Space in Mind

I've started to recognize faces on the 7-train in the morning. There's the short, awkward man with little red stubbles on his face that match the red hair on his head, much of which is covered by the ugly baseball hat he's been wearing. I don't know why people wear baseball hats; I wonder if it's more comfortable for them than for me, I wonder if they they it's cool, I wonder if they want to cover up the unpleasant smell of their unwashed hair.

There's the Hispanic woman that often talks on the phone during the trip, much of which is above ground for me, though more so for her since she's there when I board the train. She is plain looking, and her clothing is functional but hardly fashionable. From the tone of her conversation, only her half being accessible to us, and the content that I can decipher, she probably is talking to her mother. She doesn't have a ring on, but unlike people who go to work in Stamford, most women in New York don't have a ring on. Oh, I notice these things, whether I am interested in the woman or not.

I went out Tuesday night, but not to tango. Not to dance, at least. I went with my tango crush. Well, more like crush from tango. "Tango crush" simply means someone you almost fall in love with but only during the dance. As a person, he doesn't elicit much romance in you. But this is my crush from tango, the teacher with whom I exchange poetry. She wrote me a poem the other day, after sending me one from Pablo Neruda. No, she isn't interested in me. She is done with people from tango; her boyfriend is not from tango and not even from the City. Still, I cherish the moments I get to spend with her. And that's why despite my fatigue, I stayed late with her in the Village on Tuesday, listening to music. First we went to see a tango band at Zinc. It was all right. It's modernized tango music, and almost never is it danceable, and in some cases like this, it wasn't particularly exciting. No one does it like the masters and no one appears to try.

She didn't really want to go there, but one of her friends was in the band, or "orquesta". Afterwards we walked over to the famous Bar 55. It was like in the movies. It was what I have wanted to do for so long: going to jazz in the Village. This was a legendary place. In the basement, a former speakeasy. It's cozy because it was a little grungy. It was Tuesday night so everyone was a bit more relaxed and not so crowded. The music was great. At first I was a bit stiff, but my friend was just dancing like there's no tomorrow to the mix of blues, jazz, and Brazilian forrò. Soon I got off my barstool and started shaking, too. We stayed there for one and a half sets, arriving in the middle of the next to the last. We didn't talk much, but I realize more and more that forging a friendship, or any relationship, doesn't require only talking, and talking alone isn't enough. It's all about experiencing something together. I got to experience my first real jazz experience in a real jazz bar with my favorite person in New York. We hung out a bit together before the tango concert. Walked around the village in search of food, and grabbed a plate of savory crêpe for each of us. We chatted a bit. I was feeling awkward. I didn't want to. The awkwardness is inevitable when you like someone, especially you know you will never have her.

On Wednesdays I usually go to the milonga where I would see her, and maybe have the courage to ask her to dance (she's a famous teacher in New York and I am still very nervous about dancing with a teacher. I have to add "famous" because there are plenty of so-called teachers whose skills don't come close to match their title). But I decided to stay home. I couldn't afford more sleep deprivation. Sunday night I went dancing. Monday night I can't remember what happened but I ended up going to bed late. Tuesday night, despite being lucky with the train, I still went to bed about four hours before getting up. Of course, last night, despite not going to the milonga, I still went to bed just over five hours before going to bed. There was too much to do. I had to cook, take care of some business with the house, and actually spend some time for myself. Both last night and Monday, now that I remember, I go to kung fu, which means I don't get back until 9:30, at the earliest. 10:40 is when I need to go to sleep if I want all my 8 hours.

I still have to work on my budget. I need to save enough money for the next round of IRA deposit. This roof thing has eaten up quite a bit of money from my savings. And the move this year was costly. Furthermore, buying this laptop had a significant effect on the cash reserve. I also have to think about my furniture and belongings in the New Haven apartment now that I have started advertising it for the next lease, and likely it will need to be empty.

