope that it will inform readers about schizophrenia, fighting to some extent the oppressive negative stigma attached to the disorder, and that it will inspire and encourage proactive recovery techniques in fellow-sufferers. Uttley provides his contact information in the course of the book and encourages readers to initiate a dialogue with him during or after reading. He feels that an open conversation on schizophrenia will be beneficial for all concerned.
Excerpt
Looking again at Joseph Campbell’s many steps in the hero’s journey, I come to the step called The Ultimate Boon. It is the penultimate step in the quest, the achievement of the goal, the winning of the prize. It is not the end; there are five or six steps after it, including The Crossing of the Return Threshhold and The Freedom to Live, which is overcoming the fear of death. But what Campbell says about The Ultimate Boon is very interesting. It’s about God (or gods and goddesses) being the custodian of the prize. He says what the hero finds himself seeking is not God, but God’s grace, a “sustaining substance”:
"This miraculous energy-substance and this alone is the Imperishable; the names and forms of the deities who everywhere embody, dispense, and represent it come and go. This is the miraculous energy of the thunderbolts of Zeus, Yahweh, and the Supreme Buddha, the fertility of the rain of Viracocha, the virtue announced by the bell rung in the Mass at the consecration, and the light of the ultimate illumination of the saint and sage. Its guardians dare release it only to the duly proven."
I have the sense of having proven myself. Not to any mystical guardians or even to God, but to myself. I lasted the course of my year-long psychotic break and, like Job, I did not blame or curse God or my fate. I countenanced the loss of my station, my ability to work – and of practically all my possessions – with fairly good humor and temperament, if I do say so myself. And after I had endured the mental and spiritual maelstrom long enough, say nine months, I dedicated all my energies to making myself well. I had whipped myself into decently good shape by the time I finally sought professional help. All the medical people I’ve come into contact with and told my story to congratulate me on the work I’ve done to overcome my symptoms, and I take those congratulations to heart. Taming the lions of dysfunctional thinking, mastering and shepherding oneself, is not an easy task. Now I’ve just about got myself jumping through hoops.
By the grace of God, I know what I want. You guessed it: to be whole. To be mentally and spiritually whole and to cultivate an ever-keener awareness of connectedness to the greater whole. I’m not saying I’ve accomplished these goals. In fact. I’m pretty sure they’re not the kind of goals one ever quite achieves. But knowing them as goals, and being in the process of working towards them is sweet relief from the restlessness of heart I had as a youth. It’s a hollow feeling, not knowing what you want. To know is to have that hollowness filled, that vacant space occupied by a worthy ideal. Wisdom warns against desire, but there is power in wanting, power that can fuel the will and keep lit that precious torch, hope.
INvoke
knowing is hard to trust
for facts take faith
and faith I find
in short supply
but ficts I got
in spades
Thisclaimer
Now and again am I
of a mind to write
yet what have I to describe
who have known but a moment
of no moment and none
other than this?
In these two poems from the old chapbook, I see the aimlessness I felt at that time. Obviously it irked me enough to spur me to write about it. No facts, just ficts. Those ficts became trouble. Being delusional was like living fiction. Now, with faith, facts are easier to come by. Faith is a foundation, a solid base on which to build. In Thisclaimer there is a humility I like, but also that aimlessness. “What have I to describe?” Why, the workings of my mind! The goofy profundity of selected great works and the glorious trivia of the day-to-day here in Keats' vale of Soul-making...
(Richard M. Feldman) Ever since I was a young boy, the only thing I wanted to be was a cowboy. I wanted to own and work on a real ranch, with cattle and horses. Especially horses.
While I never became a cowboy, considering everything I have done
TRUE STORY. Bella survived an abusive powerbroker father with organized crime ties, a drug-addicted mother and a physically/sexually abusive brother. Shocking & inspirational. When she couldn't cry, she tattooed a crying angel to cry for her.
