New Story (2/28)

I’m sorry—

I did dream that the koala bears were the size of grizzlies running towards overpopulated deer and the heterosexuals asked the dolls for fellatio and my father and mother both watched the movie with me at the cinema and for once knew each other better than I knew either of them and they held me in their knowledge of each other at the movie, to which I arrived late, and they were, for once, appropriately worried about me. Why was I late, they might wonder, appropriately.

New Story (2/24)

Yesterday I didn’t take Vyvanse for the first time in a month or so and I felt like a mop. I took a nap with B. and woke up when the sun was on its way out of town. B. was in a lot of pain, trying to call out of work, but figured out a way to work that felt possible for them, so when we got up I said bye and took the dogs to the park. The sky had some pink. I thought about the way Vangeline, in Butoh class, indicates “coming back to neutral,” fingers pointed inward towards her chest, stomach, crotch, back of the fingers and hands pushed together in a heart shape, drawing a line parallel to her spine in front of herself; I thought about the tandem (I don’t know how to spell this word or even really how to pronounce it, I tried to look it up and I asked B. and I even emailed the Butoh class, we’ll see what they say), which is the place 3 inches below the navel, which is a center, and a place we’ve practiced moving from. In Butoh on Thursday I finally found it, I think. We did an exercise of flinging the arms like the car wash guys, trying to move from this center, and coming back to neutral each time before we did it again. Through flinging I discovered that center, and when I was walking, sleepily, pink sky, mind wandering to mean places (I was feeling anxious about the weekend, about being a good friend, there were several readings I wanted to go to later that night, I didn’t know how to communicate about whether or not I would have enough energy to go to either, let alone both, had a haunting option to stay home), I thought about returning to this center, to this neutral, and I wonder if this is the closest I’ve felt to having a self. 

M. sent me an essay this week that I’ve been thinking about a lot, “The Hole of Ordinary Psychosis” In it, they write:

I have not been given the violent gift of a conflictual home in language, and so words have not found a home in me. Thus, I do not feel strong personal possession or affiliation with the words that I say or the concepts, people, places, or things they represent because I have not been positioned within or through them. I am always speaking at a remove because the ‘I’ from which I am meant to speak is not, has not been, cannot be, securely positioned. Words float around me, conditioning and reflecting my floating. This experience is, unsurprisingly, difficult to describe: a suspended incoherence, a presence marked only by absence, a distanced but sensing nonbeing, an atmospheric hovering or sudden humidity. Not outside of language—lost in it—but not held.

M. sent me this essay because it reminded her of a piece of writing I’d done about holes for her class in 2015, which was called Reworking the Subject. My subject was holes. The class emphasized returning, again and again, to a subject. There was some discussion of what subjectivity meant, and also what objectivity meant, and I remember these concepts being very difficult for me to grasp. They still are. 

I did end up going to both readings last night, and I really enjoyed both of them. Most of the poems at the second reading, Gemini Moon theme (maybe part of the reason I was keen on going to this is because I share this placement), were somewhat about sex, or they were sexy, or I knew that the writers wrote about sex elsewhere. N. hadn’t been sure whether they would make it either, we’d both had covid the week before and we’re both sometimes (often) wrapped in fatigue blankie, but when I got to Woodbine they were sitting on the rug. Megan Milks was the first full reader I heard, and I was happy I didn’t miss them; I’d seen them on a panel called Bad Boundaries at &Now in 2015 in L.A. that I really liked, and maybe again at AWP or something? The essay they read was great, in the form of Möbius strip, (they described how it was on the page, but I’d like to see for myself), a form stolen from Samuel Delany, who had also been their teacher, and part of the essay was about his pedagogy, or pedagogy in general, and moments in class when no one speaks, and whose fault is it, and this is all stuff I like to think about, because I like being in class, and speaking, not speaking, and also now I teach, and what questions do I ask, how do I encourage people to talk, is this even what I should be doing, etc., so cool to hear some other thinking about this. Then someone named Kyle Carrero Lopez read, one poem about a fancy fire island party with an infinity pool. After that, some poems by the organizers, Sloane Holzer and Zefyr Lisowski, who share a birthday and a moon placement and are both white transsexual women; Zefyr read about heterosexuality, wind in the hair with her girlfriend on the road, and Sloane read about a Redwoods rave, peeing on trees 4 times one’s age, and then they read a sort of list poem they wrote together, Sloane was on a plane, their sameness and differences, and they hugged long at the end. Afterwards I told N. that I like it when people write about complex sex lives. They asked why and I think I said because I like to know that people live very differently than me, but I don’t think this is what I meant, and I don’t think I meant what I said, exactly.  I don’t know if I care about sex lives, but I’m reminded of writing by Eileen Myles that I like, and I think what I like is that these people live with what seems like a self, and they do it in a way that’s interesting to me. They interact with others, they try to be good or bad, they have sex, and they can narrate it in a way that I find exciting. How do I fit into that type of narration, or how can I make one for myself? N. mentioned they’d seen I’d started a blog. I asked them if they’d had a blog, and we talked about internet presence. Theirs has a long history. I haven’t ever really had much of one, I told them, and I wondered aloud about whether this is related to my feeling of having no self, or just identifying more with this person who wrote “The Hole of Ordinary Psychosis,” that a center as a hole is more relatable—I’ve always been so astonished by people who can have an internet presence, this type of alias, or alibi?, or being witnessed this way. It’s not exactly that I’m shy, why I don’t have one—it’s just…I have no idea how to do it. 

