The Fruit Hangs Heavy On The Vine

One of the things
I learned
in my maddest years
was that one could be
in a room, with walls
and barred windows
and locks on the doors,
surrounded by other
crazy people,
or even stuffed into
an isolation cell
all alone,
but that really wasn't
the room one was
in at all.
The real room
that one occupied
was constructed by memory,
by relationships, by events,
by all sorts of unseen forces.
Sometimes delusions. Sometimes hallucinations. Sometimes desires.
Sometimes dreams and hopes, or ambitions. Sometimes anger.
That was what was important:
to always recognize where the real walls were.
--John Katzenbach
The Madman's Tale

A.J. Lee: Here in California