A lot to think about. The problem isn't that there is too much to think about, but rather, that I haven't made enough space in my mind to think about them. I have too much. I think this week I will skip tango, at least until the Sunday one. I will meet up with a tango person tonight, first time meeting. She's a crazy pianist who wants me to make her chocolate mousse. It's our first time hanging out. Tomorrow I will hang out with my little sister and Dad before she returns to her woods Saturday. Weekend? Maybe I will actually have some time for myself. Quite a few of the people I know are away this weekend. Maybe I will make space in my mind.

Father's Influence

A tango song keeps following me around like a shadow, or like a little child that seems forever latched onto you wherever you go. There's no great significance to the lyrics; it's another sad love song and I don't really understand all of it (despite the cheesiness of the love songs, they are very poetic and the language quite profound). It's the melody, the rhythm, what the sound speaks to me. The voice, the violin. It's soothing but at the same time reminds me of the difficulty of trying to live a simple life in the torrents of life, and the name of the song, and its central theme, is "Torrente".

On my way to Grand Central, I thought about my Dad. Not because there is still some tension between us, just because my thought veered into his world as these thoughts are busy with the house. Yesterday evening I was a little tortured with the idea of having paid $8000 for coating the roof. I realized I had no idea if I overpaid. I was rushing so I didn't make enough effort to get other estimates. I did call other roofers but they never called me back. I told myself that since this guy is recommended by my sister's boyfriend, whom I trust, the recommendation was good enough. But then I started wondering how putting two coats of protection would cost nearly as much as painting the exterior of my house.

Of course, when I was having my house painted, I went through the same thing, wondering if I overpaid, if the guys were doing a good job, if I would ever know. I don't even live in the house so I can't see what the coating looks like. I can only confirm through my tenants that there were people on the roof, that it was now silver.

My distrust of people, my uncertainty of my landlordship of the big house with three groups of people, the unknown of the house, the housing market, are just a few factors that have started to cause a lot of anxiety in me.

But most of all, it has to do with my family. I've always known I felt resentful of my Mother who pushed me to owning a house. And I always knew that that resentment couldn't go far because overall it had been a good investment idea since, practically, I hadn't been paying rent for the past five years. It wasn't completely free since I had to pay for insurance and maintenance, and I put in an additional amount equivalent to rent in the monthly payment to lower the overall interest payment. Looking back, I think that additional payment was a good idea compared to the alternative of investing in the stock market because the latter had been performing rather poorly in the past five years.

So I could resent her for locking me now into this iron ball to which I am attached along I-95. Right now I also have to look for tenants to fill the first floor before the end of August. That adds to my anxiety greatly. But the resentment is balanced by a combination of gratefulness and guilt.

Guilt that I do appreciate the extra money, which I have used in traveling and in investing in the stock market. Guilt that I should complain about my lack of complete freedom while enjoying the extra money from the past five years.

All this is complicated, these feelings, many of which remains rather murky to me. But one interesting new idea I've started to explore is the role my Dad plays in all this. He never played a direct role. He never pushed me to buy a house. In fact, indirectly he had discouraged me by complaining for as long as he had been a property owner that he was a slave to the house they live in. He always considered himself a victim, a victim who was paying for the mortgage of the house but it was really under my Mother's name. He didn't care about all the reasons that pointed to his being a co-owner of the house. He just liked complaining about his fate. His complaints grew larger when repairs were required. He always said his biggest fear was plumbing problems. The unknown pipes of a house he never really understood. The small problem of a clogged toilet would be a cause for losing sleep.

His own experience as a homeowner contributed to my fear of being one and continuing to be one. But his influence is bigger than this. My Mother wants me to be like her, in the sense of the stereotypical merchant Chinese. Chinese people have a lot of stereotypes, but one that many people around the world know about is their entrepreneurial fervor. There is a Chinese restaurant in just about every village and city in the world. Laundromat? My mother's younger brother is like that. He is very business-minded, with a very Chinese style. He is always looking for an opportunity to make money, whether in cutting costs, buying properties both here and in China, or evading taxes. His elder sister wished her husband were like that. She couldn't accomplish the same goals because, I suppose, she's a woman, and there aren't enough opportunities here or back in China for her, or simply it had been planted in her head by tradition that she could not succeed. And she married to someone who had none of the desires she and her brother had.