In Butoh on Thursday we did a partner exercise. B. and I were partners this time. We were to choose one person to lead. That person would close their eyes, and the other would mirror them; both were to move from the center, and the person following was to focus on the pelvis, rather than the outer limbs. We switched roles, and then we did an improvisation, and Vangeline asked us to pretend like someone was watching us—to follow our centers in our minds, as if from outside of ourselves. In the moment in the park when I remembered to go back to my center, I also imagined that I was watching myself. I thought, “I am in the park. The sun is going down. I just took a nap.” Someone was watching me, so there was a me. 

With N. I feel like a child sometimes, that I can sort of try to say things, and maybe I amuse them, but there is something impenetrable about them, and I feel embarrassed about not having a self, or only having a baby self. Telling them about this feeling made me feel like they knew me a little better though, reminded me that they’re interested anyway. I wonder if I can’t see them because they can’t see me, but I know we’re trying to see each other, and that’s special. I feel pretty sure that they have a self, but feel like they’re open to the option that some people might not have one, too, which I don’t think many people who have selves are. We’re both polyamorous, in different ways maybe, somehow I feel like that’s relevant.

New Story (2/21)

New Story: I’ve gone back and forth with a bit of embarrassment about this blog. I realized that in order to follow the conventions of a blog, I should have the newest entry at the top. This changes things, but I like how it changes them, and I want to go with this change. 

Students in the class I’m teaching think the main text we’re reading together is snobby. The text is Does Writing Have a Future? by Vilém Flusser. I don’t know what to do with this information. Maybe nothing? 

2/19

I did end up doing that, I think I wrote her a pretty nice letter. There were a few days this week where I thought, “I’m not depressed.” Then on Saturday, I sort of got the blues, or I got grumpy. But I’m thinking that this might be distinct from depression. I’m trying it on. I don’t know, I guess I did feel briefly suicidal this morning when I couldn’t sleep. That usually happens when I’m having insomnia. Well, maybe I wasn’t depressed for a few days, and that’s awesome.. Maybe that can happen again sometime. 

Earlier I was trééying to write in my journal, and then U.. texted me, and so we texted back and forth for about 20 minutes. Earlier in this writing, I mentioned a friend that I hadn’t called for a while but then I made the leap and called them, that was U. . . . And we ended up talking, a few days ago, and the phone call was good. So we were texting a bit today, when I was trying to write in my journal, and it felt fun. They’re in Florida with S., who is R.’s daughter, of course. I don’t know, maybe you don’t know R. or her daughter. As if you are anybody. Nobody is reading this, at least not right now. OK, I will make a blog. 

Or actually maybe I’ll just post the link to this Google Doc on my instagram? I don’t really have that many instagram followers, but maybe there are some people there who would like to read this. That might feel good.

I’ve been thinking about why I do things lately. What I allow myself to do. Partly it came up because me and B. spiraled into a familiar conflict yesterday, and they said they are afraid they are holding me back, or we are holding each other back, and I don’t immediately feel this is true. But this morning I was thinking would I be in New York if it weren’t for them. And this morning I was thinking no, but then later on in the day I was thinking yes. I like New York. 

So it does feel different when I think about putting it out in a place where people could actually read it. I changed all the names to just the first letter, classy. I am reading Jackie Wang now, and I feel like this is nothing like it, but I do love this book. 

2/12

(I can’t remember when I wrote this part so I’m just gonna say….2/12?)

