"God does care" was a heading on this booklet a fellow passenger on my left is reading. Probably some Jehovah's Witness handout. I don't think you can really prove that, but it appeals to many of us through simply faith. And a lot of things we do, not just in the religion realm, are faith based. Or at least requires a lot of faith because trying to reason everything would drive us crazy.
Desire for connection is more about a feeling than a product of reasoning. My claim that connection defines our humanity might be reasoned through, not sure, but so far I make that claim from just feeling. Feeling that it would take me to a more peaceful place. I am still trying to figure it out. Little by little.
But first, a small bit of observation. It is based on one of my little connections with the New York City subway straphangers (though there no longer are straps, not like when I started taking the subway 28 years ago). It was a little Asian boy. He had big, thick glasses, hair cut to little quarter-inch stubs. He has a very small frame. His lips both curve down, but thick. Mine are thick but not curved down. Still, I saw a bit of myself in him. It was 7:30AM and this boy was going somewhere with his cheap-looking gray book bag sitting on the floor between his scrawny legs. He manages to stand and doze at the same time. I don't know if I did that when I was traveling my 90-minute journey to my high school. He didn't look old enough to go to high school, but if he is going to one of the two major magnet schools (oops, I forgot there is a third one, apologies for my sister who went to that third one!), he can be one of those prodigies young enough to be admitted despite the higher chance of being bullied (yes, even in the best high schools in the country there are bullies). His glasses draws most of my attention. For me they epitomize the reason for which he is here, for which he will be. He's probably a science and math genius, judging from the total lack of sense of fashion. His family is either too poor and/or too cheap to get him lighter and smaller glasses. He's taking the 7 train this early so he's probably coming from Flushing where the largest population of Asian-Americans are found in this city (many people outside don't know that). And he is alone. He isn't with at least another geeky student, another stereotypical Asian. He's probably going to his first summer session, optional, because his parents can't imagine a boy taking the summer off doing absolutely nothing. I remember my Dad complaining that unlike in China, here children have no summer workbooks to finish before returning to school in the fall. There were Chinese summer schools that are very fashionable, so much so that I was surprised later in my life that no other ethnic group shared this interest. For me, I didn't go to summer school except when I was very little. Summer was dreadful, though, because I didn't have anything to do. My raison-d'être was school and homework, and its absence made my life empty. I didn't use that word, "empty", but in retrospect, I didn't use it only because I didn't know there was a way to describe the feeling.
For all I know, I am completely off the mark with this boy. Though I can't imagine another reason for which a little scrawny boy with big glasses would be riding alone so early on the 7 train. He was definitely not going to work at some finance firm, or else, it's a very casual environment at his hedge fund.
Connection makes me happy. Observing this boy made me forget momentarily my most recent annoyance. Writing about this boy, projecting my own narrow views on him, made me forget, too, for a moment, my recent annoyance. My recent annoyance is with this woman that's "staying" at my place. I use quotes because she's only stayed at my place one night so far. She left all her stuff in my living room but has been spending a lot of time with this tango dancer that apparently likes to massage women's feet. I don't know any of my friends who would dance with him. One of my friends say he has got this "creep factor" because he seems really touchy-feely. But apparently that appeals to the woman sort-of staying with me. The one evening we actually spent some time together was rather unpleasant. It was awkward, a lot of awkward moments. Even though we were at probably the best Korean restaurant in New York, which happens to be in my neighborhood, even though it was the first time we really spent time together since she left a couple of weeks ago, even though we both expressed excitement at seeing each other, now that we were sitting together, there was the continual awkward silence. I thought to myself, wow, if this were a date I would be in one of those silly stories of awkward dates. I have overestimated my ability to turn every awkward dinner conversation into a fun one. Sure, I have had awkward dinners before, but they were all, to the best of my memory, part of some tension, fight. Here the tension comes from the awkwardness, not the other way around. The rest of the night was strange. I didn't want to go dancing, but she was feeling nervous that she would have to navigate through the subway system alone. So I gave up my rest and risked more awkwardness by going with her. She was complaining about the milonga within half an hour because no one was asking her (she's new to the scene, the New York scene!). And afterward she didn't want to talk at all.
I don't need this. I know that. But I don't always do what I need in my life. To make things worse, yesterday she didn't contact me at all. Didn't say hi during the day, didn't tell me about her plans except when I asked her as I was leaving work. And her plan was to hang out with the foot-masseur, not sure till when, though by the time I returned home from realizing I might not have turned off the stove, she thought she would be unlikely to return home that night.
I don't need this. I wrote her an email saying that whatever connection we had before apparently is left in the past. And that I wouldn't be offended if she went and stayed with someone she felt more connected to. What I really wanted to say was that I didn't want to be with someone I didn't feel connected to. To offer my place is a big deal, and it's for someone I feel connected to, a friend, or at least someone I want to build on a connection, which is her case, I was hoping. We had great dynamic that weekend when she was here last. We laughed a lot. And the weeks after that we wrote to each other rather deep stuff, both in prose and in poetry. So I thought we could build on that when she was here. But now that she's almost half way through her stay in New York, I don't feel connected to her at all; quite the obvious, I don't really want to be with her and I don't feel she wants to hang around me.
It's annoying, but I also recognize it's part of life. Sometimes you are connected to someone for an hour, for a weekend, for weeks, sometimes even for years. But there's no guarantee that it will keep being this way. Sure, if it's for years, it takes a lot to break that connection. The important lesson here is that it's nothing catastrophic when a connection ends. Certainly, nothing surprising. There are probably reasons, criteria met, that made us connect so well that weekend and the weeks ensuring. I don't really know what those criteria were, but they probably weren't met this time.
One thing I don't what to do is force in a connection. Maybe I am becoming more cynical, maybe more reasonable, more mature. Not sure. But I am not interested in trying to maintain connections in any artificial way. I tried that with previous romantic relationships when they were ending, and the only outcome was more drama. I was told (accused) that I love drama. I don't. I really don't need it. That's why I want to cut this clean. Nothing to linger. I won't kick anyone out of my house, but I will encourage her to leave, and I don't what to have anything to do with her.
One might say I am being too drastic, that I don't have all the facts straight. Maybe. Maybe I am making a mistake. But it'd be a small mistake, and a lot smaller than the one I have always made when I tried to give a relationship another chance. And I don't think I am making a mistake given the rules of how I want to engage life. Connections are precious, and for that very reason, when they are gone, it would be a colossal mistake to try artificially to revive them.
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