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!