And not all in a bad way.
Commuters
Edward Hirsch
It’s that vague feeling of panic
That sweeps over you
Stepping out of the #7 train
At dusk, thinking, This isn’t me
Crossing a platform with the other
Commuters in the sad half-light
Of evening, that must be
Someone else with a newspaper
Rolled tightly under his arm
Crossing the stiff, iron tracks
Behind the train, thinking, This
Can’t be me stepping over the tracks
With the other commuters, slowly crossing
The parking lot at the deepest
Moment of the day, wishing
That I was someone else, wishing
I was anyone else but a man
Looking out at himself as if
From a great distance, through water,
Turning the key in his car, starting
His car and swinging it out of the lot,
Watching himself grinding uphill
In a slow fog, climbing past the other
Cars parked on the side of the road,
The cars which seem terribly empty
And strange,
and suddenly thinking
With a new wave of nausea
This isn’t me sitting in this car
Feeling as if I were about to drown
In the blue air, that must be
Someone else driving home to his
Wife and children on an ordinary day
Which ends, like other days,
With a man buckled into a steel box,
Steering himself home and trying
Not to panic
In the last moments of nightfall
When the trees and the red-brick houses
Seem to float under green water,
And the streets fill up with sea lights.
This old memory has been rolling around in my head for a few weeks, but I don’t know how to tell it without sounding insane. I’ll just say straight out that there was a time when I contemplated burning down the school.
This was nearly five years ago, when everything was changing so quickly that I chose to sit down in the middle of my life and let it pass. There was a moment when I got stuck pulling on a pair of gloves. They were on the wrong hands, but I didn’t know how to switch them. I was hypothermic, removed from action and paralyzed in thought.
But I had this idea, late one night. I’d never been an arsonist. I didn’t know how to light a match until I was 19. But it seemed logical and correct. I’d do it at four AM, when no one was around. I’d bring a gas can and drip it down a long hallway, in front of the information desk. I’d leave a trail all the way to the biology wing, and then I’d drop the match, walk out, get in my car, and drive way.
The idea was that I’d feel better, with this terrible secret under my belt. I wouldn’t be caught, but I’d carry the action forever. I could see it so clearly, the walking away: standing in the bone-silent snowy midnight and watching the flames snake down the carpet, past the desk, away from sight. I’d be puffed up in winter clothing and wouldn’t hear a thing.
And people would talk and whisper the next morning, about the fire. And I’d listen, but have no reaction because there would be a peace in replacing my old, horrible secrets with this new one. A secret with a name, unlike the broken stones that rattled in my gut. Elemental and hot. Not rotting. There’s something about it that still makes sense, this mad idea of choosing a scapegoat (the information desk; the biology wing) and immolating.
I never did it, and never would, but I keep remembering it, wondering about the wicked brain that thought it possible. Wondering if you can ever take it back, a thought like that. Goddess of fire, queen of the snowbanks. It was a strange, criminal time.
How about that October, eh? My favorite month. October 3rd is the anniversary of two things:
1. My golden retriever, Chewbacha, being put to sleep when I was 10 or so. He was 1, and had uncontrollable epilepsy. And it was very important to me as a kid that his name was spelled with the “ch” instead of the “cc.”
Um. Something cheerier:
2. Germany’s reunification! I was living in Germany at the time. Here’s how my elementary school celebrated: They enacted some strange Stanford prison-esque experiment in which the four wings of the school were halved, one half being East Germany and the other West. They put up huge, papered bulletin boards, on which the West side could draw and paint, but the East had to leave blank. And then, though this seems horribly cruel and I’m probably making it up, I think the East side had a shorter recess and lunch? And some other terrible things done to them? I was on the West, so I didn’t pay attention, which proves the experiment probably worked. At the end of the week, we built a cardboard box wall on the playground and flung ourselves against it in celebration of the wall falling. Okay!
And there lies the bulk of my elementary school memories, though I do remember playing some game called “Freddy Krueger” in the 2nd grade with two boys, in which one boy was Freddy and the other was Jason, and I was the princess. Jason was the good guy. I was really confused when I watched the movies later.
Happy October!