Madness, meditation, and madness.

She stops and nods at some of the patients come to stand around and stare out of eyes all red and puffy with sleep. She nods once to each. Precise, automatic gesture. Her face is smooth, calculated, and precision-made, like an expensive baby doll, skin like flesh-coloured enamel, blend of white and cream and baby-blue eyes, small nose, pink little nostrils – everything working together except the colour on her lips and fingernails, and the size of her bosom. A mistake was made somehow in manufacturing, putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work, and you can see how bitter she is about it.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, P11 copyright © Ken Kesey

We are all constructs of our environment and upbringing. Murphy got caught up in a mental institution whilst some of us just get trapped in the other…