Abstract: Annual Symposium of the Metacognitive Talk Therapy Apologists Association

Diseases of Denial and Recognition

Hypochondria is not a disease that tells you that you don't have it; it's a disease that tells you that you do have it, so if you're a hypochondriac and you think you have another disease that does tell you that you don't have it, does that mean you do have it or does it mean you don't have it, and how would you know in the first place whether you were really a hypochondriac because a real hypochondriac would always say yes, of course, I have that too, so you can't take their word for it; but can I take your word for it if you say no, I'm not a hypochondriac, even though to me you might seem like one? How is it possible for a true hypochondriac to even contract a disease of denial much less deny it in a chronic fashion? Would the hypochondriac not nurse a gnawing suspicion that yes, maybe I am a hypochondriac, and experience a not-unpleasant thrill of horror at the thought? Then how is the true deny-or of a disease of denial to truly measure their pathological burden if they are self-diagnosed with a disease of pathological recognition, an obsessive-compulsive hyper-vigilance, an error in the ranking and evaluation of signs and symbols? Are the paradoxes not tied in a knot when the sufferer is convinced that no recovery is possible without self-diagnosis and the power of honesty, reflection, and faith?


Dr. Donna Thong
Surgery Generalist
(Relicensure Imminent)
"Check out my back patio!"

4 classifications

Hey Sylvia

Spotted you out in the CCC parking lot this afternoon snapping clouds with your long-ass lenses and your convertible looking cool.

Your story: world is divided into following classifications: annoying, agitating, exasperating, and upsetting.

Yet there you were maybe grooving or maybe gathering evidence.

And then those of us who survived
realizing nevertheless how sluttily
chilling in the dez on mandated recreate

Remainder of world gaydom reeling
but seasonally flooding the pool
may they take home some flavor

of days when men roamed live
like it was life's last laugh
every night a glowing surfeit

alcoholic firebrand drumkits
there was this was a counterculture
so many soft-cotton swaddled dicks

everyone a similar golden color
workers were crowning paramount
unlimited beer and cigarettes

now freeze dried forever, a residual
fanciness, snide or glassy earnest,
not flannel or denim in that sense.


Love, Tom

I Sit and Drink before a Screen

Rock rolling, in packs, against effigies, has been preserved.
Some flakes even stream in hoopties to communal slurp holes,
risk getting picked off by the sensation grid or spoiling a life.
Gods of atroposis can bareback their amygdalas and view.

Once you buy the razor wires for yr pinfold, the bolts and screws
close automotively, as at sunset for grain bank doors.
Yr consciousness and shiny coins are disbursed in the heavens.
All the moisture you can carry is your hydroelectric insurance.

Donna
"For Illyn"

journal of a house arrest, day 106

at least down at central lockup you had yr hell is other peoples;
a pretty prison soltera, even with dogs, may become agorapathic.
she sits in the sand with the bitches guarding, hoping, dozing.
her hair pushes through the squares of chain link fencing.
Donna, you are beautiful, but look at you:
a free tumbleweed with caramel tinge, mashed in a blockade.
whooda known you'd steadily become a morbid-ideating blob?

Phyllis, embedded

Atroposis

there was safety in my temple;
i was at a Command Center.

now i rely on the public oracle
dispenser. i experience Atroposis.

Th' Sisters know you've got it comin'.
You sit back and let them choose it

while you live in so many Temp-
oral Bodies. handwriting analysis

proves how easily Beggars are
turned to thieves.

Tom