I just reread the part about how I read the fireman line from C. Seltman, and then I thought of the story about my fireman story, and I thought, oh, the person that made that connection (me) is like the gross person at the party who is like, oh you have a sister, I have a sister too, and then tells a boring story about sisters. Gosh, I’m so mean to myself. But the point is, right now, I don’t feel like it is a boring story! Fire is pretty significant, and especially houses on fire, and I even want to go so far as to tell you another story about a house fire, and it is this: once, when I was living in Olympia at the black house on the water that in a fleeting childhood memory was painted white, I fell asleep with my lamp on and a piece of fabric over the lamp, and the fabric caught fire, and then the stained glass window caught on fire, and so did my guitar, and I ran down the stairs with a burning guitar to awaken my housemates. We brought the dog outside when the firefighters went in to put out the fire, but we forgot the new kitten, so someone ran back to get the kitten. We had blankets that the firefighters gave us, made of shiny silver plasticky-feeling stuff. The fire was put out, and a new regular window replaced the stained glass window. I know the people who still live there now, but they’re getting evicted in April maybe. Also, my good friend just started dating one of the people who live there now, at Bad City, that’s what the black house was named when I lived there and it still is named that, and though I didn’t like the name at the time, I am so grateful that we gave it a name and that it stuck, now I don’t care that I didn’t like the name back then, even though it felt sad because I had a chance to shape the name but I just swallowed my tongue, sometimes that’s all names need, is time. But not always, don’t take that as me saying that names always get better with time, they don’t, bad things can happen too, and they did, at that house, but also good things happened, and I would say overall more good than bad, so maybe that’s why I’m ok to neutral about the name. 

I was having some ideas about where to publish this. I could do a blog. Maybe I’m excited about that because there’s a book that’s made of blog posts, I think? that a few friends have recommended I read, and one friend even got it for me for my birthday, so I’m pretty excited about it, but I think it’s made of tumblr blog posts, and before I read it I feel like I want to start that. I don’t know why I feel this impulse now, like I have to start writing things before I read or hear about other people writing things that are similar to what I want to write about, because I’m afraid that too much self doubt will overtake me and I won’t want to write if I read what they wrote first, and maybe it’s just because I’m trying to make things, because making things makes me feel good, (even though that’s not always true, but right now it is, and is that because I’m not depressed), and I understand the conditions under which I might make things more easily, which is to make them when I think to, and not to think, I want to write, let me read this new book, but in fact to think, I want to write, so to then write, and maintain my curiosity about the book, perhaps how similar or different it is or might be to how I’m writing right now. Not sure. The friend, n., who recommended I read the book, which is Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun by Jackie Wang, they really recommended it, and I really trust them. Just thinking about this recommendation gives me chills, because I think there is some sort of lightning bolt from me to them, or something. Wouldn’t that be cool? If like part of them was actually made of the same rock that got lightning bolted like 5 frillion years ago, and that’s why it feels like things click a little when we talk? And also what does it mean that I really trust them…I guess it just means, I feel like there is a 0% chance that they will be wrong when they recommend something to me. And going into it with that confidence certainly helps, but where did I get the confidence to begin with? Who knows………..

There is the question of where to put this though. But like the other times where I start asking something somewhere where I’m not actually going to get an answer, I feel like I should ask this question somewhere else. But where? I’ve started writing things like this before, and in my mind I am thinking, like, “This is a book,” but that makes me feel really terrible like, why would this be a book? What makes me think this rambling should be a book? But I guess it is a book, so suck it. Maybe I’ll put it with the other bit of book that I wrote that I feel like could make sense with this bit. Right now that one is called something like, “character, loneliness, auto-fiction,” or at least those are what I search in the google drive folder to get to the document. 

Funny how much search terms come up. Actually it came up today when someone called me responding to a call I made on Saturday about getting into psychoanalysis with someone who is training to be a psychoanalyst so that I can afford it. Otherwise I couldn’t afford it. And it sounds like this place might take me in for an intake, which is cool! There was that whole other story about the psychoanalyst before that I told you about (NOTE: insert story about E., which I believe I already wrote). It was you who I was telling that to! Isn’t that fancy. Anyway, on the phone with the scheduling person from the Center for Psychoanalysis or whatever, they asked me how I heard of the place, and I said, “Well, I searched on the internet for it, I think I searched something like low-cost psychoanalysis or psychoanalysis training low-cost appointments or something,” and what I’m realizing now is that I should have said that I find a list of resources on some other psychoanalysts website, and this was one of them. That probably would have been more helpful for them, so they knew there was a list of trackable resources on some good psychoanalyst’s website for people like me who want to do psychoanalysis but don’t have much money. But I don’t know who that was and I would have had to go looking for it, which neither of us probably really wanted to do, so I didn’t, and I think he just shorthanded my answer to “Google,” which was a bit disappointing, because I thought the search-terms might be helpful for them on their end. 

