Someone is eating something with a lot of garlic in it. The whole train smells like garlicky Chinese food. (There's some sort of a difference between garlicky Chinese food and garlicky Italian food. Perhaps the basil.) The woman across the aisle wondered about the same thing I did. That's after she smiled at my silliness of trying four different seats before settling on one. I am ridiculous, yes. I hate the seats on Metro North trains. My back sometimes hurt from sitting in them before the hour-trip is over. I often don't have the luxury to pick seats that I want. But today I am catching the local train that starts from Stamford. So no hordes of passengers from between here and New Haven, and no hordes of finance people who prefer to take the express either twenty minutes earlier or twenty minutes later. Me, I didn't want to leave too early to give the impression that I am a slacker, but because I have a guest waiting for me to open the door for her, I didn't want to leave later, even though the difference between the arrival time of this local train and the later express is only about five minutes. Really, I just didn't want to be sitting at my desk anymore.
My sister is one of the two people I know who read my blog regularly. The other person is the "French girl/woman" who may or may not be reading it anymore since I told her once again to stop talking to me. It's ridiculous, not what I ask, but the whole pattern. The absurdity is even greater when you see how the two people care about each other. I, for one, miss her a lot, before, during, and after each episode. Nevertheless, for our own sanity, happiness, I hope we really don't have any connection for a very long while. I think connections are precious, real, and important in defining our lives, in defining our humanity. Without connections we are human only in our own imagination and illusion (and for my sister, who believes in God like I believe I am typing on this laptop, let's include connection to God as the kind of connection that defines us).
But sometimes you have to walk away from those you love a lot, maybe even the most, to find yourself again.
I was thinking about my sister today. With women I want a romantic connection with, there's often a lot of rules, a lot of expectations. With my sister, there's not really any. We talk nearly every week, on Tuesday. But that's never expected. And sometimes we only talk for five minutes. Sometimes for an hour. We don't talk much about hard stuff. If she's concerned about a blog entry, she'd send me an email. On the phone it's a little hard to bring up difficult topics, I guess. There're no rules on what to talk about, though we often talk about my niece and nephew. And sometimes when there is disappointment (usually caused by me who break appointments), there's no drama.
There have been disagreements, hurt feelings. Very rarely. As adults, I mean. When we were children, that's a different story. And when feelings are hurt, it's usually because of something unresolved from childhood, such as big brother not really taking the little sister for an adult. But those moments are rare, the the cause is not as complicated and deep-seated, for me, at least, as the drama I have with women. With my sister I never need to feel brave, need to feel I am doing the right thing, need to feel nothing goes right.
It's almost like this with my other sister, the littlest one. With her, sometimes I do feel inadequate, that I have not really succeeded in "rescuing" her from our parents by moving her with me to New Haven. Sometimes I still feel a jolt in my heart when she doesn't seem to have changed from that little, materialistic brat who expects the world of men to take care of her, one way or another. But even with her, I have a lot of peace.
Even with my aging parents, there's a lot of peace. Funny, because it is with them, it is through them, because of their failures raising us, that my traumas rose and my peace depleted. I remember all the fights, still, I heard they had downstairs. I remember being scared even though the yelling wasn't directed to me. And that doesn't count all the direct assaults against me from them. Peace was gone as a teenager. Gone were the days when I walked through the fields of golden rice that stretched to the golden sky as I dawdled from returning home in the old country. Gone were the days when just me and my sister and my Dad went to some bamboo strewn riverside and swam; well, I didn't really swim; I had styrofoam lifesavers to hold on to. I remember holding on to the smooth skin of my Dad that was made slippery in the water. I remember laughing with my sister. I remember the smell of the river, which now is one of the most polluted in the country that has made nature pay for its progress. That peace was gradually eroded during the immigrant teenage years.
Still, somehow, that peace made some a comeback in the past years, also gradually. And if it helped me deal with what I want from women, well, it's not so obvious how it has.
It probably has something to do with connections. That same theme about connections defining us, defining our individual and collective existence.
I am trying to do more art stuff, but with the theme of connections. I have to say I am stealing this idea in part from my art friend, who talked a bit about her final projects at Yale that involved two women dancing in a single suit that she made. It's based on tango (she being one of my favorite tango dancers), but it's really about human connection. I've decided that unless there are logistical and financial barriers, I will do martial arts instead of yoga. The two choices were based, you got it, on desire to improve my tango. But I think martial arts will be a better choice because I am working with connecting with another person. Martial art isn't fighting, but rather, a path of discovery of one's body and its connection to another. It requires awareness of the other person's physical state as well as your own. And coincidentally, the first tango dancer I asked about his involvement in martial art does Kungfu. That also brings back some childhood memories when I tried to imitate the kungfu fighting on movies and TV.
Before I can connect to those I want to connect, to those I love, I need to replenish some of that connection to myself. And so it's not the best idea to have a guest again this week, who will undoubtedly drive me a little batty, but hopefully, not totally insane and out of this world.
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