Ago

I saw myself close to the edge when I was twenty-two. There was a period of at least two years where I woke up and did not feel happy. I wasn't aware of it though. The last time I had felt happy was too far away to use as a point of reference. It was just a state, miserable, yet unaware. Dreams were more vivid, filled with loaded guns, but harmless ones. I was my own worst enemy, and then there was him, writing about German things, somewhere in the woods.

The motions were set for me to go through. I didn't set them, I don't think, at least not directly.

They were there. Three months out of college, I slept in a warm bed in Chicago, took a bus numbered 35 to a school for Mexican-American children, taught them about geometrical shapes and shading and famous painters, danced with them, and once, at least, sat with them and told them I was very, very sad.

Sometimes, in Chicago, I sat up in the morning and remembered my thirteen year old self in a red velvet tank top sitting on Jeremy's bed. He had a truck, and smoked pot at 9am. That was a big deal to me. He didn't go to school ever. Me either (I think I told my student's that too). But somehow my statistical outcomes were a bit more acceptable then Jeremy's, who is now more than likely strung out on one organic, and two non-organics. I guess. I think even then I had the urge to run out into the forest and engage in voluntary poverty and hack at my own skin. Or pull the triggers of cotton filled guns. Now it's not so voluntary. It's part of the routine.

Now twenty-three, in New York City, I am sleeping on an air mattress in the Brooklyn apartment of a couple. One from Venezuela, one form Japan. Neither of them speak very good English, and so I am constantly impressed by their level of physical communication. Its almost like a song, you know? He touches her, she laughs, pulls away, he pulls more in, they both smile. In between they ask me questions about what certain words me. "What are these?" .....Lungs, I say. We sit on the floor on pillows and eat Japanese soup, hummus, and South American candy. I smell both countries in the room, and then my own country. The roof above us is vast, I want to sleep up there, but they tell me the super will get mad. I think about Jeremy's bed. I wonder if this girl ever wore red velvet in Japan, or if this man ever wanted to pull the trigger.

I then think about the woods, and him, building German things, speaking German things, dancing German things, in his American accent. North American accent. United States accent. Eastern United States accent. Rhode Island accent. Cranston accent. I didn't know him at thirteen. I wonder if he knew me, wore red velvet, wanted to pull the trigger, missed me. Ago. So long ago.

I was twenty-one when he spoke German to me.