Outside and Inside Harper

It's the first time I saw the black smoke coming from the diesel engine some cars in front of me. The smoke drifted back far enough over my car for me to see it. Something new in a very familiar landscape.

Today is the last day of the month. March, starting tomorrow, hopefully will be the last month that I get to savor the familiarity before a new ones slowly sets in. There won't be many, if any, diesel engines on the trains coming from New York. I have never seen one leaving Grand Central, though the one I take to go home is a diesel one that comes from Grand Central.

The weekend since my last entry entailed a drive as a passenger to New Jersey, being surrounded by the little children of my sister, trying to be connected despite all my mental distractions, and before ending it with my favorite milonga of the week, I spent time in the future home city to which I will be returning in a month.

I didn't want to be alone in the city.

I knew I could. I knew from history I would always enjoy being alone there.

But I didn't want to be alone. I wanted to be with friends. I asked a couple of tango friends, but it was too last-minute for them. I wasn't disappointed, and I was glad I did it because by asking them they knew I was interested in connecting with them. I have already started "living" in New York. Nonetheless, I still ended up being alone.

And that was the fatalistic attitude I carried with me when I went to the Edward Harper exhibit at the Whitney. I never cared to go to that museum, even though it is one of the most famous and popular one in the city. I never cared for American art before the crazy modern stuff. I share the same stereotype that many of Harper's contemporary and past critics had about American art: that it was immature and uninteresting compared to the European art that carried a much deeper and older legacy. But Harper had always been an exception. And my visit allowed me to understand why. His most famous piece is the diner scene, where three or four customers were sitting at a corner diner not really noticing the empty streets cornering them. That had an effect on my since I saw it first on a textbook in high school. I didn't know the artist's name until much later. Now, he had a whole exhibit to himself, posthumously, of course.

I was tired by the time I got to the museum. I was tired from expending the last bit of energy with my crazy nephew and the increasingly crazy niece. Crazy because they are adorable kids. But their nuttiness exhausted my last bit of energy left over from all the mental work over the weekend. So I sat a lot for the less than two hours I was at the Whitney, but I was also able to enjoy the pieces with more attention.

In the end, I understood why Harper's paintings attracted me for so long, and still do. They are all about loneliness. They are everyday life stuff that was beaming with the big L word. I sort of knew that since high school with that one piece I saw. But I never understood how Harper did it. Ironically, it's the colors, the brilliant colors that highlighted the loneliness. It's the subtle distances between people that resonate with our own personal feeling of distances that divide us from others. It's the eyes. It's the very fact that these quotidian subjects reminds us how prevalent they are in our own lives. Most of the snapshots of our everyday events are the same, most carry no sense of hope and excitement. Most of us don't think about it, but especially for those of us who live in big cities as the subjects of his paintings do, we are reminded of this simple reality of the mundane life. Boredom and loneliness are twins, it seems.

The eyes don't show boredom. They are sad. They are uninterested in life. They are merely going on.

And I am not like that. I decided to enjoy my city despite having no one to spend those four hours with. I decided to walk into a falafel place carrying a heavy heart that for the third night this weekend I was having dinner alone. And I did it without self-pity; I did it feeling happy that soon I would be dancing, to be with people who may not be my friends but in their own ways cared because they connected with me, not as dancers on the dance floor, but just people with a few things to chitchat about. I saw one of the people I invited to have a bite before dancing but whose schedule didn't allow it. She was nice enough to call and leave a message telling me she couldn't do it but that I should remember her next time I wanted someone to hang out with before the milonga. That made me feel warm and fuzzy before going to the museum. And when I saw her, we exchanged a big smile. She and others gave me hopes that I could have some real friendships here, in this city of ten million, a city whose loneliness was betrayed in Harper's painting. I went into the museum with the same mood that his paintings carried, and yes, that helped me understand his paintings more, but at the same time, the paintings reminded me that I was an "exception", that despite my frequent feeling of loneliness, the self-pity, and frustration with romance, despite all this, I was able to see the contrast between me and the paintings. I was someone who loves having fun, who loves life, who loves human beings. It is with this attitude, despite a weekend mostly spent alone, I start a new week, a new month.

Moving on in my Mind

I woke up remembering last night, remembering the night before.

Last night I saw "Cinema Paradiso". It was beautiful, but the story was long, perhaps I had the extended version. And I didn't feel the story was cohesive and strong. I could see how I would have fallen in love with it, become attached to the characters, had it been done a different way, by better direction and story-telling. But I didn't. I could see how my art friend said she didn't like it so much when she saw it, not sure when. Then again, I don't know her taste in movies enough to say we would have the same reasons for not liking a given movie.

The night before I wanted to see a movie, but I ended up just organizing my room, especially the desk that had pies of receipts on it.

Then I thought of the obvious: I spent both nights alone.

I am done with this town, this life. I know that in New York there's no better possibility of avoiding another weekend night alone, but at least I will have my city, my milongas, my cafes, my people watching, my reading among people who excite me just by their presence. Here, even with friends, I still find myself alone on weekend nights. I didn't call any of my friends to hang out, because for one thing, I didn't find anything interesting to do besides sitting and watching a movie or chatting. For another, I didn't have the energy to invite and be prepared to be rejected. My art friend has many times suggested that we go to one of her parties, meet her cute art girls, go to an art show. But that never happened, even when I suggested it. Her life is taking a road a bit diverged from mine. That's normal with friends.

But I just feel more strongly that I am done here. Sure, I could have called up my sister and gone to see a movie. However, that wouldn't have made me feel less compelled to leave here.

Last night before the movies, while making my lunch of the week, while baking for the sweets of the week, I finally got around to post an ad for subletting my room. That's another step toward exiting here. I will need to find a property manager, formal or informal, to take care of the place while I am gone. But as far as tasks here is concerned, there's nothing more to do. I didn't feel sorry for myself these two nights as much as I am now, in my matutinal mood of introspection. And tonight I will be going home alone after the milonga. If I were in New York, I would still be going home alone, but at least, I will go home through the subway that I love, through the neighborhoods that I embrace. Such are my thoughts this morning.

The weekend did have quite a few happy points. Besides taking care of the apartment I am leaving by organizing and washing its floors, I got a surprise visit and also got to spend time with a friend. I got a phone call from a voice that asked, "Do you know who this is?" It was a woman's voice, unsurprisingly, a deep voice, but not one I could recognize and the area code of the phone number, 215, was even more foreign to me. It was a friend from a long time ago I met in New Haven, a common friend with my ex-best friend. She had moved out around the time my sister left for college. She is the only person I know who stuck around this town for longer than I have. Ten years. Four of those in college, the rest dedicated to social improvement through the union. After becoming tired and disillusioned with union politics and disagreement with its new direction, she left the movement entirely, and studied and now practicing acupuncture while still doing her equivalent of my tango in terms of personal passion: aikido. In some ways, that's more useful than tango.... She was visiting this little town, and just thought about calling me up to meet for a little bit. It was nice to catch up. I can't say I was ecstatic. I was so taken aback that I wasn't sure how to feel and what to say. She was the first woman in my 8.5 years here that I didn't pursue. We spent a lot of time together. We were friends before tango came along. We shared our feelings about our respective little sisters, in both cases there was love and disappointment. We both grew up having to struggle against the walls set up by the very same family that was supposed to help us. For some reason, I never got interested in her. I forgot much about her since she left the city, or earlier, since I focused my attention on, I can't remember which girl. We even did pottery together.... How odd that I don't remember that until now, that we didn't even talk about it. It's strange how I recall things; I remember a lot of things, I notice more things I really need to, but it doesn't mean I can recall everything on command....

We chatted for forty minutes and then she left. I didn't feel very connected to her. Perhaps it's because she aroused too many memories that were awaken for the first time, directly connected to her or indirectly connected to others. Perhaps it's because she and I never really had much more to talk about besides what I have mentioned above, and now, really, the memories of these few connections. Now she is in Pennsylvania, living with someone she had met through traveling for aikido, and living in the middle of nowhere, on 8 acres of farm land. My mind couldn't focus only on her. My mind focused on how lucky she was to have someone for whom she felt so attached as to live in a place she would otherwise not have chosen to live in.

Overall, it was a beautiful surprise. The surprise reminded me that when you let life take its course and you do your best to respond positively at every turn of the river, it's a beautiful life. I have mentioned that I am listening to a philosophy course on Death. It is, of course, about Life. I am now on the last topic: suicide. When it would be rational to commit suicide. I won't get into that, and by mentioning it I don't in any way suggest I am contemplating it. I want to say that so far, now at the last topic of this course, I actually have come to believe that life is worth living. It has too many intrinsic beauties to forgo despite all the ugliness that throw me into occasional despondency. It's true that I have no one to share these beauties with, that I still spend my weekend nights alone watching movies that I may or may not enjoy, cleaning a house I need to connect to even if I am leaving it soon. Despite all this, I have a lot to be thankful for and will have even more to enjoy. I thought about the people fighting for freedom in Libya, most with nothing more than their voices in the face of live ammunition. They risk death and horrific injury because, in part, they love life enough to live it the way they want even if that risked shortening it considerably. Better to live a short meaningful life than a long, tedious and hollow one.

After this surprise visit one of my local friends finally showed up. The half Latina (though she would call herself simply Latina). We connected. That was what I wanted to experience with her. When we are alone, we always talked about things that made me feel connected. And this time I told her deeper things, confessed on topics I have been thinking about, and shared with her my joy in my recent discoveries about life, about myself. She told me a lot too. I am grateful to have friends in this little town with whom I can occasionally make a connection.

