journal entry and photo: katalin pusztaszeri
"If you do not change direction you may end up where you are heading." Lao Tzu
Excerpt from my diary:
It is already mid-May... and I have been squatting over the very same problems I should have been pressed, released and flushed away for so long! But I could not.
Once I had read that the length of our intestines are equal with the width of a tennis court. Imagine how much food are you able to push throughout your alimentary channel daily. What you put in finally gets out...except all the goodness which remains in the system due to secretive and absorptive functions of your digestive tracts. It is a smart structure...your body relentlessly selections ...finally the waste, a reproducible mouthful of shit lands in the eggshell-colored gorge of your high-class ceramic toilet to finally disappear in the sleazy-stinky labyrinth...guts of the city.
I am not a scientist nor a shrink but constantly puzzling about why my mind doesn't work similarly to my digestive system. My brain...a strong imperishable! organ...the hard/core of my-self...why is she unable to filtering out all the devilish thoughts especially those in connection with painful memories or unpleasant situations and preserve solely the mild, foamy positive experiences. I wish that all of the past-mares would not systematically hammer good sentiments out of my skull during nights by waking me up from my superficial but relatively peaceful dreams by making my brain drastically shudder with heavy strikes of distorted realities. And also during chills on cheerful sunny days those sneaky throw-backs why are they able to creeping imperceptibly into the soft-squashy tissues of my head, wrapping around the two hemispheres squeezing out some unsavory bitter word-puddles...dipping and spreading across on clean-white paper.
I could use a massive mindset therapy...but how could I ask any favors from Balkan psycho witches or charlatans? Let just bring up some ghost-heads from the past... a great harvest of characters from all the lost years...who fortunately left me high and dry coping alone with my "non-existing pain".
The drinker: large cheekbones, puffer fish-face covered with alcoholic rosacea patches. She could not help...she did not push a try...even If I would pay her by hours...she advised to prescribe some anti-depressants for pain I had been already forced to try in hospital turned me a total paranoid lunatic for many days. Big nope for her.
The mosquito larvae: slender-built wobbly walking 70- something hospital doctor with attention deficit disorder, acting and speaking in hasty and creepy way twitching every 5 seconds...Ph.D. in sleep problems, professional in pain...she had not had a lightest idea on spinal cord issues even in the roots or qualities of pain...experimenting with drugs from the 1980's with side effects on white blood cells causing leukemia...ridiculed by her own colleagues even nurses or patient transporters there was no way to taking her seriously, her pills were landed on my mother's pocket.
The unusual juggler: Head of the Hypnosis Association...her majesty...elderly psychologist woman. She failed for the first time by not offering a cozy chair or sofa to stretch out my cramped stiffened limbs. She refused to put me into hypnosis by questioning her own skills in front of her own patient, but offered to show me some basic meditation techniques I had already discovered on Internet. Visiting her once more became total pointless.
The misogynist: 50-something male psychologist with crusty behavior...I felt penetrating sourness from the beginning...hated me as a patient, hated me as woman hated as a human being...I would bet half of his cases had ended up on a bridge or under the balcony...he forced me to pay his remuneration in advance, 10 minutes after questioned the purpose and the real reason of my visit. Busted!
The snow leopard: The most gruesome being ever. 50-something tall blonde on high- heels, ace in genetic sciences, psychiatry, neurology all in all a medical jackpot...outstanding attitude, overwhelming experience in the surface. She met me in a dilapidated experimental health center at the most squalid area of the city. After giving me 5 mg intravenous valium injection (an old-school benzodiazepine medication) without any further explanation causing me serious headache and later on moments in full blackout. She airily insisted to reform my view on pain and on sensation of pain by prescribing 4 types of anti- seizure and tranquilizer meds without noticing that I was being in half-comatose and far away from the capacity to exercising my patient rights. Needless to say that I have never asked her advice again.
By finishing to write down these highly negative stories I am realizing that there had been no lessons to learn at my side...from these really soulless dehumanizing incidents. I should not blame myself not excepting deals of old spooks from a collapsing outworn post-communist health care system should have been shattered for years.
Except the fact that I had been left totally alone with my problems.
about the writer and photographer: katalin pusztaszeri
Katalin Pusztaszeri is an art professional and photographer living in Budapest, Hungary. She started taking photographs in 2013, as a part of her recovery from a spinal cord surgery. In the beginning, she used photography as neuro-feedback to alter her attention from pain and anxiety. She realized that by means of creation, she has been able to release all of the suppressed and latent feelings she felt were clogged in her body throughout the years. At this point, creating pictures has become an urgent and utmost need to convey her thoughts and ideas toward the outside world.