That was actually a funny situation when I got that phone call, because I was already on the phone with my girlfriend, we were having some intermittent cut-outs which I seem to have more and more often these days, is that just me? It seems like service should be good but it’s not, and we’re never sure if it’s my end or hers, but it doesn’t just happen with my girlfriend it happens with loads of people, at different times. When I got the call on the other line I asked if I could call her back, which she agreed to, and I answered and had that promising conversation with the person from the Center for Psychoanalysis, during which time the doorbell rang a few times, and I buzzed them in but they didn’t seem to be coming in, and when there is someone at the door or the doorbell is buzzing the dogs bark usually, so they were barking, and then when that kept happening B. went out to see what was going on, and it seemed like some people with hardhats were trying to get to a utility pole in the back of the building, they were trying to reach the super but couldn't read the phone number on the sheet that’s supposed to have the super’s phone number on it. So B. came back in to retrieve the super’s phone number for the hardhat people, and then went out to give it to them and came back in, pretty shortly they buzzed again, and B. went out, and they said the super said they’d have to get in through our apartment, so we let them in. Before they came in B. mentioned to me that one of them had a septum piercing, which made me feel more comfortable about being in my PJs and also about welcoming new people into our home. I was still on the phone but then the call ended. When the guys were out in the yard I tried to call M. back but it went straight to voicemail. The hardhat people were pretty graceful, didn’t knock anything over in our apartment despite having lots of tools and stuff hanging off of them. And they were grateful too, grateful and graceful, and they wished us a nice week.

It feels really important to have people wish me a nice week. Or I guess I’m just taking these sorts of speech acts more seriously these days. In writing is even crazier. L. & E.. E., who I mentioned before because she was with me in Rosarito with the house fire, she and her mom L. came to NYC to see an off-broadway show that would soon be running its course, and they stayed with me and B.. That happened to be right on the same weekend that we were moving to a new apartment, the apartment we’re in now, and L., E.’s mom, wrote us a letter to the new apartment to thank us. It was such a nice letter, and though she didn’t put the apartment number on the envelope, it came to us anyway, and it was beautifully written, and it said that we were good hosts and that I was graceful under pressure and that she was sure we would have a cozy new place too, and that just meant the world to me. I can’t believe it. Partly it is so meaningful because she is a mother of my friend, and my mother doesn’t really write much on cards, so it’s nice to just hear more language describing the space in between me and a person who is a mom even if it’s not my mom, but also because it boosted my confidence about the new place. It made me feel sure that we made a good choice to move despite how much work it was and all that. It made me excited to write letters to friends. Actually last night I said I would write to my friend M. and then I haven’t yet, so maybe I should do that now. 

New Story: The Fireman Rushed and Sprayed Their Water On It (2/5)

 When I get off the train, and I am deciding which hole to come out of the ground from, I think of East (being the direction I don’t want to go) and that makes me think of El Cajon Boulevard, because El Cajon, the city, is East of San Diego, and El Cajon Blvd is on the Eastside of San Diego. The boulevard spans a handful of neighborhoods, including the one I lived in for a year, City Heights.  El Cajon makes me think of one of my friends who still lives in City Heights, in the same house I used to live in,  so I call them up as I’m walking out of the subway in Brooklyn, but no ringing happens, and it lasts for a while like that where the call still says it’s happening on my screen but there’s no ringing, and then there’s a beep, no answering machine message just the beep, so I leave a message, but I’m not sure they’ll get it. 