What do I like to do? I like to bake. I like to experiment with a new type of chai. I tried and mostly failed yesterday trying to recreate that pink Kashmiri chai, but I am far from giving up. I like spending time with my family, and that's what I will be doing today; in an hour I will be driven to my Grandmother's place and have a little reunion with everyone. I like playing and hugging my little rascally nephew. I like watching the mystery-ridden face of my even tinier niece.

But I also like sitting in front of a movie on my couch with the warmth of a woman I like. To think about the movie or fall asleep to its stupidity with that warmth and that scent not as a background but as the atmosphere of my enjoyment. Until that happens, I know there's a lot to like about life.

Longing for Friday

If they told me the journey would have so many stops, I would have not worried so much about going to the bathroom.

But on this train, there are only two stops. One, really, between my current city and work. It is still late. I was late leaving the house. I had to run. But it was late, and I ran for nothing, other than not getting stressed about being late.

My thoughts for the morning. Metaphors galore or just plain nuts.

It's a different morning. Not because the train is late or is running slow. It's raining. Maybe that's the reason it's late and running slow. These trains are like house of cards; the tiniest problem would break apart their tough, iron-clad demeanors. While I was running here I thought, oh, it's raining, the train might just have yet another reason to complain, like a child failing to go to school for a little booboo on the elbow.

I was right.

It's the first time I see rain from inside this train. The sky is dark, like a canvass painted with the dirty gray snow it is facing, the snow that is diminishing but only to reveal the equally gray landscape that is this section of Southern Connecticut. The ice on the rivers is a distant memory. Everything is just gray, and the colorful interior of this train serves both as a contrast and a sort of refuge from the wet and depressing exterior.

The rain doesn't only bring about a depressing gray to the world outside, but also repaints the scenery completely. The reflection from its water running amok on the streets and other surfaces of cities serves as a mirror of the sky, of the few street lights, of the cars. The water also becomes a dazzling aquatic curtain on the highways as the cars and trucks slice their ways to work or clients. And the rain is thick enough to partly obscure the background of what you see, that is, the distant buildings, factories. While the rain makes everything depressing looking, it is changing how each element manifests itself. The abandoned truck near the Bridgeport station is no longer sleeping under a peaceful blanket of snow, but now reflecting the building and the gray sky above. And everything that doesn't reflect or produce its own light shies into the conformity of gray.

In this gallery of gray I am observing from the warmth of colors of the interior of this train, as if I am on a safari trip, I find, curiously, some peace. Peace that lets me think. Today is Friday. If I were in New York, if I lived there, if I had a place to call my own, I would relax my evening and night at a milonga that is more for relaxing than other milongas are. I would listen to the music I love, watch people dance, regardless of how well, and drift into the ebbing tide caressing the beach of my week's memories.

But I don't live in New York. Not yet. So I am returning home tonight, home in my little city that has no longer much to offer me, and for which I owe neither allegiance nor love. A tango dancer told me once that I wasn't sticking with the tango group from the city, that I was forgetting where I was from. But even though I learned tango here, I can't say I am from here, can't even say as a tango dancer I am from here. I owe my allegiance to the friends I have in the city, but that has nothing to do with the city, unrelated. My tango started here, spent most of its time here, but I developed it in different places, New York, different festivals, and really taken off a lot in Buenos Aires. I shouldn't have felt any need to justify my lack of desire to be part of that group. But I did feel it. Because it's not just about tango; it's about my coming to realize my identity has nothing to do with this city.

Nevertheless, tonight I go home. And my roommate is gone again for a month. I will be alone for a month. When she returns, maybe I will be in New York, or at least within a week. When I move to New York, it won't only be a new city, but also a new lifestyle. I won't have a roommate. I have lived with someone the past twelve years. And before that were the only three years I had lived alone, in Boston and in Switzerland. I always prefer to live alone, however lonesome that may be, and after this current roommate I am more adamant about living alone. I have my own ways of doing things, and I don't have the energy or desire to work things out with someone I am not connected to as a friend or a lover. It's hard to know how well you'll get along with a roommate from just the first interview. Now I see that my roommate is very much oblivious to how clean and orderly the apartment should be, and I am far from being the pickiest person when it comes to cleanliness and order in my living quarters. My previous roommate was the opposite, totally obsessed with rules and order, being the stereotypical British that she is. This current one seems to have her brain on some other clouds far from earth.

So I will have my own apartment. I will invite whomever I want at whatever hour I want without feeling a need to respect someone else's space. And on the flip side, I won't worry about a roommate talking late at night with a guest as I am trying to fall asleep for an early morning waking up for whatever reason. I am glad to pay for my independence. I have lived with a girlfriend before, and so I am not worried that I will be disconnected with one should one ever decides to live with me. It's just with roommates that is a problem.

That's a new life. Another new element in this new life. In some ways it's not so new. My roommate hasn't been around this past and present semesters. She, being a violinist in a quartet, has been on tours a lot, and so most of the time I am alone anyway. And that's how I know my apartment is too big for me. So much unused space. The one apartment I saw last weekend in Sunnyside was smaller (not surprisingly for New York), but it still felt too big for me. There's a desire for something cozy, as if in the coziness I find freedom. Freedom from the sense of loneliness that big space enshrouds you? Don't know.

I am looking for a smaller space, easier to clean, but a space with a lot of light, enough room for guests to come and stay, and of course, a big enough kitchen to hold my culinary creativity and experimentation. I am ready to return to New York, ready to cross the next bridge on this road of new life. I look forward to going to the Friday night milonga without thinking about how late I would have to drive home. Today is a new day, a new Friday, with the rain, with the different cloak over a familiar region. Pretty soon, it will be a different region, dressed everyday, at least every week, in a different cloak.

Man and his Wife

The Korean guy is on vacation starting today. I haven't had lunch with him or anyone yet this week, though it is a short week and he was here for just two days. I wonder why he just didn't take the four days off starting on Tuesday so he could have extended his long weekend. But from the little I do know of him, he doesn't care about these things much. In fact, I don't know how many people think about these things the way I do, maximizing length of a vacation.

He told us that he would just be home. He complained about having to take these four days before the end of February as required by the company for vacation days rolled over from last year. He complained that it might not be the case, that the deadline might be end of March, but that he was not prepared to talk about it with the manager, with whom he had complained more than once of not really connecting well. His complaint streak continued with what he was going to do these four days: nothing.

Here's where the complaint becomes interesting, for me, at least. I told him he could go to DC. He was hoping to go to Montreal with his wife, but she couldn't take these days off. That was when I told him he could still go to Montreal, or DC, or even San Diego where it was warm. For me, four days is nothing, but if I were him, I would maximize its use.

But he isn't me. He told us, not the surprise of the Englishman but to me, that he couldn't go anywhere without his wife. Not just because he couldn't live without her, but also that she wouldn't let him go.

Here he was, a man who, though has thinner hair than mine (thinning in the way Asian men lose hair, which is not from one spot that expands, but just hair falling over all over), who is obviously younger than me, was behaving so much older, like on TV shows. A man locked in a marriage that he apparently doesn't complain about in general. A man who can't go anywhere without the consent of his wife. He said, half jokingly, "My wife's money is her money. My money is also her money."

They met through friends, on a blind date. I have no idea what she's like. Is she one of those petit Korean girls? Is she big and fat like him? Or not "fat", perhaps cherubic. Is she really demanding, matriarchal like many Asian wives? (This is quite ironic considering that Asian cultures, arguably the worst case found in Korean, are extremely misogynistic.) I wonder how much of his complaints are true, or he was just having your average "guy talk" among men. I threw in my "guy talk" nonsense by saying, "Well, I am glad I am not married." Really? But back to him, he responded by saying that "Girlfriend and Wife are very different. Very different, man!" And he repeated that first sentence again two more times. Then why get married?

However, he doesn't seem unhappy. I think he's one of those people who are grateful to have companionship, who feel grateful that the tedious and sometimes painful road of loneliness and singlehood is finally over, that even if there's no spark, there's at least warmth. I listen to his joking complaints and wonder how overrated I have made marriage. He's right, though, wife isn't like a girlfriend. Men often complain about losing their freedom once the church bells are tolled.

He told me and the Englishman all these things about his marriage when he invited us without warning to coffee (tea for me). It was so strange for me to be invited to something by a man. I was very suspicious. His motive was to express his gratitude to the Englishman for helping us out even when the latter was on vacation the past week, which was very hectic without our captain. So in a way I was very touched that especially in this world of money-making-only and thinking-only-about-money, there's a lot of care, or at least camaraderie. I have never seen this in my life, not at the university (forget it), not in previous jobs. Yes, the ultimate goal is to make as much money as possible, but the smart ones also understand that you can't do this alone. You need not be a poor-people-loving socialist to understand the power of the community, or rather, the weakness of the individual. I am sure the Korean man wasn't thinking about how to make the team more efficient, but I suppose he has had enough experience in working in teams and in the private industries to feel natural to foster bonds within a team. Granted, he is the most outgoing person in the group, not just in this subgroup the three of us are in. He is always inviting people to have lunch with him when he has the time. He calls me buddy after we had a bit of friction over some minor project management issue. His attitude in working both inspires me and irks me. And the negative feelings I have reveal, I think, how much of a loner I have become, at least in the field of work. And the inspiration shows how much I want to get out of that state of being a loner, being someone who, despite complaining so much about being lonely, actually chooses more often than he thinks to be alone, to isolate himself from others, especially Asian men.

