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.