One

Station 23

Trying to remember how I got here. The first thing I remember now is that summer of nice weather, 2004. I had sold everything to move to Europe and was in fact, quite traumatized in leaving everything and everyone behind.

But Berlin is lovely in the summer, and with that move the four years of really hard work with CHEAP began. It was great to be with Marc, Susanne, Daniel, Richard and Salome, who were then still children. But that sadness of leaving never seemed to fade. My sadnesses accumulate, they do not move.

The sky fades from purple to white, then dark blue, silver being the background in which the branches are tangled with their spring buds.

I just walked outside between the peacefulness of my self-contained world here with the most handsome of men and kind, listening women. One has to walk a labyrinth of foul things. Here I sleep between the most beautiful Franz and the cheerful Marcel. Most of the day was spent lying on my bed, looking out the window and trying to figure out just where I am. There is food, a recreation room, a communal kitchen, a nurse’s station and two shower rooms. I had three interviews with three psychiatrists today. They all asked me the same questions as if they were one person with three faces. Twice I sat in an alcove in the hallway and spoke to other patients. Fabian checked himself in because he feels his life dissipating into the air. He studies physics and finds the world incomprehensible. His favorite author is Thomas Bernhard.

Stefanie came over for dinner last night, and Cornell came to sleep with me. I was very out of it. This tenderness was not lost on me, and between him holding me I paced the apartment most of the night. In the morning we met Stefanie, Marc and Susanne in the courtyard. This struck me as strange, but nice. They took me to the hospital.

Leaving this safe floor I first encountered a pool of vomit on the stairwell so I took the elevator. Outside men and women in horrible states stand and smoke. I had a hard time crossing the line and the first lawn to that grassy slope where in the summer I sit and enjoy the canal, its folk and animals. This was hard because of the awareness of being a patient in this building which a former self had passed and sat in the shadow of many, many times before.

I missed dinner because I did not quite understand how things work. Fabian explained some things to me. In the afternoon I sat and read a little. Here is when Nani came to me and we spoke. She had in fact come earlier that morning when I was quite confused, and for this I thanked her. Later Fabian joined me again and we went to the kitchen. Soon we were joined by Marcel, Nani and Jossi. It became a nice conversation about our conditions, how long each of us was there, and we really shared with a rare honesty that is encountered seldom outside because of the depth of the intimacy.

Marcel threw a tomato against a wall. Jossi said she liked doing this but only in one corner of the room. She hurled the tomatoe with great force against the white tile and we all laughed so hard as the juice dripped down the wall. We then ate some food and all sneaked off to see the bat enter dusk from a higher floor that we were not supposed to be on. We were too late for the bat, and I went to bed feeling not alone in my thoughts, but I could not sleep. They would not give me a pill because they wanted to monitor me every two hours. I would catch what was just the beginning fall of a sleep, feel myself drift and wake to a swirl of thoughts again. It was strange because like the psychiatrists the nurses all asked me the same questions ending by asking me if I was angry, as if they somehow wanted me to be. I woke from a cluster of nightmares around five thirty. One was a series of men’s faces changing in rapid succession. I yelled something in anger and punched something very hard. This woke up Marcel and Franz. The nurse came in the room and we all feigned sleep. Later Marcel told me it was good we faked sleep. “They love that shit here,” he said.