Yesterday, the day after he invited us to coffee, he told us he was just going to be home. He told his wife he was thinking about going down to Atlantic City (the casino). For me, going to a casino and throwing your money away ranks really at the bottom of what I want to do with my vacation. Really, there isn't much I can think of to compete to be the worst things you can do. But at least he wanted to do something besides sitting at home playing video games. (He is definitely not the read-books or gym-going or self-introspective type.) The story doesn't end there. The "wifey" looked at him puzzled and asked, "You are going without me?" That was enough to keep him home for the next five days. Is it sad? I don't know. Should I be grateful that I am not married? I don't know. But I sure am grateful I am not married to his wife.

Who are you?

There is a good chance that I will be gone, moved out, in a month. I will be taking a new route, in a new train, to work, from a new city that is very old to me.

Strange. The idea that I am leaving is strange. You don't know how much you have been ensconced in a place, how much attachment you have to a place, until you leave it. I suppose it's the same for people. But at the same time, the feeling of nostalgia, for a place, for a person, is often much more short-lived than we presuppose when we haven't arrived at the exit point yet. I don't think I will miss my little city much, but at least right now, I feel the nostalgia is inevitable.

It's funny that only after less than two months I recognize so many things that the train passes by. Nothing really changes in two months along any train track, of course, but you'd never really think about that. The same abandoned construction site, the same graveyard, the same parking lot, perhaps with slightly different composition of cars, same minor-league baseball field. I notice a lot of things, and hopefully, that's a good sign that I am not always so full of myself.

The reality is also that I am more and more ready to leave. Last night I went to the first Tuesday night milonga this year after much anticipation with the new place. The new space is bizarre; it's big in size but feels very claustrophobic. The ceiling is low and the shape is a very long rectangle. And the entire interior, including the low ceiling, is lined with wood so I feel like I am in a box. Strangely, this box feels even smaller than the box I was in yesterday in the train. I danced with the same people, except for this woman that was new and happened to be the complainer that lived upstairs who used to call whenever the tango music got too loud for her. Ironic how she actually dances and is Argentinian but was the complainer that caused much grief to those of us who actually listen to the music when dancing. Last night I didn't feel charmed by the city. Last night I felt reaffirmed that there was nothing left here for me. And I was about to do what so many before me have done: leaving.

The main reason, the underlying reason, the most encompassing reason, for my leaving is that I feel no identity here. It's true that it was here that I made the greatest number of self-discoveries; it was here that I felt most responsible for my own growth; it was here that I finally started to understand life, understand people, friendship, and love. But none of my growth carried the city with me; the city, being small and cozy, allowed me to grow, gave me space and time to make these discoveries, the soil for my seeds of philosophies, and all this allowed me to start walking on the path of peace. It is for this reason that I find so strange when some people complain about this city because they only see the bad differences. I think it's worthwhile judging a place for what it is, and not in reference to what you have been used to.

So now that I have grown up, finally, I can go into the tough world of New York. And it doesn't feel tough at all. Partly because I already know a lot of people there; none I can call a real friend, but plenty I can hang out with if I want. Friends enrich my life, but I don't need them in the area where I live. I already have friends, both here and in other places in the country, int the world. Part of this maturity is that I can live alone, live in peace, without having the presence of friends around me. I have mentioned several times that I like being alone; I enjoy an evening alone.

The exception is when I want to be with someone and that the couch, the bed, the kitchen table, remains empty, that there is no other toothbrush in the bathroom, that the guest wash towel remains dry and fresh. Perhaps that's the next level of maturity, to enjoy life without even thinking about having a woman. It's like what that tango dancer told me; she doesn't need a boyfriend, and often doesn't even want one, too much trouble. I think there's something immature about avoiding relationships because you're unable to handle another human being, but it's absolutely admirable that you can live happily without the guarantee of the warmth of another body. But that's something in the future for me, if it ever comes. Now I simply wish I had someone. I think about the few people I might be interested in New York, but knowing how fantasies have gotten me in big trouble, I try not to think about them or the impossibilities they might bring me. For now the most important thing is to plan my move.

Move to the city where much of my identity is based. It was not the city where I had the best time. Like India, there is much suffering in the past with New York; in fact, one can say that nearly all the roots of my troubles come from that city. It's tough being an immigrant of a different race growing up in a racist city of millions of lonesome souls. But it is my identity. More than China. More than any other place. I am a Chinese immigrant before I am Chinese. I went shopping this weekend in Brooklyn, and I had to look at myself many times in the mirror when I was trying things on. Every time I looked at myself, I was puzzled: who am I? What clothing would show what part of me that I want to show? How am I different from everyone else? How do clothes that are sold to everyone help make me unique? They are paint, and they are for everyone, but how I use them on the canvass of my body, of my soul, makes me unique or makes me a conformist. I can't help but think about how other girls would see me. It's bad. I want to look in some ways that would attract women.

But that's not abnormal. Fashion, is that really about self-worth, identity? Ideally, yes. But really, practically, it's about looking amazing in front of your friends, in front of strangers you want to fall for you, or at least think about you even for a second. But standing there before the mirror, it gave me an opportunity to start the search for my identity that can be manifested visually. Just by standing there myriads of questions arose in the form of "Who are you?"

The Box

I am boxed in. There is no heat in this box. There is fake leather. There is cold metal. There was a man, but now the space he had occupied becomes cold air again. There isn't much light, at least there is no view of the freezing landscape outside. People coming into other boxes bring that freezing temperature with them, having scraped off the ice, almost, and brought it in to the already cold car.

I ran this morning because I got out of bed late. I woke up at the usual time but I couldn't get myself to get out of bed. I got seven hours of sleep, that's about the average, which is less than what I want: eight hours. That's more than what I got when I was in New York this weekend. Four hours each night. I felt I was in a tango festival, going bed super late and waking up at a normal hour.

I got out of the house two minutes later than the latest I've ever gotten out. And that was after rushing to get my lunch, breakfast, and four-o'clock tea treat packed up. (I baked yesterday, a lemon yogurt poundcake, French style. Smells great; can't wait to eat it. It was my second try.) I ran and ran with the heavy bag of food. The worst that could have happened was that I arrived on time and the train actually left early. I got the second worse, which was the more likely event, arguably more likely than the "normal" event of the train arriving on time just like me. The train arrived very late and then it would only take me to the main station where I had to transfer to the train that I am in now, where the box is. The train is crowded. I had no choice but be in the box or sit next to the bathroom. I preferred the box.

This weekend I learned a few things. Among them I learned that I have forgotten how fast New York is. I am used to looking for apartments, or more likely, looking for tenants, with a month or two of space. But New York, it's just a matter of weeks, or less; apartments come and go like the fast money of Wall Street. I was surprised that I found that surprising; how much of a New Yorker am I?

I learned I am very much enamored with India and the related cultures. I went to Jackson Heights to check out apartments. But instead of finding any apartment, I found a piece of my heart there. I got excited, like a boy developing a crush on a girl. I got excited recognizing the the letters if not the meanings of the words, smelling the food, drinking the chai, being surrounded by the produce that most of my peers understand. Someone asked me why I could get so excited when all I talk about regarding my India experience was sadness, bitterness. It's true, the thing that stands out most in my experience there was suffering, both mine as well as the thousand-times worse ones experienced by the poor people there. But India did me no wrong; it might have stolen ten pounds of fat from me, but it had put more than that weight in gold in my heart. It's the complication of my experience from which I develop this love. Most love, most romantic love, has its basis on something complicated and messed up; my infatuation with South Asia is no different. One day I will resolve my feelings and the past about India. But even after than I will be just as excited to hear them speak Hindi or Punjabi or Bengali.

That made me want to live in Jackson Heights even more. I would love to get off the subway and be immersed in that love every night. Sure, I will eventually get used to it, probably pretty soon, but you get either get used to something but no longer noticing it, like traffic jams on your commute, or you do so by giving it a permanent place in your heart, like family. However, I am also practical. If I find a nice apartment in Sunnyside, I would live there, and take the eight-minute train ride (I timed it!) to Jackson Heights whenever I want (yeah to 24-hour subway system).

Sunnyside was where I went afterward. I came here once in my life, when I wanted to find my disappearing piece of the heart for Romania. When I was in college my geopolitical infatuation was Eastern Europe. I was in love with the food, the politics, and of course, the Romanian girl that gave me the gift of the first and worst broken heart ever. I came to Sunnyside to find the food that I remember having when I was in Romania, what was it, three, four times. I remember when I was in Romania last time, in 1999, I ventured out to some suburb just to look for the stuffed pepper, which I had first time in Hungary. I failed, but the adventure was worth any failure of the goal. So I came to Sunnyside looking for Romanian food. I failed to find that elusive stuffed pepper, but I got to have some treats and listen to women speaking a language I used to speak some, too. And yes, I think, though my memory may deceive me, I think I even met up with that same heart-breaking ex girlfriend here to have Romanian food. I remember the restaurant had very much the Communist-era style you would find in Romania during the times I visited.

But now, history repeats in geography but not in anything else. I am back and not looking for anything Romanian, though I passed by a shop with Romanian words. There are also plenty of Arabic, Korean, and of course, English all over. It's a diverse neighborhood, and the diversity can be seen right away in the "Chinese-Indo-Bengali" restaurant, or the one I went to, a Nepalese-Japanese restaurant, basically a Nepalese place with its prayer bells and prayer flags sitting side by side with the usual poster of different sushis. It doesn't have that energy Jackson Heights has, but then again, I didn't go everywhere. It's very quiet but not like my little town where there's no shops around. It's midway between Jackson Heights and Grand Central. It's idea in terms to getting to work, but Jackson Heights has better access to other areas of Manhattan and to the airports. So I don't know yet if I want to live in Sunnyside. I checked out one apartment and it was nice, very sunny, small but not like a box, not like the box I am in now. I was so excited to be in an apartment in New York a part of me wanted to just take it and start moving in.

