David, a poet, has a bi-polar condition that runs manic with intense crashes. This is what happens in chapter 7. What he’d thought was a brilliant student engagement project worthy of an award now seems puffed up and narcissistic. Each perception, though opposite, seems realistic in its time, and now that he sees himself as a pompous fool, the evidence stacks up everywhere he turns.

The project, a re-enactment of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, gave me the opportunity to introduce a few things: a philosophical cave, probably the most famous metaphorical cave, the Doors (“Who Do You Love?”), and mental illness. Plato’s cave, with its shadows that people are unable to see beyond, is the perfect cave for David. The re-enactment he comes up with is rather clever, showing his creativity and gift as a teacher. He is also intelligent and able to see shadows and projections and “what’s real.”

Bi-polar, as I understand, is a condition with wide ranging effects, some mild and some severe, including hallucinatory effects that can be confused with schizophrenia. David’s auditory hallucinations are of this sort. His sensitivity to sound, hearing voices in his empty house and later in his office, go along with his love of words and sounds, poetry. But his books, stacked and leaning in a corner, seem accusatory.

In his story, you see him with Meredith, and throughout Letters from the Karst, their love story is woven. You find out that they met at a Doors concert, and the phrase “who do you love” becomes an inside joke for them, a kind of needle and thread that stitches up their experience, from the beginning, dancing in the aisles at the concert, to today, when Meredith is the only one who understands and can help.

David’s office is in Cherry Hall on WKU’s campus, where my office was. It’s the best building on campus, with its marble stairs, lovely wood, even a bell tower, from which the carillon bells peal popular songs like “My Old Kentucky Home” or “Que Sera Sera.”

Here’s David listening to the sounds of Cherry Hall:

He’s just tired, hearing things. The college chimes mark the passing of another hour. Across the hall, a class erupts in laughter. The sounds in Cherry Hall layer like hands of children trying to determine who will go first, each moving a hand from the bottom of the pile and slapping it on top, endlessly climbing. Footsteps from the floor above, fainter ones from the third floor, and on the roof the flapping wings of pigeons, sighs of professors who have died. The aging furnace ticks beneath the window, marking the seconds. Let it blow. But it only sighs as it shuts off.

Mental illness runs in my family—in all families—for instance, my lovely brother David who was schizophrenic and wrote thousands of pages of religious poetry in all-caps. A cousin of my mother was bi-polar and had to be looked after as she got older. An artist, she had a high sweet voice, which I remember just as I can see her looking over at me, a little like a bird, rocking from foot to foot. My mother thought her a gifted poet and always treated her with respect and affection.

So, that’s David’s story, a hard one to write. I hope I’ve done him justice.

You can purchase Letters from the Karst at your local bookstore or on amazon, here.