After four days away from work, it was good to be back. That's a good sign. I haven't looked forward to going to work in a few years. I'd felt quite lost, as it seems, at the dusk of my years in academia. No motivation, and sometimes, even contempt, enough contempt to deliberately stay at home, "work" at home for minimal time needed to get the minima requirements met. That allowed ample time for me to grow other skills and talents completely unrelated to my work, but I think it also caused some atrophy in my attitude toward work, in work ethics, which, believe it or not, I truly believe in.
No matter the amount of atrophy, I am glad I feel great returning to work. Even better that I had no sign of that stupid sickness left. I heard that other people when they got food poisoning they are stuck in bed for a few days, hence the (misused) word "flu" in "stomach flu". I was lucky to be out for 1.5 days.
I drank the remaining bottle of ginger ale, one of the two that my friend bought me along with other things. It made me smile a little. For one thing, it reminded me of this terrible night that now seemed a distant memory. I can remember how painful I felt, but I can't remember the pain. I am like this, for better or worse; I can't stand pain, can't bear it. Since I was little I feared the needle, or the knife (imagine I had to start preparing and cooking food since I was six), and dreaded being shot (by enemies of the state or by the state police, both feared equally by Chinese citizens). I can't stand heartbreaks. I sometimes think I am such a wimp; I know many people who could bear breakups much better than me. But then again, I've known since college that people were capable of committing suicides over love, perceived or real. Like physical pain, I quickly forget the pain of the broken heart; just remembering the painfulness of the event. In any case, the bottle reminded me of the pain that I should or should not have been able to bear better, but in any case, I've forgotten. The other interesting thing about the bottle was that it was diet. I never drink diet drinks. And this time it was, like all other times, due to a mistake; my savior friend bought it probably without reading the label or caring whether I cared for diet or not. I chuckled and drank it with delight. It didn't taste as bad as I remember diet drinks tasted, but I smiled because it reminded me how wonderful it was to have someone save me. Especially someone, as I have written previously, I didn't expect to offer me help, and much less, from whom I didn't expect to ask for help. I smiled for him, and I smiled for the little brave step I made toward connecting with people.
I am writing on the way back home now. I look out to Bridgeport in the night; there's nothing but darkness with patches of amber mercury light reflecting off the ubiquitous frozen ice-snow. In the distance, also in near total darkness, is the infamous I-95. I can't really see the highway, but I know it's there because of all the slow moving red taillights of poor commuters who are trying to go home but somehow always find themselves joining the rush-hour club. I commuted to work by car for 1.5 years after college. It was a 40-min commute that could sometimes stretch into a whole hour, from Framingham (no one knows where it is) to Somerville (it's a suburb of Cambridge, which is a suburb of Boston). It wasn't pleasant, the stress, oh the stress. You can't read, you can't walk around, and you always wonder why traffic is so slow. Having a car is such a bother; I am glad I will be selling mine soon. I pity those invisible souls secretly dotting among the red lights blinking and moving slowly. I wonder about their lives. I guess if I keep taking this train for a while (which is not true, since I will be moving to New York soon), I will actually "be" with the same people, more or less, for that duration of time, and in such sense, we are getting to know each other. While they are fretting over the traffic, or chatting on the cell phone, they must notice a fast-moving commuter train every night they are in that individualized tin box of theirs. They must wonder, one of them, at some point, who's been in that train every work day along side him or her. In this way, are we not connected?
You must think I am crazy. I am trying to contrast this to something a little more obvious and trite, but for me, rather alarming, if not sad. If I were taking some random train as a tourist in France, for example, passing along some highway full of commuters (not sure if there are many commuters driving in France), I know I would never see these people again. "See" I mean be so close to them. Never again. And so they mind as well never existed. I don't really see them; I know someone must be inside those cars, at least one person, to be effecting the locomotion of the vehicles. Some soul are out there, so close to me, but I can't see them and never will be with them. They therefore don't feel real. Whereas here, I don't see anyone in any of the cars out in the distance. But I am sure there's a minority of people, at least, out there, I am "with" every workday around 6:25 PM in Bridgeport. And this connection makes me wonder about them, how they feel in general, are they nice people, are they approachable, would they like my baking if I shared some with them.
To test how real this connection is, imagine, after having ridden this train for a year, ten years, more, this same journey, and one night I see a fireball surrounded by many emergency vehicles, I think I would be many folds more concerned than if I, as a tourist, saw the same incident on a French highway. The two points here are that 1) Connection is built partly on familiarity 2) Our value for a given life is based in part on our connection to that life. You can disagree.
So today was a good day at work. I had only about 5.5 hours of sleep. I actually went back to bed after turning off the alarm. I sat up, just to make sure I didn't fall asleep if I lay down. I stayed in bed not really for the lack of sleep; my back was all wet. I wonder if that was because of the end of my sickness, a true break from the fever. I went dancing last night, and I would feel a little weak after three dances. It was a small risk to take, but smaller than the risk of breaking my legs walking on the frozen pavements. My car was and probably still is entombed in ice after a day of icy rain on still fresh snow. So I walked. I went because a friend wanted to film two guys dancing. I thought it was weird but would be happy to be one of the guys. It didn't happen because her camcorder ran out of juice, but I got to say Happy New Year to the little community of dancers that I haven't danced in since leaving for Buenos Aires. I was surprised to see so many people. So after the dance my body attempted to get sick, I guess, but decided over the night to break the fever and let me be. The routine recommenced 10 minutes after I got out of bed, for real, and it was good to be in that routine again.
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