Balzac Institute

I'm skipping huge gaps in my personal story to leap from that fateful day when I bound my father to a cactus cross, for now I intend to describe, in brief, the approach to good mental and physical health we take at the Balzac Institute for Partial Recovery. Not that I'll deprive my good readers of the ripping and inspiring yarn that is my life, but I still must take a break from mining my past right now. I don't like the term "post-traumatic stress disorder," preferring to call it "serenopause," but I've had a bit of a wilding relapse. Whiski Rae could smell the musk rising off me like stink waves in a cartoon. Also, she rose early one day and caught me cooking up a mess of chimpmunks, snakes and wild parsnips for breakfast. She's set me straight by taking me to a performance of Wagner's "The Ring Cycle," as massive doses of human culture, even that favored by the Nazis, have a civilizing effect on me.

So, to the clinic. The Balzac Institute for Partial Recovery is now in its eleventh year of existence. We occupy a large Victorian mansion we've refurbished extensively, and can accomodate a maximum of fifteen patients at a time. Our grounds are expansive and magnificent, such as you might find in England at a fine manor house, and are renowned for their healing topiary labyrinth, featuring such vegetative sculptures as Sigmund Freud, Catherine the Great, John the Baptist, Secretariat, James Monroe, my coyote mother, Ki, Virginia Dare, Calvin and Hobbes, Marge Simpson, Soren Kirkegaard and Shamu the Killer whale. At one time I used my own teeth to trim and shape the shrubs, teeth strengthed by years of cracking bones out on the prairie. This activity soothed me, too, and drew out my ferality, not to the extent it consumed me, but instead so that I could examine and understand my wild side using my powerful (I am told) intellect. Eventually I didn't need to sculpt the topiary myself, turning it over to our capable groundskeeper, Durwood Del Monte Shamrock, younger brother to my beautiful wife, Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD, and a recovering arsonist and stamp counterfeiter who has abandoned youthful sociopathy for the modest benefits of honest work and a clean conscience. The ankle bracelet is simply a precaution. Same with the GPS unit implanted in his belly. I truly believe he has turned the corner, or is preparing to, or is at least considering it. Really.

Our program revolves around the undeniable assertion that nobody is ever completely well or, for that matter, absolutely unwell. We firmly believe that nudging people from the terrible to the okay is not only doable but noble, and that it respects the obvious fact that suffering is man, and man, suffering, and fuck all the rest. Those seeking perfection or absolute succour won't find the Balzac Institute to their liking, for we regard the very quest for a state devoid of misery as being supremely neurotic. If, however, you wish to feel just a bit better, and are fine with minor improvements, we're the place for you.

The Balzac Institute's therapeutic approach is best conceptualized as "targeted eclecticism," a term less oxymoronic than you might think at first blush. For in our opinion at BI, as we refer to ourselves, "eclectic" doesn't mean "everything," while "targeted" can be a shotgun blast to the body at 25 metres, and not just the sniper's desired "pink mist" from five blocks away.

Patients at BI stay for fifty-nine days irrespective of their diagnosis and condition, a duration picked because it approximates the average coyote gestational period. The program is assertively but not exclusively "natural," not in the nuts and berries, herbs and minerals sense, but out of homage to the Great World Beyond, or GBW, a locution which refers, broadly, to what used to be called Mother Nature, until that term fell to the merciless scythes of the political correctionists. Below lies a brief description of the program's schedule:

Week 1: First payment due. Diagnostic testing. Fasting. Three mile run. Safety swim. Digging classes. Stalking and seizing. Rolling in dead things. Hiding. Improving the senses. Yipping and yowling. Hide chewing. Dance therapy.

Week 2: Medication wash-out. Seventy-two hour marathon psychoanalytic psychotherapy. Cathexis and catharsis convocation. Psychoneuroendocrinological probing. Phrenology 101. Your rectum and you: motility exercises. More dance therapy.

Week 3: Improving the senses II. How to kill chipmunks and rabbits. The perils of traffic. Embracing varminthood. Mating rituals. Vegetables: who needs them? Fifteen mile run. Your burrow your home.

Week 4: Second and final payment due. How to have skin like a baby's ass: Beauty seminar by Whiski Rae Shamrock, MD, and Gator Ethel Thibodeaux. Yoga till you drop. Mindlessness training.

Week 5: The wind, the rain, the stars. Seventy-two hour electroconvulsive therapy session. Rest.

Week 6: Screw like a muskrat, run like a moose: discovering the joys of ferality. The love poems of Jack London, Ogden Nash and Rumi. Hypnotherapy. Dental implantations: how to make your canines really growl. Optional fang installations.

Week 7: Sharing your tale of personal growth. Seventy-two hour medication infusion session. Managing side effects: living with a fat ass and learning how to laugh. Voluntary scullery opportunities.

Week 8: Group mural therapy. The joys of psychiatric philanthropy. Wrapping it up.

Days 57, 58 and 59: Form signing session. Thirty-six mile swim. Group portrait. Go the hell home.

Drop me a line if you think this program might interest you or a loved one. References available. First thirty minutes free. Total cost $39,999.99, excluding transportation, tips and optional institutional gifting.

See you later.

Dusty Balzac, MD