My Dad doesn't care much for the stress of business, and so nothing of the business. Owning a house for himself (forget being a landlord) is already stressful enough. He wants things to be simple. He eats very cheaply, not because, as is the motive of my Mother, it cuts cost, but because he can't imagine any need for something more complicated. He is not a good cook in the sense that he doesn't want to explore options. He just wants some good, simple food in his body. I remember in China he never showed any interest in anything, but I was a kid. He never went to do something even slightly out of the ordinary. He went to teach, prepared his classes, slept, cooked for us, went to the market, and spent some time with us like by the river. He had grown up in a busy and crowded city, but before I was born he had moved to the laid-back world of a village that had just rice fields and all the little critters that inhabited them.

My Mother didn't like that. She had often complained in front of him, in front of us, that he was a coward, lacking initiatives, lacking ambition. He didn't come to this country for a better life because he didn't imagine one. He came because that was what fate had required him to do. He gave up his idyllic life for a foreign one, his teaching job for a labor-intensive one in various grocery stores. I remember he had a stint in this grocery shop where he felt happy, and though I don't know all the reasons, I suspect one was related to the fact that the owner was like him, not very competitive, nice guy, unlike the cut-throats you find in most Chinese immigrant stores. Of course, that didn't last long; the cut-throats in the grocery store across the street soon shut down Dad's store.

I think I have much more his desire to be free, desire to be left alone, desire for simplicity, more of this trait than my Mother's trait of wanting to make money. In my every day life, I find myself often trying to be efficient, and I am thinking about making money much more often than most of my friends. Besides the India girl, I am the only one I know who actively invests in stocks. Most people who do investment really just dump their money in some money manager's lap and forget about it until their retire. I have full control over which stocks I invest, how much, and I read stock investment news nearly every week. I am not as diligent as many people who spend hours a week reading about the trends, philosophies, and economic news, and sharing ideas with other investors. But compared to my friends, I must look like some investment expert.

And I keep a tight budget, which also no one else I know, besides that India girl, has. So definitely I think about money a lot, and would like to think I am not obsessed but wise about money management. That part I am not sure if I learned from my Mother teaching us being cheap and money-pinching (she just had me walk with her to CVS just to understand where that dollar she thought she would get went). Or I learned it from surviving in New York. Or both.

But the important thing is it is becoming clear to me that my Dad exists in a bigger part. Looking back, I know I would have been equally happy, perhaps in a different way, if I didn't have that extra money. My Mother somehow believes, and somehow had convinced me, that life had been better off with that extra money. I, however, know that whatever I wanted from life, even if it cost a lot of money, I would have found a way to get it. But the reality is that what I wanted from life rarely required a lot of money. I could have still traveled as much as I did, just less money in the stock market. She didn't mention about the future, which is also important in this evaluation. When I do sell the house, and if I sell it for the price I want, or close, I will have a lot of money, more than I have ever saved in my life. Not extravagant, of course, but that is the point.

Just like my Dad, I don't need anything extravagant. I don't need to own anything when I know what I want can't be touched or seen or smelled. I appreciate more the lack of material objects.

But balancing an unknown future, an unknown future sales date, is the present annoyance and frustration with owning a house and taking care of its inhabitants. It would drive my Dad nuts. I am not good at managing people, and neither is he. When he was the manager of the bookstore where he still works he was being a bad manager, in the sense he did everything, didn't delegate any work because he didn't want to inconvenience his insubordinates. He let them go home early even if that meant he had to go home later. I sometimes think I care too much about my tenants. I am worried the slightest inconvenience caused them. I know most of my friends don't have very responsive landlords. One friend had that same leak in the kitchen for as long as she had lived there before leaving. Me, I scramble to find someone fix the roof, twice, totaling more than $9000. My personality doesn't fit a business person. I take risks, but in the stock market where there is nothing material, just numbers. I am not responsible for any human being, any structure.