I realized, and I don't know why it surprises me to realize it, that I have never lived in New York. Not on my own. Not as an adult. The one year I lived in New York as an "adult" I lived with my parents and their drama. I looked for apartments to buy that year, but it didn't feel exciting; it felt scary. I was alone. I knew no one except a best friend who didn't want to talk to me. And on my shoulders I had the weight of my sense of duty to my little sister, for whom I was looking for an apartment to share with. There was no tango back then. There was no unreciprocated love. There was no boredom with jobs. There was just my sister and loneliness with family drama.

Now I get to chart my own future, no more responsibilities for others.

Not really true: I still have to take care of my tenants, but that's a different kind of responsibility, different story.

The slow, local train is finally approaching work. After this three-day weekend I am ready to get to my projects. It's a sunny start, even if freezing cold start, to another week. In a little more than a month, I hope I will be coming in from the other direction, from an apartment of my own in the city that has taken too many pieces of my heart.

The Vague Void of Women

Sometimes I think I am really smart, and I am often not shy about admitting to this arrogance. I may not always do the smartest things because often they are really hard, but I at least know about a lot of things.

But when it comes to women, I find myself in some familiar darkness. It's ironic since almost all my friends are women. And when they have problems related to men, I have never felt I didn't understand, never felt any "darkness", any murkiness. I may not have the best advice, or any, but their conundrums, their dilemmas, I never failed to understand. I am talking about myself, my own struggles to understand what I want from them, how I want to connect with them.

We just passed by a telephone line hanging to a pole that stood by the banks of the river that opens up to the port of Bridgeport. On it a growing line of pigeons enjoying the view of the rising sun on this very warm day. It will be the warmest day since the year started. The memories of the endless blizzards are melting away on the streets and in the minds of these commuters who fail to talk about what a relief it is to have no snow in sight (at least coming from the sky). The weather is like my life; you never know, you want patterns, you want some sense of stability, but if you just accept that changes are not only normal but exciting, you find smiles on your face even while others are mourning at the news of an impending storm.

That's how I've been feeling lately. I don't know how or why or really when it started. I don't feel numb, which was what I was afraid was the case. I don't feel jaded. I don't know if it's because or in spite of the recent storm, or blizzard, with that latest rejection. I don't know if there have been other factors that had helped me overcome the pain of the rejection, or that the rejection itself lent some peace to my new life. The difficulty of dealing with rejection stems from growing up needing to prove myself all the time. In particular, to my parents, who never seemed satisfied at what we have accomplished. While it is great that I have come to understand that their behavior stems from their dissatisfaction with themselves, I still can't just turn off the switch of throwing tantrums with a rejection.

But the most difficult rejection to take is from women. Looking back, starting with the most recent rejection, there's a part of me, hopefully the rational part, the part that would lead me out of this dark labyrinth about women, that understands how foolish my behavior is with rejections. I have heard my woman friends tell me how sexy it had been for them to meet a man who kept his cool when she rejected him, who genuinely was happy to just continue with whatever friendship connection they had, who didn't make them feel bad for not wanting him for whatever reason.

"Sexy". What does it mean for me to carry that adjective? Not just to carry, but also to emanate it. I saw pictures of myself from high school, or worse, before that. I saw pictures even of later, college, graduation. Who is that guy hiding in broad daylight? I remember only a few years ago a friend, no, more than one friend, said I was slowly changing into a man. Being sexy, being a man.

The tango club ran a Valentine's Day charity milonga this past Saturday. I was in a hurry, as always, before going there. I put on a red shirt with my favorite blazer, complemented with a pair of nice black pants. I felt good. I felt good less about how I would impress the ladies but more about just me, that I impressed myself. Not in a narcissus way, but that I felt connected to myself. I felt I wasn't hiding like I have been for almost all my life since coming to this country. It has a lot to do with my mother, but also with being an immigrant not always feeling welcome, and being a teenager not feeling always welcome is even worse. I have a picture of me when I was in junior high school, with a white blazer, rockstar glasses, and an electric piano in my arms. I took that picture by myself, hiding in my room. I wanted so much to be someone else. That's normal for teenagers. But what I am understanding now is that it wasn't that I wanted to be someone "else", like a rockstar; I wanted to be that happy me. I might have wanted to look like someone else, walk like someone else, but really, deep down, I wanted to explore where the happy me was. Somehow, after that picture, I stopped exploring. Maybe because of my messed up family with all the disconnections. Maybe because I was an immigrant dying for the approval of the white people, especially white women. Maybe I just wanted to hide behind my brain, my books, my Harvard degree because those are the things my parents thought highly of, even if they had never said anything good about them. I don't know.

A friend of mine told me that winning a woman isn't really that complicated. It can even be easy. I just had to be patient, be cool, be confident, and above all, be loving. Loving even to the woman who rejected me. What's difficult, I think, is me. The struggles I have to connect with myself are what make it extremely difficult to do those simple things to "win" a woman. After five years in tango, after feeling progressively more confident that most women want to dance with me, I still am afraid of the rejection, the big R. It doesn't make strategic sense to freak out, to throw tantrums, when a woman says "No", but that's what I end up doing.

In this new life not only did I get a two-foot blanket of snow, a simple but moving letter from my mother, a job that I loved getting early and taking the train to (and work in), not only all this and more, but also, I get to feel connected to that part of me called the man. It is that disconnection that makes me feel I am in the dark when it comes to woman, that I can't still express love to a woman who said no, that remains a source of my unhappiness. I realize that many men are in the same place. I realize that many men may have a woman in their lives, but it doesn't mean that are more connected than I am. I can see from the way they're dressed, they way they hide behind their generic designer-brand jackets that spoke of money but not of connection. But I don't want to be them; I just want to be me.

I noticed yesterday, I realized, really, that most people I interact with at work are men. This is a major change already in my life. I talk to men all the time. Yesterday I had to talk to a lot of them and very frequently because there were problems with the software. I really enjoyed it. I always was a little surprised to see my enjoyment. I was keenly aware of the discomfort in parts of me coming from being with this strange species called "men", to which I belong. And as I have alluded to in an earlier blog entry, the man I speak most to is an Asian man. I think I am ready to connect to these creatures that resemble me much more than all the woman friends I have. I finally feel I am ready to be a man, to come out of the darkness and when I finally stand from this side of the gender divide, I can better understand how I feel and what I want from the beautiful people on the other side.

Sister in the Wild

There are patches of woods along the train tracks, and in one of them, I saw three or four tents. They did not at all seem like the sophisticated ones you buy in sporting goods stores for camping on your vacation. They were black, small, weathered. I wonder who camps along the train tracks in such poor-quality-looking tents. But they were shielded from the bothers of civilization, even in this tiny patch. How the patch is positioned allows few to see them and for the tent inhabitants to really see anyone else.

The rivers around some of these patches of woodland were frozen again. The temperature dropped, but thankfully the sky remains clear and blue. I can see the sun reflecting off the window panes of one of the buildings outside my window when I get up. I can still see twilight when I wait for the train to go home around 6. Pretty soon my new life would be engulfed in sunlight, finally.

But even before that life goes on. And for my little sister, it seems to have been on a flat-line for a long time, since returning from New York after dropping out of college. My other sister called last night, as we have agreed to do every Tuesday night, at least for a little bit. She talked about our "baby" sister who, unfortunately, isn't a baby anymore, not in physical look, at least. I realized an irony in my life in terms of family. My sister, the older one, told me in an email after reading my blog entry about our Mother's letter to me, that she was very surprised by the letter, that she, too, expected something nasty, unpleasant, at least, that she held her breath when she saw that I got a letter from that woman. She felt hopeful knowing that even our Mother could turn around, slowly, very late in life, but could turn around the bend and do the right thing, be brave enough to show what she really is like inside, even behind the wall.

So the irony is that my little sister, the smallest, the youngest of the family, is the one I feel most hopeless about. In retrospect, we shouldn't be so extremely surprised about my Mother. After all, she has always been a fighter. An incessant complainer, yes. Always wishing for a better life, understandable in light of where she had to grow up in. She came to this country alone, with just a mother who was more of an acquaintance since she had only seen her for a few years at the beginning of her life before her mother went abroad forever. And she managed to survive and send money back home before the rest of her family came and joined her. So my Mother, being venomous as she has always been, is a fighter, and the venom is not unusual for fighters. This is perhaps one reason for which she is so restless, so ambitious, so constantly dissatisfied with life, especially elements in it closest to her.

But still, she is a fighter. And that, unfortunately, is not what my little sister has become. She is just letting life pass her by, and sustaining on the love and generosity of always some man, whether her Dad, me, or a boyfriend. She isn't living in a modern time, but rather in some Victorian era where a woman isn't expected to be anything more than a pretty object in a middle-class home, rearing children at some point. Cut away the husband, then you had better hope your Dad still has the will and money to support you. I was telling my other sister that marriage, though somehow had become the target of feminism in the past century or so, was originally beneficial more for the woman than for the man because it was the bond that ensured a woman access to resources in a society where women weren't allowed to work or take up business. It was only when women started to become independent from men that the institution that had in part meant to keep them safe from destitution turned out to be a fetter of freedom.

