Symbols and Signs

Russian immigrant parents attempt to visit their troubled son in a mental hospital.

"He excludes real people from the conspiracy, because he considers himself to be so much more intelligent than other men. Phenomenal nature shadows him wherever he goes. Clouds in the staring sky transmit to each other, by means of slow signs, incredibly detailed information regarding him. His in- most thoughts are discussed at nightfall, in manual alphabet, by darkly gesticulating trees. Pebbles or stains or sun flecks form patterns representing, in some awful way, messages that he must intercept. Everything is a cipher and of everything he is the theme."

The Pill Becomes God

A brother visits his sister in a mental institution after an unspoken incident.

"His sister talks about how they are staring at her. How she thinks the fat man in the purple shirt is going to rape her, though she won’t tell Greg if he works there or if he’s a fellow patient. She talks about starving and dying and figuring out how she can get out and sue the place into the ground. He tries to listen, he tries to ask questions, but after fifteen minutes he smiles and nods at her and tries to ignore listening to anything she’s saying. He looks out of the doorway when she looks away from him, and he wonders how many of the people who walk past are just as confused as she is. He imagines that everyone in the common area is just as lost, all of them imagining everyone else is trying something."

24 Ladies Resting

A social and historical look at a women's sanatorium.

"What about the exercise path keeps the women moving together. They move toward the birds and the birds disperse. A woman drops a handful of raisins from breakfast and the birds converge for the raisins but only until the raisins are gone. The birds will disperse again. They will fly down chimneys and into cars. The shriveled fruits cannot hold their attention for much longer now. They have no exercise path like the women have. The exercise path keeps the women moving together each morning and evening, as if they will never disperse. The women entwine their wet hands."