To end this, I want to say that there is something good to say about an entrepreneurial spirit. It requires patience, faith in what you're doing, faith in reaching your goal, being open-minded, being active. My Dad was never ambitious, and I think even if you're not ambitious about making money, life needs to be full of ambition. One should not confuse desire for simplicity with a simple mind. Life should always be a journey and the traveler always taking risks for the simple goal of happiness. Unfortunately, I believe, sitting around doing nothing extraordinary at most makes you unaware of what deeper joy life offers. I don't know if owning a house gives me deeper joy than not owning one. But it certainly is a challenge for me to go through this dark valley full of worries and concerns and frustrations.

Sanity Revisited

I realized something that has been happening to me, and I realized I am not insane.

But since I didn't realize it, perhaps I can't blame them for not realizing it either. Then again, that doesn't help me forgive them.

I asked one of my closest friends if I am crazy to think like this. She said no.

Here's a man who has been made to feel unwanted for a year by a woman with whom he was on and off intimate. Then she finally said no, 99% no, until one day she started seeing some guy and it became finally 100% no.

This isn't an unusual story even if it's not a nice story.

But what's unusual is that I have to see these two people every weekend I go dancing. Has this ever happened to you? Has this ever happened to anyone you know? You have to see the person who rejected you, and then the person who took what you thought you would have for a year, and see them together, dancing. Dancing at the beginning and dancing at the end. And talking, right in front of you like you don't exist.

And you have to bear with this every week in a place in which you used to feel safe and relaxed, and they knew it. They knew this and they still made a decision to put me in that situation, or else I leave my friends I see on Sunday nights.

And sometimes Fridays, when I thought I was safe.

The last time this happened on a Friday was the previous time I told her I didn't want to see her again. She thought the reason for my behavior was the girl from Missouri. How naïve can you be to think that I can put up with seeing those two in front of me. That Friday I was so angry I even spilled my anger on one of my best friends.

Until today, I thought I was being irrational. I thought I was childish and hypersensitive.

But no. Not many people, no one I know, has the fortune of going to do his favorite activity where he has to see the two people who claim they care about him but instead remind him of his humiliation and pain. Unlike life outside tango, in tango you don't have many choices on where to go. If I have to go somewhere else I mind as well stop tango.

In other people's lives, when things don't work out romantically, they don't see each other because someone moves, out of the zip code, out of the city, out of the time zone. In my case, she is actually moving into my city, so I get to see the two of them even more in September.

Am I crazy to think I am in a unique situation?

No, my friend said. She said despite my reaction, I have been pretty mature. I guess most people would just leave the milonga at the sight of two people who remind them of the rejection and replacement. I love tango too much. But not enough that I can dance well. That Friday, and this Sunday, I couldn't concentrate. I was nauseous from anger and humiliation.

So I am not crazy. But it doesn't mean what they did was unnatural. It would be weird if they avoided the places I go to for me, especially since the guy organizes the Sunday milonga! All I say is that I have somehow found myself in a very unique situation.

But then there were the smiles. Smiles from my friend visiting from out of town that I get to see only once every few months. Smiles from my New York buddies who don't know anything about the drama with the three of us. Smiles that replace my sullen face the whole time. Smiles that made me believe I can overcome this, I can forget about them, and even forgive them for their insensitivity and tactlessness.

But to be realistic, it's hard to believe I can forgive them for doing this to me. But I need to do so for myself. My friend, who agrees I am not crazy, reminded me that whatever I do it had to be something good for me. That might mean refraining from tango so I don't have to subject myself to their presence. Whatever it takes to take care of myself.

