Photo by Reg Graham
“[…] The six weeks I spent at Seacliff Hospital in a world I’d never known among people whose existences I never thought possible, became for me a concentrated course in the horrors of insanity and the dwelling-place of those judged insane, separating me for ever from the former acceptable realities and assurances of everyday life. From my first moment there I knew that I could not turn back to my usual life or forget what I saw at Seacliff. I felt as if my life were overturned by this sudden division of people into “ordinary” people in the street, and these “secret” people whom few had seen or talked to but whom many spoke of with derision, laughter, fear.
I saw people with the eyes of hurricanes surrounded here by whirling unseen and unheard commotion contrasting strangely with the stillness.”
Dal libro: Un angelo alla mia tavola
di Janet Frame
(Edizioni Neri Pozza, traduzione: Lidia Conetti Zazo)
Dedicated to Janet Frame, the author of An Angel At My Table.
To Jane Campion and to the homonymous movie adapted from Janet Frame’s novel.
Dedicated to all the insane people in the San Lazzaro mental hospital, Reggio Emilia.
Dedicated to Teresa.
And to all the insane angels of the past, the present, the future.
Misunderstood. Silenced. Locked up.
Or just ignored.