No one is prohibiting my sister from working, or going to school, or being the person she can be on her own. When my other sister asked her what she would do if her boyfriend left for whatever reason, she simply said she didn't want to stress about it. To say this is laziness is to fail to see the depth of the problem here. And it is that depth that makes me feel, ironically now, more hopeless about her being "someone" than my Mother overcoming her own challenges with love and family. My Mother, who doesn't need to work, who is too tired for most work, decided to take some courses on, not sure the proper term, taking care of the elderly. Caretaker? And now she travels to the Lower East Side to help those at the twilight of their lives do the most basic functions. She is paid minimum wage. She is not doing this really for the money; she doesn't want to sit at home alone. In some twisted way, my little sister is older than my Mother.

But I don't want to do anything about it. I have done more than most brothers in the world in my position would have done. And any interference would just make my sister be more resistant. I told my other sister that in my pessimism I believe the only way for her to turn around the bend is for some catastrophe to happen. When you have sunken so deep in the quicksand of your own choosing, the only thing you can do to get out is to be yanked out really hard, very violently, at the risk of being killed by the very violence of the action. Life gives you always a chance to take control of your destiny, but if you don't, destiny will come one way or another.

If she must live in a tent by some train track, then so be it.

Yet, this isn't even about changes. It is entirely possible that she would leave a Victorian life. She could eventually get married, ensuring some economic help in case the husband has a change of heart afterward. She could have children. She could grow old seeing them go through their own versions of life. I suppose if that's the life she chooses then she will be lucky to have it in this day and age.

When I was waiting for the passengers to leave the train before getting on, I saw a woman dressed in some bizarre way. She was wearing a rather ugly plain long coat in faded blue. Her face was so full of that low-level fear and insecurity, not enough to make you think she's afraid of some imminent danger, but you know she is afraid of something. What struck me most was that she was wearing a reflector vest, the kind that people working at some construction site would, or joggers that need to be seen by motorists. It was a protector, but why? Why did this woman have this vest, which itself was faded and ugly, over her equally uninteresting coat?

Despite my fears and hopelessness about my little sister, I also know that there are plenty of people out there who have it worse, who despite having a job and having a diploma, are psychologically more bizarre than my sister. And being reminded of the existence of these people, being reminded of the reality that life really does have many ways of living it, not just my way or the way of my other sister or of my Mother, in turn reminds me that the real reason I feel helpless isn't related to my sister. In the same way my Mother is overly concerned, I am concerned for reasons of something unresolved within myself. I have a certain belief of how life should be, we all do, but like most of us, I don't know even realize what that way is until someone comes along and refuses to live that way. It is therefore difficult for me to know rationally how "wrong" the other person is as long as I have this anxiety over my own opinion for how life should be lived. When I can get over this anxiety I can feel less hopeless, and I think only then can I really talk to my little sister on this matter.

The train is pulling close to those big glass buildings now. The people in there, the person I work with, I have only known for less than two months. I wonder in what ways they are more "successful" than my sister who's living at home, playing video games, raising a cat and a couple of betta fish.

Starting Normal

The static, frozen, white surface of the Husatonic River has given way to the thousands of wavelets with their little white crowns on this windy, warm morning. "Warm" as in not freezing. The peacefulness that came down with the countless snowflakes has also melted away as the unremarkable brown of the winter landscape reclaims its normal place in the normally temperate winter of Southern Connecticut. It's as if finally, my new life is starting normal. End of the endless barrage of blizzards, so perhaps end of all the drama, finally some peace.

Every morning I pass by Bridgeport, and I have written quite a bit about this city that I have only visited twice. One time was to eat at this middle-of-nowhere vegan restaurant run by women who make it a point that it's run by women. Another time was to visit a girl for lunch, someone who turned out to be one of my closest friends. When I told her about the letter from my Mother, she gave me a big hug. There is something beautiful about people who come from a culture, or a background, of physical contact. If we all got more physical contact, more hugs, more kisses, since earlier on, I think there would be a lot less creepiness, less awkwardness, and dare I say, a lot fewer wars, in this world. But if we all got what we deserved, the story of life, the story of love, would not have even been conceived as a story at all.

The ugliness of Bridgeport somehow attracts me. The ruins are visible from some glory of a not-too-distant past when America was the world power in manufacturing. After the blanket of white peacefulness finally melted away enough, I can see the reality of a lasting death; there is a lot of abandoned factories, some still struggle it seems to remind us what it had been when they were feeding families of hardworking Americans, but most of them are just in ruins. And in this ruin or in this stubborn cling to the past, I find something human to visit. Human as if I were looking at the soulless eyes of the unemployed who had at one point a lot of proud to brag about, rightfully brag about. Human as if it were one of those poorer people who still dare to put on the best clothes they had, even if they were worn out and out of fashion, and walk around the street with their heads high even knowing the silent or not-so-silent snickering in the more fortunate observers. If I had the time…. If I had the time I would come to Bridgeport and take the photos to tell you what I mean.

The guy that I mentioned in yesterday's entry, the one with daughters but not so clear to me if he is married or not, I had lunch with him along with others. I learned that he doesn't like to travel. He doesn't like to leave the country, at least. He doesn't even want to go to London, where our headquarters is, and would resist if he has to, if business requires him to travel. And yet, his girlfriend is "500 miles" away. He drives a lot, from what I hear, puts in more miles a year than I have in my car so far since I bought it nearly six years ago. His story made me feel so alien to a world that is very normal in this country. I am not afraid; on the contrary, I feel delighted to be in a different world. He has been working in the company longer than anyone else in the group, including the manager. And I would be surprised if he will leave on his own will. Unless the company lays him off, he will stay, undoubtedly, for as long as he wants. There's something tempting on my part to get to know him. He is probably my age, if not younger. His world seems not only different to me, but "older." Older not in the sense of years, not in wisdom, but just that he seems to have a very settled down life, present and future. The fact that he has to travel "500 miles" to see her girlfriend adds some drama in his stable life. And so is having "daughters" whose mother I am not sure of.

I forget sometimes I work for a bank. I always think I work for an investment bank. The relevant difference here is the stereotype I have. An investment bank screams out risks, screams out responsible and reckless investments, pushes out headlines, usually either bad or makes you very jealous. On the other hand, a bank, like the government, typifies stability, job security. As long as you play by the myriad of rules your career is secured. The layoffs you have read about the past few years are an exception to a world not only of immense cash and capital, but also of great job security. When we think about working at a bank we think about "boring", "stable", and in that sense, family building.

And so it should come to me as no surprise that people who work in the bank are those who would buy two dozen roses and throw in some chocolate for those they care about and wouldn't want to disappoint. On my way out from helping out a "client" (really is a colleague from the group that our group support), that Chinese woman was on her way out to go home. She's the only Chinese person I know, as I have mentioned before on my Chinese New Year blog. She always talks to me, never avoids me as strangers usually do even when they all work in the same big firm. She always smiles at me. And she always attempts to speak Mandarin to me, even though I am still not at ease to do so. She wished me Happy Valentine's Day, the only one to do so that day, and the first one in my life to do so in Chinese (at least that's what I think she said to me!). I asked if she and her husband would have a special dinner that night, and she smiled with no sign of bitterness that no, they had already had that the previous night and that this night he was working overtime. I forgot what he did, but I am pretty sure also in finance. Sometimes I think people who have never interacted with the finance world, let alone worked in one, think that we always think about money, we yearn for more money. We obviously have people who do, and we need to have those people for otherwise the finance world wouldn't be the finance world, wouldn't succeed as a money-making industry. But I think most people, at least in this family-oriented company, think a lot about really normal, everyday-life things, like family, like groceries, like seeing a far-away girlfriend, or golf, for that matter. I am willing to bet that I read a lot more about investment, about growing my personal portfolio, than most people at the firm, who probably, like most Americans who actually invest (and that's undoubtedly a minority), just leave the money in some mutual fund and forget about it. I find making money fun and challenging, but that's perhaps I had a mother who always wanted an alchemist life where with the little life has given her she would want to become a millionaire one day.

I can see the trees again, brown but naked in its truth. Soon I will see the glass buildings housing all those billion-dollar ideas waiting to be tested out on your money. Perhaps a more normal life will begin, but my life has never been normal, let's face it. And the moment a whiff of normality is sensed in the air I would stir it up with some drama. It needs not be a romantic drama, but I just know, with the impending change of location, moving back to New York, anything but normal is waiting for me in the offing.

V-Day

I sit at this late hour with a detox tea and sticky fingers from macaroon sandwiches sandwiching cardamom cream.

I really should have gone to sleep more than an hour ago. But the evening didn't have enough time for all that I wanted to do.

This morning I saw a girl walking toward the bus stop, which is right outside my windows. She was carrying a half dozen roses (and if her life has more luck, the number of roses will double every twenty years or so). I remember the many Valentine's Days in high school. I was too poor to buy the roses for $2 each (what a ripoff!) so I bought carnations (the kinds you bring to funerals) for whomever the girl was that I was too shy to say how I really felt.

I was out some parts of the evening, and of course, there were couples walking everywhere, even though it was immensely windy. I almost felt it was Christmas, except that the ubiquitous annoying Christmas songs and decorations were replaced with couples and gaudier decorations.

I thought about this girl from tango, from New York. I asked her if she was going to this event today in New York. She said yes, but probably not in the evening. In my most sincere naïveté, I asked why not. She rolled her eyes and said, "D'uh, maybe because I have dinner plans?" Right, right, she has a boyfriend. They are a sweet couple, but not the show-off kind, so that was my excuse for blocking her out of my memory of a woman "taken." I thought about her because the memory was funny.