And that included what I had decided to do with her. It's too easy to be angry with her and pretend she's invisible, and by doing so I just feel sad about us and jump back into trying to be close to her, only to be humiliated again. The simplest thing is to be nice to her so I don't let drama get in the way. Be cordial and polite, but nothing more. Treat her like a human being and not an invisible point of hatred. And leave it at that. No more sentimentality when our favorite songs come up. That sentimentality lives in the past and can only cause trouble in the future. She has the right to throw away everything we built, and the worst thing I can do for myself is to pick up those jettison and cradle them in the present.

She is spending undoubtedly her last few days with him before he goes off to some work and she back to France. How do I know that? The more important thing is I shouldn't have found out about that. I shouldn't do things that make me sad. To remind me of the humiliation. It's bad enough that they humiliate me; it's my fault if I allow myself to be humiliated.

Stand tall and walk forward. Be with people who love you for real. That's what my friend reminded me again in our brief conversation. I hope to see my other friend visiting from out of town tomorrow. Her smile has always made me feel good. She's my first tango friend from New York (though not the first who still lives in New York). She is one of the people who remind me that the world is bigger than my dramas lead me to believe, that I am bigger. The humiliation and pain, too, shall pass.

Bryant Park, Sunset

I've written about Bryant Park once, but I think before I moved here. I never really sat in the park and enjoyed being there. There was some rush to leave, probably to catch the train. I was waiting for the train, in fact.

Now I am in New York. I have the luxury to waste time in New York.

I sat there without a reason. I wanted to get a gelato with this girl or that girl, but in the end, everyone was busy. If you are reading this, you must think I am some young boy constantly hungering for some chick. You got the "young" part wrong, but the rest I suppose has some truth.

Just some.

With some pain and a long chain attached to my foot at one end and a ball at the other, I move, dragging, to be friends with all these people, including men, but mostly women. I now know three women who have boyfriends and whom I wish they didn't. But in the end, it's OK. I am not counting the French girl since I don't know what the real nature of her relationship is and to type this sentence is already hard enough. The point is, I try to be good to myself by enjoying the beautiful friendships I am building.

So this is my defense of calling up girls and inviting them to gelato.

That didn't work out so I found myself sitting on the lawn of Bryant Park. I realized I loved it. Loved the moment. Behind me was a raucous crowd of restaurateurs at some seemingly expensive restaurant built on the steps between the lawn and the mighty New York Public Library. In front of me was the lawn and the trees that circumscribe it. And standing behind the trees, peeking into the human beings penned within the arboreal fences, are the Midtown financial firms. That Girl in Black and Red works at one of these big finance firms. I walked past her building, saw the great letters, thought about her. Thought about the reasons I liked her. Thought about my regrets from being superficial and never really noticed her inner beauty until now. Thought about her seeing her boyfriend.

In the park, I thought about the fortune of being her friend.

There were lots of people on the lawn, but not enough to be a nuisance, to distract me from enjoying the space. The sun was setting, the gap that 41st Street created among the glass giants was fiery orange.

On my left a man just sat down. He had a messenger bag on his lap, his face scarred by teenage-year acne, just like mine, his shoes indicate he works in one of these finance firms, and his constant chewing of that tiny white bubblegum probably means he's got a lot of stress to release. He sat that nearly motionless for the whole hour I was sitting there.

Another lone person sitting nearly motionless was this woman about ten feet from us, left of us. By motionless I mean also solitary. Undistracted. Most people were sitting with at least one other person. And all those people not sitting with anyone was either distracted by a book they were reading or using a laptop or some Smartphone. Only the three of us were totally motionless watching the sunset. (Well, I can't really count myself since I was occasionally distracted by looking at these two.) The woman I was, no surprise, looking at more. She was very beautiful, even for Manhattan standards. She dressed rather expensive looking, but I know you can get a lot of expensive-looking things at TJ-Max. She had very long and lean legs. She wasn't distracted. Once or twice she looked at her Smartphone, but most of the time, she stared into that fiery gap in front of us. I couldn't understand what she could be thinking about. What he was thinking about. Both were motionless. Both just staring into the gap that was slowly reddening, soon to become purple as soon as the sun set. It was as if they were both just meditating, searching for some peace at the end of a hard working week in the heart of this financial hub of an island. So isolated from the tourists and families and romantic couples around them.

