Notice More

This morning I woke up grumpy. I didn't look forward to rushing those ten, fifteen minutes, preparing breakfast and lunch. And even less, those fifteen plus minutes of walking in that cold. My main alarm didn't go off because I forgot to turn it on. It's a program in my iPad. Well, not my iPad, the old company's iPad. That, too, needs to be returned next week. The grumpiness, however, was due mostly to yet another dream about being found.

But I knew, once I set in motion, things will be all right. So this won't be another blog that starts with a diatribe against life and eventually ends with some brilliant revelation about life's beauties. All the love in the world, etc, etc.

Finding peace, or at least searching for it, involves one little trick. Without passing judgments through a diatribe or a revelation, I just notice things. My brisk walk itself was peaceful. The street was nearly empty, as usual. I noticed the sun as a blurred globe behind the morning haze. It always reminded me of the egg yolk in one of those mooncakes the Chinese eat for our Autumn festival. Innocently orange.

Most of the sidewalks have been plowed, and I remembered my poem about the black plowed sidewalk and the blue sky above, separated by the white world. I noticed the buried fire hydrants, and I thought about the firemen who would have to plow around them, like some did when my rescuer friend and I were trying to liberate my car from the previous blizzard. I noticed a simple line in the snow made by someone I could assume I would never get to know. The line would be there until the next snowfall, or spring. Marks made by strangers, especially strangers I didn't even see or otherwise sense, somehow leave themselves also in my mind.

This was the first work day since the merciless third blizzard pounded us the night before. I noticed the presence of a lot of the MTA workers on the platform, with their walkie-talkies. I wasn't sure what they were doing, looking so concerned and worried.

Of course, I couldn't help noticing all the snow around us. It seems that most of my blogs talk about snow. Lots of snow. Snow all the time. More mentioning about snow then the philosophies of life and love. The whispers around me in this train that is usually very quiet utter mostly about, you guessed it, snow. More snow coming. If I believed in a God that cared about human beings, I would like to think that this record snowfall happening at the very beginning of my new life is no coincidence.

The train passed through a lot of residential areas, so I could see the backyards of many houses. One of them had a bench, but it was covered in snow over its sitting part. It was cute. It was as if the snow was taking its current rest on that bench where the owners and their guests have rested their tired butts on.

The port of Bridgeport is frozen, all snow on frozen stagnate water. The commuters were making ant lines into this train. I've made the seat next to me free before the first station since mine. I noticed in the past that most people don't do that, and many of them aren't very nice when asked to liberate the seat, no matter how polite you ask them. Some, of course, smile and apologize and offer. But many don't bother to make any human contact, even sighing at the lost of property they had convinced themselves they owned by default of being in the row of seats first. Only a slight judgment. In the end, this is how people are, naturally.

The shuttered factories many with broken windows, the depressing rows and rows of subsidized housing surrounded by ugly machineries sleeping under a blanket of snow, the distant chimneys billowing out steam, the graffiti that was now matched in its omnipresence only by the colonizing snow. Bridgeport is the border in Southern Connecticut between the rich and the poor. The snow does its best to level the beauty for all places.

Last night I had an unexpected invitation to sushi by a friend I hadn't seen in a while. I don't think I've even seen her this year. We didn't say happy new year, so I wasn't sure if we forgot or we had done so already in person. She was distant. She disappeared, her mind at least, during dinner. I haven't seen a more forlorn face in a while (though I should just look at mine from time to time!). It wouldn't surprise you that the reason had to do with a relationship. Unlike me, she has one, but one that was plaguing her. They say that having a relationship can be much worse than being single. I sometimes believe that. I felt bad for her. I did my best to listen and to cheer her up. Making jokes. Lightening things up a bit. I think people who are single, like me, often make too big of a deal out of relationships. I don't mean those who are desperate for one. I also mean those who are avoiding one. Being with another human being is the best way to discover your deepest challenges. But once you get in there, you may find yourself trapped for an unnecessary amount of time. My friend wasn't sure if she was trapped or she was not patient enough.

My breakfast was oatmeal. I brought it on the train only to find out that I forgot to bring a spoon. On the other hand, I brought two pairs of gloves, which happened a few days ago. I thought about the girl I went walking in the blizzard with. I remember thinking I wish I had brought two pairs of gloves that time. Her hands were wrapped in these thin gloves that soaked in the snow, which melted and then started freezing again. I didn't want her hands to feel pain.

While having my oatmeal I thought about the sushi dinner last night. There were a lot of couples in that restaurant, which was usually empty when I went. I actually recognized the woman in one of the couples. She didn't recognize me; she had no reason to. I only knew her through the woman I went to India with; "knew" as in I said "hi". But I remembered her name. My friend proceeded to say she didn't understand why all these pretty girls were with all these ugly men, and that I was the most handsome in the room. I wasn't sure how much of a compliment that was, being compared to a crowd of ugly men. But she knew how to make a friend feel good when his male ego had been flattened to a crêpe by all these unlucky women. I told her earlier that evening that she was one of the few women who never seemed to age, whose beauty seemed eternal. It is always nice to be a real friend with a woman and you can compliment her, make her feel really beautiful, without any awkwardness. We both needed in our own ways to be reminded by a trusted voice how beautiful we were.

I told her as she drove me back on the snowy streets about our common friend, my best friend who was attending to her dying father now. I told her how in love I was with my best friend for many years. She knew that, but what she didn't know was that I told her I would wait for my best friend every night, no matter how late, and took her home, without ever hinting or pressuring to go in with her. Love was simpler back then, even though there were many fights, but not enough to taint the memory of a simpler love. She knew from the beginning I wanted a romantic relationship, but she wasn't ready, not for another five years. But I was still waiting, and doing what my heart wanted. I told my friend last night I had forgotten how simple love was. But, being the cynical human being she was about love, reminded me that I deserved a woman who didn't have to make me wait, especially not that long. All right, I guess she was right.

It was nice talking to a friend, an old friend. I'd known her through my best friend for six years now. We don't spend much time together. We are very different people. But like family, you don't need to be compatible, you just need to want the other person. Simply want.

I guess that was another "revelation" about life. One more revelation I want to put in is this man, the snow man. I mentioned him in my second entry yesterday. I thought more about him. I imagined wanting a man too. Wanting friends who make me feel safe in a way that women wouldn't. Seeing this man in his mid forties, who has nothing to show in life except his expensive shoes more because he wanted to copy his father than for himself, who remains single and horny at the sight of any young woman, more than pity I felt camaraderie. I realized that, it is true, it is very hard being a man. I have spent so much time thinking how hard it must be to be a woman, empathizing them, but never felt connected to anyone in the field of how men suffered in their unique ways. I looked at this man and I remembered how we always have to have something to show. How women expected us to have a steady job. How we should dress. How we should be a "man". How we need to be admired and need to have that certain charm. Here was a man whose suffering had brought him no closer to a better job or the warmth in the company of a woman. In my mind, I gave him a hug, and we each told us in the most unmanly way how sorry we felt for each other as men.