Well Bottom Blues

title from a line in Lucky’s speech in Waiting for Godot—Samuel Beckett 

They took my hat.

Yes I was rampaging mad drunken unsteady ever ready like an electric cat on a hot tin roof and glorious glorious the invasive Blakean  angels and writing my God writing writing all the time writing. Some said it was good, the writing. submitting publishing reading applause encouragement from the recognized elders. Yes I had it.

And then they took my hat.

Nights at the Apple Barrel I commandeered the tip bucket keeping my hands in view and cornered everyone and demanded they put money into the bucket until the bands realized that I wasn’t stealing anything and why the hell not have a barking mad barker as long as the bucket was full.

Until they took my hat.

Evenings possessed extending past midnight scribbling block printing in notebooks typing typing typing computer tablet phone a beloved Lettera 22 pounding the manual keys the way I pounded computer keyboards until they cracked writing writing all the time writing. 

Before they took my hat

Nights chasing tail the drunken glance the unsteady  dance tentacled embracing sucking face at the bar: the madly drunk woman traveling with her family who left her wife behind this trip who came back to the bar and dragged me to my house and demanded to be fucked unprotected but I was so drunk I couldn’t and she sat astride me and slapped me and slapped me her rings’ impacts marking my face.

Until I lost my hat.

The elegantly Latin Don Señior Doctor in his tailored three piece suits with years of Poetry magazine on shelves in his waiting room recognized my misdiagnosis not ADHD not anxiety but  something that mimicked those trivialities—manic depression, more properly bipolar disorder 2— the divine madness. Together we found the psychopharmacological bolus, the miracle cure, tamed the electric Antichrist, firmly terrestrial and in control again.

He took my hat.

At that time I quit the job that nearly broke me, an IT project spanning 12 time zones including the incompetent whose meetings in China standard time I had to attend following my 7:00 a.m. daily meeting at 10:00 p.m (my time) until we were done. I quit and started to walk everyday in the park and take my Risperidone and find calm in the poise of standing water birds, the susseration of the trees.

I did not miss my hat. 

Come June I found I could not reread Ulysses with attention and intention. I put up my Dylan Thomas and my John Berryman and all the non-Euclidian tangents from the mundane by which I once measured my days. I stopped posting to my blogs and I stopped writing poetry and read all of Terry Pratchett twice through. Calm. Fitter. Happier.

Where was my hat?

Two years unemployed driving Uber Lyft 50 or 60 hours a week and  religiously the pills until I found a day job again in IT testing software drone work really but I learned the business and became valuable and sort of prospered again.  Calm. Fitter. Happier. I picked up difficult books again and found them still hieroglyphic. 

I missed my hat. I’ve always worn a hat 

Señor Doctor retired. I’m back with the pill nurses at the big clinic and I asked if my wild misbehavior was behind me if I couldn’t begin to titrate off of the pill. I told her about my writing, and the things I could no longer enjoy reading anymore. 

I told her I needed, no demanded my hat back

When I was down to a dose that would not phase a lab rat I said I wanted to stop. That I was going to stop. That all the diagnostic manual behaviors had stopped. That I was ready to stop and to start again. I wanted my hat. She agreed.

I put on my hat, my many hats. 

The round top Italian rolled brim Milan, the Colombian straw fedora,  the black fur felt pork pie, the Basque beret I inherited from my father. One night I took down the Dream Songs from a shelf and read it through till morning, then wrote about it. The nightmare was over.  And then I wrote some more, the Blakean Angels not invasive but calm on my shoulder, encouraging.

I have always worn a hat. 

I’ve just learned to wear it better.