Being in Bryant Park was one of the turning points for my re-establishment in New York. It was a point where I felt good about being in New York. I haven't felt regret of moving here. But to say I had no doubts would be lying. I am making friends. I am learning to be good to myself. I have discovered a new passion called kung fu, as an extension to the passion of "living". But then, there's this hole still in my heart. I feel lonely even if I am always busy doing something. Sometimes I am angry. Sometimes I still get angry with those who have abandoned me by choosing a path I couldn't follow. I don't have New York to blame. This emptiness will follow me until I find the connection to myself, until I have reconciled and love all that I am ashamed of.

I said in the last entry that I am ashamed of fearing pain. Kung fu is helping me with that. The master told us today that we had to empty ourselves and recreate ourselves. It is a very Buddhist belief, fundamental tenet, actually. Isn't that what I have been doing for a while, attempting to do. Recreate myself? Isn't that what my last Yale supervisor said to me? That I needed to recreate myself? I sort of did by choosing finance. But that's not a big deal. That's easy.

Sometimes to recreate yourself is to face your demons and shake their hands. Pain I am dealing with. I can deal with more pushups on my knuckles now. I can face pain for more than a fraction of a second and convince myself I can do another round.

I left Bryant Park more than an hour later. But those two still sat there like statues. The man didn't move at all, while the woman tried to shrink herself into her expensive-looking shirt like a turtle when the wind picked up and the sun had set. There are so many stories in this city. I want to know them. How do I connect to them?

How do I do it when I have a hard time connecting with those I already know? With those with boyfriends and I wish they didn't. With those whom I love dearly but I find so much pain just talking to them? I walked among the shadows of the glass giants, and they too were tired after a whole week of trading and finance auditing. The path ahead is difficult, but the most difficult thing for me is to maintain my course and not run away from the pain that was waiting for me. Through the gauntlets of the dark valley I can emerge a better man. A man closer to what I want myself to be.

I said I want to be the best amateur tango dancer in the city (which really means North America). There isn't some contest I want to enter to prove that. There isn't a list of things I can mark myself against. It isn't some black belt thing for kung fu. It is for myself. Mount Everest didn't become the tallest mountain by looking at how tall others are. I have my personal standards for what is a good tanguero, and I want to meet those standards better than anyone else on the social dance scene. This is an example of what I mean by being the man closer to what I want. Be more connected. Be me.

Pain

Dealing with pain was a motivation for me to do kung fu. It wasn't in the beginning. But in the first class I was stunned to see others doing (and being asked to do) pushups on their knuckles. I tried, I couldn't. My bare knuckles on the hardwood floor, the pain came immediately. Not like fire, not even like a needle. It came the moment I added any weight against the merciless floor.

I remember feeling helpless when I was going through food poisoning in January. I felt also ashamed. I thought it was something not so abnormal, even though it was my first time. And I have experienced presumably worse ordeals. But something made it horrible, and I don't know really why.

Now I still can't do a single pushup on my knuckles against the hardwood floor, but I can do a few on the mat. That's sort of cheating. Part of the reason they make us (try to) do this is when you punch someone, you don't want the pain of the knuckle to get in the way. Your hand needs to not feel pain, or at least not mind it. But more importantly, like the other endurance-trainings, I think pushups on knuckles is about the mind. In the end, it's about the mind over the body. Another torture we go through, though the pain comes ten seconds later, is the horse stand. That's what I tried to do when I was a kid watching kung fu movies. My Dad would be disappointed that I, the little boy, couldn't hold the stand for more than a few seconds. The burning pain surges from the knee up the calf like acid (well, it really is lactic acid inside). Today I could do it for a minute.