I thought about one of my coworkers, someone I haven't mentioned yet. As you know, they are all married. I thought he wasn't married. That he had a girlfriend. She apparently lives "500 miles away," as the Korean guy exaggeratedly said today. But then today I realized this guy also had daughters (plural!). He didn't seem that old to me. Married. Once married. Now with daughters. I don't know why that stayed in my head today. The reason probably isn't that hard to fathom.

I didn't charge my laptop last night so I couldn't write my blog this morning. But hey, I got to write all my thoughts down on this day of opportunity for those forgetting to say "I love you" the whole year to do it at least today, if not on her birthday, anniversary, or whatever else spontaneity doesn't allow in this world of busy couples too cool to remember romance.

I thought about that girl with the flowers again while having my snack in the afternoon. Where did she get all those flowers so early in the morning? Seven! My colleagues were talking about getting flowers toward the end of the work day. Would I be too condescending to say their lives are so simple? I wonder if it feels different buying flowers for a woman you fell in love with and buying them for a woman you think is expecting it on the fourteenth of February.

I don't know. I've never bought flowers on Valentine's Day. I haven't had anyone on this day for more than nine years, and before that, on the few spotty years I did have someone, I think we just went out. It's funny how I have so many feelings, anxieties around this day when I have absolutely no recollection of years when I actually had someone. Pretty messed up.

I thought about a different tango girl also from New York. On Sunday she told me she didn't need a boyfriend (it wasn't in the context of me being interested in her; I can't remember why the subject came up). She was very happy being independent. Really? Normally, I think when a woman says that she just is either in denial or is very disconnected from her desires. With her, I became more believing. And if she's right about herself, I wonder, did her yoga really did all this to liberate her from the need for a man? (She seems quite heterosexual.) I think it's possible to want without needing someone in your life, but that takes an immense amount of internal liberation that I didn't think anyone in the world could attain, especially not at our age.

I am just putting my thoughts down because I am sleepy. I slept just a little more than three hours last night after driving back from New York (fell asleep at the wheels, but while car was parked in front of a McDonald's, of course). But I decided to write something for this confusing holiday. I am surrounded by people who either don't care, don't show they care, or outright antipathetic against the holiday. But all in all, I don't know anyone who doesn't even realize it's Valentine's Day. It appears to affect everyone, even if not in the most positive or economy-stimulating way.

I got a phone call in the evening. One of my closest friends wanted to tell me how disappointed she was. She got a gardening hat for Valentine's Day. I guess it's more original than two dozen roses, but it made her feel very depressed. She wanted to be treated special, be treated like a princess, and all the man knew about her amounted to a gardening hat. How do you live with someone who knows you so little that he gives you such an atrocious gift? He in the end bought her, like most men today in the developed world, two dozen roses that will very soon start rotting, drooping, and be dumped in the garbage while the yellowed water they had been sitting in would go in the toilet along with whatever new colonies formed inside in the meantime. What I say is the truth, even if a bit cynical.

My friend's phone call reminded me the reality that often (not just sometimes) it's much better being alone, and always it is better being alone than being with someone who makes you feel even lonelier. It's hard to find someone who will grow up with you; it's much more likely to find someone who gets lost with you and only end up making both people feel more frustrated than if just one person found herself in the woods. Why my friend doesn't just take at least a temporary break from this relationship at least to gain a perspective is not too difficult to understand. But I will leave your intelligence some room to ruminate.

The last thought I had from today is about being good to yourself. Being Valentine's Day, it is no surprise to find some sort of chocolate theme in the cafeteria at work. There was lots of chocolate sweets. One was this chocolate mousse cake. Do you know, I don't like chocolate? But I like a little bit, so illogically, or logically, I got myself a big piece of mousse cake, pure chocolate. I had it for my afternoon tea. I decided to treat myself. I used to buy flowers for myself because, well, it didn't seem like any woman was going to buy me any, especially since it isn't the most manly thing to enjoy flowers. That same friend who called me to complain about her "hat" told me that when she was single, and she was for not a few years despite being one of the most attractive women I know, she would buy herself Valentine Day gifts. I wasn't thinking about her when I treated myself to this cake, but I thought about my cake when she told me that. Valentine's Day may remind us to connect with the person we chose in our romantic niche, but I feel that it raises expectations based not on love but the lack of love, lack of love for oneself. The holiday itself, subtracting the poisoning by materialism, is rather harmless, even cute, one more excuse to buy her something she likes (or for him!). And yet, for some people, it is an indirect reminder, an indirect reopening of old wounds regarding, that we all have had to give up something in order to be with someone. Perhaps that's why I thought about that tango woman who believes she had reached the nirvana of independence. Once you accept the foregoing of the biological need to be with someone, what's left is a psychological need that can equally simply forgo. Because romantic love is not the only one there, and to think it's central to happiness than, well, we wouldn't be any happier when we do get that kind of love.

I can say that with some certainty only because I think, today, on the day of love, that love for life can't be substituted by love with a woman. The latter, if it exists, is a part of the former, which doesn't need it to exist on its own. The macaroon sandwich I am eating, believe it or not, isn't made by me. I came home very tired and sleepy this evening. Then before I passed the gate of my main entrance I saw this package at the door.

There was a small part of me that thought maybe it was for me! But that part has over the years shrunk to near thin air. For so long I have wanted to at least get a letter, something, from someone not my family or my friends. Just as so many times I wish the person at the door wasn't a mailman, the Fedex guy, or someone looking for my neighbors. (Never had a Jehova's Witness come visit me.) Sort of like when I was in public school, when the phone rang, my heart begged and begged that it was for me from the girl I had a crush on at the moment. Anyway, so for anything remotely like that to happen on Valentine's Day would be even more inconceivable. It was for my roommate, no doubt, the newly wed (brillian enough to wed someone six-hour drive away. Being sarcastic.)

But it was for me. Someone left it at my door. Someone who knew I was going to bake tonight so I have something to eat for my four-o'clock afternoon snack and tea. Someone who knew I was so exhausted that I shouldn't have to bake.

What's beautiful about life is that even when your mind is so stuck with some dreadful idea, when your being stuck could only make you disappointed, despite all this, life still could make you open your mind up to the beauty it offers. In my mind, I wished so much to go on a date at least one Valentine's Day per decade (really not that much to ask, is it?). The idea has rotten so much that it has turned from stale to bitter.

But instead of a date and whatever conventions no less trite than two dozen roses, I got a box of homemade macaroon sandwiches. My heart was warmed not by the candlelight in front of a woman I probably didn't know how to connect with, but rather by the macaroons that somehow that simple but elusive connection to me. And believe me, the pleasure of eating the macaroons is much more satisfying and stress-free, than from whatever trophy I would have gotten after the candlelight dinner with however sexy the woman would be. Life is beautiful like that. When you are busy mending your garden, taking care of the neglected flowers, someone walks past and leaves you a part of their heart, however small or big, it was a piece of it, and it is a river of the sunlight that would helps with the very garden I've been neglecting while trying to find that candlelight in someone else's guarded heart.

People Close and Far

I was doing my short weekly grocery run at the nearby "super"-market. It isn't so super, the aisles being narrow, the choices, limited. The choices are limited to what its working-class clientele can afford. Actually, I am not even sure about "working class" since it closes at 6PM and on Sundays; what "working" person would actually be able to offer his business there? Really, it's for people on government support, or at least there are lots of them. You can tell when you stand at the register and see that nearly everyone passing through has their EBT card out.

I was tempted to get meat. I have been off red meat and mostly white meat for a few weeks now. I am just not in the mood. My palates, for some reason, just don't find the texture of these blobs of protein strands very appealing. But then I thought I shouldn't fall into the "I-am-a-vegetarian" arrogance ("arrogance"? I won't get into it now). I think meat is great as it gives a distinct flavor, but for now, at least, its texture isn't so interesting. So I thought about processed meat, such as bacon and ham. So immediately to my right as I entered with my little basket, there was the aisle of bacon and ham. I was tempted.

The two women next to me, both fit the stereotype of obese black women, were browsing through the sausages. One was counting the number of hotdogs in the package in her hands, calculating quickly the unit price and concluded loudly that it was a dollar more than whatever she was comparing to, something else in the aisle, from another store, not sure. Two thoughts came to me. Second thought was, wow, what am I doing buying processed meat from a store that offers steep discounts to those who rely on government subsidies. The worst part about processed meat is the "processed" part. Traditionally, as you find in Italy, and other parts of southern Europe, the process of making cured meat didn't involve carcinogens taunting you with very long chemical names; whatever they used the French or the Italians or the Spaniards didn't die from. Now, here, I looked at the front of the package of bacon I was holding, and I saw in big letters "sodium" mentioned many places, and I don't mean sodium chloride, but in front of words I can't recall. I still am very fond of chemistry (the educational context, not the romantic ones), but not on my bacon. So I gave that up.

My first thought, upon seeing those two women calculating the differences in prices, was, of course, me, and to be more precise, surprise, my past. I remember my parents having done that, and actually, put the past in the present, they still do that. One of my mother's favorite topic is how someone was trying to cheat her out of a dollar, or fifty cents. Combined with being a non-English speaking immigrant subjected to real and perceived discrimination by the established, her poverty-stricken past is as present as her wrinkling skin. I am, of course, part of that, or at least part of that legacy. I still find myself calculating the differences, and not always do I realize I am making a decision based on a two-dollar difference. So when I saw this woman hesitating on the chemical-ridden hotdogs because of the one-dollar difference, I felt both disdain and sympathy. I am a big shot Ivy League graduate who now works for one of the largest banks in the world, and in some very twisted way, more twisted than this woman's decision process, I still look out for the minor differences that actually matter to a lot of people in the world but not really me.