Then when I’m reading on the couch later, I don’t even know what line it is that I’m reading, but I think of something. Oh yes! (I looked for the line). It is “All   / the fireman rushed and sprayed their water on it and whatever other extinguishing chemicals they use.” (That’s from a book called Palimpsest: Down by C. Seltman that I found at Big Reuse, which is the store down the street from my apartment (20 minute walk) I like to go to. C. Seltman was in a German Comparative Literature class with me about 10 years ago, and I liked their discussion forum posts so I think maybe I’ll like the book, and I do like the book.) What it reminds me of, this line—it’s silly, because it just has to do with maybe the word “fireman” and maybe “rushed and sprayed their water on it and whatever other extinguishing chemicals they use”—it reminds me of when I was with my friends in Rosarito,  and a house down the street from the apartment we were staying in was on fire, and at first there were just neighbors, trying to reach their hoses over to the burning house, and I tried to fill up the trash can and wobble it over but then there were firemen, and we watched as they put out the fire for a while. The family had gone on vacation. They’d left their dogs, I think? But I think they were OK, the dogs. We were about ½ block from the Ocean, the big one, there. There are a few things to say about that trip. Do you know my friends E., C., and V.? 

It’s crazy that I’m wanting to tell you things. Usually I don’t want to, but I don’t want to break the spell by talking too much about when I don’t want to tell you things.  About the friend who I called earlier, it’s not no big deal that I called them. We had a really close relationship but it was kind of intense and since I moved we haven’t talked very much. I’ve felt pretty sad and bad about it. But I made the plunge and called them. Is it rude for me to be talking about that here? Like maybe I should try to go and make sure they get the voicemail by, like, emailing them and/or texting them to make sure that they know. OK I just emailed them. Coast is clear.

Maybe I can talk about how I don’t want to talk a lot of the time, and that’s because I’m really depressed a lot of the time, and that changes the way that I engage with myself, and with my memory. I still feel like, WTF, I can’t remember things, and I’m so silly, the way my brain works and who has patience for it, and when I’m talking I’m still overly self-aware, but at least I’m talking. But maybe that’s not a net good thing? But do I have to believe it is because I’m a person who needs to keep living? Or “gets to” keep living. But really, I do get to keep living! I talked to people about a few things that were coming to mind at the party we had yesterday—me and B., at our new apartment. It was a houseworming/birthday party for me and S., and it was really casual. B. made a little invitation that we sent to people, it had pictures of me and S. on it. At the party, I talked, and I also listened, but I think I was more on the talking spectrum, and it felt good. When I say stuff like that, like “I was more on the talking spectrum,” I feel like an asshole, but I can’t tell if I feel that way because I was more on the talking spectrum, or because I said that. There really is a politics to who talks and who doesn’t talk, I think, but somehow I also feel like there is something else that determines who talks, not politics, or at least I have no idea why I talk when I do and why I don’t when I don’t, except for what I said earlier, I guess, depression. But depression, though it can be helpful sometimes as an idea, is kind of an intractable one a lot of the time. I guess it’s good and I’m using it now because I’m not as depressed as usual, and that’s because (perhaps, or at least partly) because I’m taking a new antidepressant. My psychiatrist, who I like this time around, said, “Well, I understand that you are doing OK or you have been worse, but what if you could be doing better than ever?” I thought that was a really cool thing for him to say. 

Sometimes I feel like talking and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I’m good at it and sometimes I’m not. At school where I teach, I feel really bad at talking a lot of the time. It becomes really clear when I’m trying to explain an assignment or even just an exercise, trying to organize groups of people into what feel like simple configurations to me, but then when I say the configurations  aloud it doesn’t really seem to make sense to the students, or at least I worry that it doesn’t, and I think the worrying doesn’t help me make sense. It makes me seem less confident, and people have a problem with that sometimes. 

Ugh, that makes me remember that I’m in this Butoh class that’s put on by Fractal University, which is kind of like a low-cost low-barrier peer-taught school thingy. There have been 2 classes, and actually that class is in Gowanus too, about a 20 minute walk away. I like the Butoh part, but there has been a discussion part afterward that I don’t like that much, and I talked to a few people about it, and said I was going to email the facilitators about it, but I didn’t get to emailing them yet, and then when I got home from work today, B. said they emailed the facilitators, and there was a response but they would tell me about it later, and I’m thinking about whether I want to email also and if I should wait until B. talks to me, but I think maybe I shouldn’t wait. I’ve tried to suss out my thoughts about what I want to  say with several people, but I think I’m hinging on this question: do I want to say that I just don’t want to participate in the discussion part, or should I ask for ways to make the discussion part better for me? OK, I just emailed and I said I might not want to do the discussion part but I’m open to ideas.

I usually like talking in class, or at least I do most of the time when I’m a student (not in the Butoh discussion, which is the only place where I’m a student right now). Class usually feels like a safe and contained space. Parties often don’t, because they often don’t have clear start and end times. 

Sometimes I think something could shift in my brain and I could like telling stories again. Maybe that has happened. Good riddance!