I ended up getting my processed meat from the only two "ethnic" foodshops in my neighborhood, the two being a block from each other. I almost felt I was in New York, being able to go from an Italian grocery store that seemed to me a front for the extant Italian mafia in this edge of Little Italy, to the only existing Polish store in the city, a living fossil from the not-too distant past when this area was thriving with Polish immigrants carefully establishing their roots next to the established Italian counterparts. The Polish immigrants scattered quickly, unlike their counterparts in New York's Greenpoint, and the only thing left to remind of their brief stay are this store and the Polish church a few blocks from the other side of my house. I got some Pancettas from the possibly-mafia-run Italian food store and a special type of Kielbasa and a special type of bacon from the Polish place. None had labels on them saying what sort of bizarre chemicals were used, but I would now live in ignorant bliss. I looked forward to adding them to omelets and other things for flavor and some texture.

Such was the slow start of my Saturday. Despite entering the 1.5th month of my "new life" I am still not sure what my weekend is like. There have been so many things happening that nothing seemed as regular as I tried to make or convinced myself to believe. I can't say "on Saturdays I do such and such"; this Saturday is different like the previous six. I do feel tired. I haven't slept much. I don't sleep much, not as much as I would like. Too much happening.

One thing that surprised me was a letter from my Mother. It was the first directed specifically to me. In the three dozen years I have been hanging out on this blue planet, this was the first time I got a letter addressed only to me. She wrote to "us" when she was alone in the US while we waited for her to get her green card. But never to me. She had written to other people, like my best friend from high school, the one that no longer talks to me (or, as I am told of her version, that I no longer talk to). She wrote to her to plead for her continued help with my little sister. She has written to my other sister when they were arguing over my sister's engagement. She had even written twice, at least, to my little sister, demanding that she lead an adult and responsible life, which in essence, made the young woman feel worse. Mind you, neither my little sister nor my ex-best friend understands Chinese. My other sister knows less than me. And, well, me, I did my best to understand the letter my Mother sent me. Keep in mind that it's not like getting a letter in Russian or Greek or even Arabic where, if you at least know how to type the strings of letters onto Google Translate you can get an approximate meaning. I didn't understand all the characters. But I understood the letter.

Someone in my life got to listen to my complaint not too long ago. She got to hear a lot of complaints, of course. But this one was about how when we weren't in front of each other, or rather, when she didn't have to be in front of me, when there's a computer screen or a text message enabled phone between us, she seemed more caring, more loving. In essence, she opened her heart up more. I think most of us do that, and the only difference is that some do it more than others. I think that when there is already a wall to protect your heart, you need not build one despite knowing that the one you build can be colder, even more hurtful, than the one the two of you find already standing in between. And the same with my Mother. For as long as I have heard her voice, especially starting when I understood the meaning of the tones if not the actual words, I have heard mostly poison, and blessed it was to hear something neutral. I remember very few "kind" words, whose kindness I obviously could not piece together at the time. I remember her telling me one time that she saw some guy selling a robot toy for ten bucks, and hesitated to get it for me, and that she regretted her hesitation, and so she gave me ten dollars instead. What for? I didn't understand the logic. I was twelve, and I was mainly just confused by why she always gave me such a hard time for owning and asking for more "Transformer" toys and then now she willingly tried to get me a "robot" (probably not a Transformer since they cost a lot more than $10).

Before I went to the not-so-super-market, I was listening to another lecture from the semester long philosophy course on Death. I think I mentioned it. I don't listen to it for really "enlightenment"; I am too arrogant to think I can still be enlightened even by a brilliant philosopher from Yale. But it helps me with my logical thinking, entertains me with ideas and different perspectives, and yes, makes me think. Something different happened on this episode. The professor, usually being funny and gives comical examples, told a quick story of a student he had had in class not too long ago. He was an undergrad (as this was an introductory course to philosophy) who was told he had terminal cancer. He decided, interestingly, to take this course, on Death. The context of this example was what would you do if you actually knew more precisely when you were most likely to die, because one of the "problems" with death is that most of us don't know when we would die, and so we can't "plan" on anything. But I am not interested in the context. It's more the story itself. The senior decided that his goal was to finish his undergraduate education at Yale. Unfortunately, half way to the semester, he became too ill to stay and had to return to his home where death awaited him with cold, stiff arms. The fairy-tale ending was that Yale still decided to award him with a degree, letting him feel accomplished before his own death. The focus I am putting here is that there is something beautiful about doing what you can to enjoy life knowing that it is short. "Short" for the simple reality that it does end, whether because you have terminal illness or because you are simply human, simply mortal. The beauty isn't in the philosophy of it all, but in the fact that we humans feel attached to the idea that we do what we think would make us happy in a world where nothing is guaranteed, not even that you will actually be happy doing what you think makes you happy. Nonetheless, it's the doing that matters more than the "reward" that might not await you. I don't know if that senior was capable physically of feeling happy when the Yale representative visited his home some timezones away, delivering his diploma. It doesn't matter. What mattered was that he made a decision that had no guarantees of any degree of success. When we get to have the luxury of a long life, like many of us from developed countries do get, we take life for granted and don't try to do what makes us happy. We count the pennies when we don't need to, we strive for goals for someone else's sake, for past's sake, for anything but our own real happiness. We forget to do what makes us happy, despite the lack of guarantees for success.

And so even though when I got the letter from my Mother, I didn't know what to do, I felt grateful, I allowed myself to feel lucky after reading it. (Before reading it I thought either it was money for Chinese New Year that she had forgotten to give me, or some serious news I didn't want to hear.) Allowing myself to feel close to a person who didn't allow herself to feel close to her own son, that's an attempt, a stab at, happiness. Life was really too short to wish you never hear from someone who you felt poisoned your life. It's too short to fear a letter because it had a high chance of being something nasty even though you never gotten such a letter from that person before. If we were given so many more decades to live than that Yale senior, I think we owe it to ourselves to make every cobblestone of the Road a piece of attempt for happiness.

What struck me about the letter isn't its purpose, or its obvious purpose. She told me since I have been writing letters to my Grandmother, and since it is her birthday coming up, and since some random relative I have never heard of before had been sending the old lady $100 each birthday, that I should do the same in my next letter to her. To my hero who traveled around the world with the sole purpose of making happy her family whom she had left behind and would not see for decades. I was grateful my Mother informed me of this idea. But I was especially moved that at the end of the letter, she said she was happy that I turned out to be such a good son.

So for the first time, I realized that for her a good son wasn't just someone who went to the best Ivy League, got the best job, married the nicest woman, produced the most obedient children. And it was slightly sad and beautiful that she figured out how to tell me this behind the wall of a letter so she wouldn't have to hide her love behind that wall of hers as she had all my life.

Ironies of the Left

For me and the Korean guy, our English colleague and mentor gave us each this book, whose name escapes me, about the financial crisis that had just ebbed away recently. You know, the one that brought the world to its knees and pushed it to the brink of a depression. The book is written by this guy who got disillusioned with defense law and got a job at a financial services firm, making a lot of money selling securities. Then he started writing books about the finance world, and this latest one, based on the first page I read, was a very unflattering assessment of the greed and irresponsibilities in that world, as well as the irresponsibilities and ignorance of regulators that were supposed to protect us from the consequences of human frailty in the sea of so much money. I thought it was interesting that someone who worked nearly all his life in finance would want me to read this. I somehow had this very irrational assessment of the people who work for the finance sector. Actually, most aren't greedy, aren't victims of their own frailty in the face of tremendous amount of money and the pressure inherent in managing this money. It is true that the goal of the group where we work is to keep an eye out for suspicious activities regarding trading, but I doubt that was his goal in life: watching people who might play too hard with money of ordinary investors. I think it is worth remembering that a great deal of people work for the finance industry. You just have to go down to lower Manhattan, or take the train by Stamford. And don't forget other places in the country, such as Charlotte, NC, or other places in the world, Hong Kong, London, Frankfurt. There are those who blame the finance sector entirely for the mess the world nearly couldn't get out of the past few years. And by doing so, they collectively blame the people who work for it. Far from illegal activities like drug and gun running, finance, being a structured management of money, does make the world go around in the most legitimate ways. Those who don't understand the role of the financial industry in spinning the planet faster than nature does, don't understand how almost everything that is and does happen around them has some hand of the financial sector in it. The world is driven by buying and selling of all sorts of things, and not just material and services, but the reallocation of capital that makes the use of those material and services more flexible.

Exactly a week ago, after celebrating with my parents the new Chinese year, I had some time before dancing. So I walked around one of my favorite neighborhoods in New York, probably my favorite in Manhattan. It is full of young, mostly white, yuppies who manage to be able to afford living in the East Village. It never escaped me the irony of gentrification. This neighborhood, when I was going to public school more than two decades ago, was one of the no-go zones. There was even a major riot because a black woman accused white police officers of raping her. Only after the riot did she confess that she made it up. Now you can't find parking here without spending at least a good half an hour. There are always throngs of young people chatting on the sidewalk, at the doors of expensive and hyper-hip clubs, restaurants, bars. The rent here, as I browsed online, is sky-high. It is also the home of the world-famous art school of Cooper Union, hence all these young people milling around. I know of an art couple that live in a tiny tiny apartment. They aren't rich. But I am guessing most young people are rich, in the sense that someone in their family is rich. This is a phenomenon I have seen in the gentrified areas of Brooklyn, particularly the ones by the three bridges to Manhattan.

The irony is this. Before all these white, young, and almost always, ultra-leftist people came with their money to raise the rent and property values, there was a lot of working-class people. Some areas were mixed, with a lot of ethnic groups, some areas were just mostly black people. Life was tough, sometimes violent. People didn't care much about politics, at least not vocally expressive of their views. In the same manner they didn't make a big deal out of art. Then after a decade or so, the scenery changed. It can't be called an ethnic or racial change, simply. It's a change in the age, in the social background. My parents' neighborhood, where I spent most of my New York growing-up years, remains very Russian. But that's because it's at the "Deep South" of Brooklyn, too far for the impatient white artist. Too quiet with its few night-clubs that seem so suspiciously like mafia meeting places. The new people are different in almost every way from the working class people they have been displacing. The point I find interesting is their expressiveness of almost exclusively leftist views. When I was walking down St. Mark's Square, I saw on a window some anti-capitalist cartoon. You would never expect that from the people who used to live in that apartment but couldn't afford it because, ironically, the landlord was very much a capitalist who let the market forces decide that an anti-capitalist white boy could take over and help drive the property prices even more, not only because his money paid for a higher rent, but also because it would bring more restaurants and other businesses to the neighborhood once closed down by the lies of a black woman.

The story isn't so simple, of course. For all I know, the person living there isn't white, could be working class, and maybe is living in a rent-controlled apartment, like a tango friend of mine, who have lived in this neighborhood all her life (even went to my own high school), and pays some insanely low rent. That, however, is, I am certain, an exception. The world doesn't thrive on rent-control, unfortunately. That is not to say that capitalism is good; "good" only if your view of a good world is economic progress at all costs. What I am saying here isn't a defense of capitalism, but to show how ironic it is that those who claim a leftist position, who are so vocal in defending some ambiguous and confused version of socialism just for the sake of venting their anger against the evils of capitalism, often don't know, or don't care, the roles they themselves play in helping capitalism thrive. They can get emotional when they read or see documentaries about what globalization is doing to water shortages, or what the rich is doing to fatten their coffers at the expense of schools in poor districts. But after they are done venting with some nice red wine they go back to their nice loft in Williamsburg or the East Village.

And so it's not a wonder that some of them have a dim view of the finance world when they have never worked in the field, never really understood economic theories, wouldn't be able to tell you what hedge funds are but might tell you how they are bringing the world down because they are unregulated. They wouldn't believe that someone who has worked decades in an industry that directly or indirectly uses your money to make financial decisions for the sole purpose of fattening up his company, that this person would buy me a book denouncing the greed of the finance industry. Of course, the book would probably have more evidence to back its screams than most anti-capitalists milling around the expensive sushi restaurants on Tenth Street.

I think the lesson here isn't so much about finance, or even about capitalism and leftist movement. I don't think most left-leaning people are the passionate screamers with a vapid heart that doesn't allow them to see how ironic their lives are in being a tool and beneficiary of capitalism. I know many people who are even more left than me who do work, who center their professional lives, in helping to make a world "better", better in the sense that everyone's living standards be raised, not just those fortunate, not just smart, enough to maximize their hold of world resources. These people are often quiet when it comes to issues for which they actually have intelligent things to say, but they aren't in any need to express them, to defend them. And that's the lesson, I think. People who like to scream out how evil some potent force of the world is really are looking for some attention, some outlet to let off steam. This is true not only for leftists, but rightwing extremists, too. In this sense the two adversaries share something in common. They look outward, see what's wrong with something other than themselves, and scream at it, without really look at where they are, how they lived. I know some people who care a lot about their own behaviors with the environment, saving water where they can, never wasting food, and it's not because they can't afford to waste water or food, it's because they can't start changing the world, or expect the world to change, if they themselves don't.

The matter of gentrification is difficult. I was in Jackson Heights the other day with a friend who moved there a year ago. He was a white middle-age man from the liberal part of Connecticut. He is your typical leftist white man, without the shouting and the leftist propaganda cartoons. He told me he couldn't get used to the Hispanic community, the stores, the people only speaking Spanish. He preferred the quiet streets, as opposed to the loud and often Reggaeton-ridden main streets. He preferred to visit luxury wine shops or this hip coffee shop (run by a Bengali ex-doctor and his white wife). I couldn't understand why he was having such trouble adapting to this ethnically mixed neighborhood, why he insisted on being the white liberal who drinks expensive coffee while talking about the destruction Republicans are doing to the world. But I guess he is bringing yet another culture with him, in the same way that the Poles, the Punjabis, the Pakistanis, the South Americans, the Koreans, the Chinese, and many others have brought with them to this neighborhood. I guess white liberals are a culture of themselves. What I prefer not to see in gentrification is the take-over of one culture and dissolving away the existing one. That would be a huge shame, even if there's a lot of beauty in art and cafes and European-style foods and chic yoga studios that these people bring with them. On the other hand, looking at my parents' neighborhood, I don't see how even if the white liberals take over with their art galleries, this is so different from what other ethnic groups have done. My parents' neighborhood used to be Italian-Americans. Now they are almost non-existent, replaced by nearly always Russian Jews. The final counter-argument is, however, that the Russian Jews had been here, though not as early as the Italian-Americans, but much longer than the world gentrification existed.

Headstones

I noticed by now that at least the two stations before Bridgeport share one thing in common: they have a cemetery right by the eastern end of the station, so the dead could hear the train rumbling by at least every hour. I found that rather amusing. Some of the headstones looked so old that I was pretty sure the dead was alive before the tracks were born. By now they have cleared paths in the cemetery for the living to visit the past. The two cemeteries looked very much alike, and when I discovered the one next to the second station, I almost thought we were pulling into the first station. The headstones looked the same, and their simplicities extended to the cemeteries' overall feel. There were no fancy little buildings; not sure the proper world for them. Any tourist who had visited any touristy cemeteries, like those in Paris or the one in Buenos Aires, knows that a tomb can be a lot more than just a piece of stone weathered away like the undead vestige of the withered inhabitant below.

When I visited the the Recoleta cemetery in Buenos Aires, I noticed, despite the throngs of tourists, how crowded the place was, crowded not of tourists only, but of the tombs. Every one was a nice little building all made of stone, just that some stones seemed more expensive than others, and some tombs more elaborate than others. I was there on a photography expedition with my tango buddy, who was on an art expedition for her project. It was very interesting to learn about some tiny sliver of culture of this city by looking at how people built and decorated the tombs, for themselves or, more likely, for those they were bidding goodbye to. The confused and often irrational relationship between the living and the dead can be found so striking in the culture of tombs.

I wasn't thinking about my best friend's Dad when I saw the cemeteries. However, I suppose one day I will go visit "him" when I visit the living that still love him. He doesn't exist anymore. In those precise words are evoked all the confusions about the dead. The confusions are, of course, with the living. How to let go. How to ignore the reality. How to bear a future so different now. I care about him, or "cared" about him. I am very saddened that I will never see his grumpy face that belied a lot of love, even for someone like me whom he hardly knew except that I was the most important person for his daughter while she was an ocean away. I cared more about the living. I felt even sadder that I couldn't directly offer my condolence to my friend's family because I knew that to do so I would have to know exactly the right words laden with emotion to tell them, all in Spanish. And I didn't feel good enough about my Spanish to do so. And so I told my best friend to tell them I thought about them.

I care, obviously, most about my best buddy, who has now returned to her home in London. I wonder how she really feels. She is still an ocean away from her island, though the same timezone, and the flight is half of what it would be from the US. She said she didn't suffer as much as the rest did because she had been a bit more detached from her Dad and the family since moving out of the island nine years ago. The rest, however, have been together on the same island for all their lives, and to lose someone you saw everyday, for not a few hours each day, so suddenly, and to lose him in such an agonizing way of waiting, not being able to say goodbye, no drama, just watching him in slipping from a coma into oblivion, I can only imagine. But for my friend, she said she felt stronger than others because she was not as attached. Her poor mother. Losing someone you spent most of your life with, all the smiles, silence, and strife, all the things you learn about someone even if you know you aren't always happy together. I remember being told of the story of how they connected first. They didn't even meet. My friend's mother looked through a book of soldiers, and when she saw him, she said to her friend sitting next to her that that boy was the one she wanted. Not particularly romantic, but unique. And how many stories, how many romantic or dramatic upheavals, real or just in the heart, ensued. But she had her children, and even minus my friend, there were still three boys and a teenage niece. When she came to visit her daughter, I spent some time with her, even driving her to the airport and flying back to the island with her so she wouldn't have to return home alone. She's a very special woman, and I wish I could be there with her for a few minutes to offer my direct consolation that would be simpler than any Spanish words I felt a need to conjure up on the phone.

Still, I am thinking mostly about my friend. I wonder how she's feeling. I want to ask her but the question seems stupid: how are you feeling? Joyful! Never been happier! Of course. Not. I never lost anyone in my family. Not in this permanent way, at least. It's a part of life to lose someone in your family at some point, unless you're unfortunate enough to get hit on the head with a fallen brick. Can I tell myself that? That she would feel fine soon, accepting that this is just part of life?

One day I will be on her warm, tropical island, saying goodbye one last time to a man who showed me his "finca", where he planted potatoes, orange trees, flowers, and raised rabbits and chickens, where in his big shed he offered me some homemade brandy, where he introduced me to friends who were even more quaint, and in many ways, like him, very manly, very simple people, not bothering to get too confused about what it meant to be a man when what you had was an island and some land you owned in it. He respected his only daughter, the only one who escaped the island, went to the most famous country in the world. I liked that part about him. He was a man, reticent, grumpy often, but he respected his daughter. He made his own food, didn't need a woman to slave for him. He took care of himself while his sons became unbearably dependent on their mother. My friend must be very happy to have such a great father. I wonder how she feels now….