I question pain. Pain itself is a feeling. It's really the mind that decides to give up. I find myself being afraid. What if I damage my tendons when I push myself too hard on the knuckles? Same with the food poisoning; the foreign feeling of the stomach contracting suddenly, and painfully, made me very afraid. I have never felt my stomach contract so tightly. Never felt it contract, period! I had stomach aches. I had kids hit me in the stomach and I would writhe in pain. But I have never felt it like some foreign object, contracting without my permission.

So today on the bathroom floor (it's not just for my naps now), I put myself in the pushup position, on my knuckles. The pain came as quickly as before. I held myself there a few seconds longer, feeling the pain and the fear of breaking my tendons. I couldn't wonder about the pain until after I gave up. The pain was too distracting, and the fear enveloped me while I was a plank over my knuckles. Then during work (and during a meeting, slightly distracting to others) I made a fist out of each hand and starting punching the edge of a table, enough to feel the pain. My knuckles were all red, but nothing more. It's that fear of the unknown, fear of not knowing where the limit was to the force I could apply.

It's always about the mind. When I was doing the horse stand in class, I wanted to give up. But the instructor told us that it was in the mind, that we could do it more. And I did it. Longer than if I were alone. That's another reason to go to class, to be motivated, to be told I can do better.

I look at my knuckles, now, when it's all normal and happy, or after I subjected it to either the marble floor of the bathroom or the surface of oak tables, and I am reminded that I don't know my body that well, like most people don't know theirs. There are lines. There are shapes. There are different colors. And that's just the surface. What's underneath? What are its strengths and weaknesses? Again, it's that ignorance that weakens my mind. I hope after another month in kung fu I will have more confidence about what my body can do.

But the little I do know about my knuckles. They aren't like my Dad's. His are all cracked and scarred from so much manual labor since coming to this country. One time a relative, with my Mother's encouragement, made fun of my hands, saying I had women's hands because even she, a peasant, had rougher hands. I don't know pain. At least not physical pain. I can't even do a single pushup on my knuckles. That needs to change.

This is all physical pain I am talking about. The pain that most preoccupies my life is that of the heart. It's a different feeling. Heart broken. Disappointment. Hopelessness. Jealousy. The pain is unbearable in a different way. The two kinds of pain aren't comparable in quantity, but physical pain I forget much sooner, and I haven't had one of those physical injuries where I have to be in the hospital for a while with continual pain. The emotional pain is more abstract, with greater unknowns. It comes when I don't really expected as well as when I expect it. But I hope that any progress I make in enduring physical pain would spill over to the endurance of emotional pain.

Speaking of continual physical pain, one of the people I was talking to last night told me she nearly had to amputate one of her legs after a driver drove his SUV to her (hitting the gas instead of the brake, supposedly). She said she was touching her protruding broken femur. She even showed me her scar (and, strangely, asked me to touch it and touch lower part of her leg to see the difference in temperature). She's a relative beginner, six months of dancing, new to the city. Though she isn't that good, all the guys want to dance with her because she's a very pretty actress. I talked to her because I was in a mood to talk. I almost never talk at a milonga, but last night I spontaneously decided to talk, and I talked at least as much as I danced. The conversation with this actress extended beyond her broken and healed femur, though that was part of a larger topic of religion, how her Christian belief didn't make her a right-winger, despite what what left-wing people think about all religious people. I was also too tired to move my legs much. I had an hour of kung fu an hour before walking into the milonga. I also talked to this high school teacher visiting from DC, whom I danced with in that Boston tango marathon a month ago. I couldn't believe I was capable of listening so much with just seven hours of sleep total in the past two days. Last night I had less than four hours of sleep. Tonight I am looking forward to not listening to anyone and sleeping more, as Thursday nights I don't go to tango. This weekend, however, will be all tango. And we will go see the parents again, with my Dad still not really warm about talking to me.

Dancing and Talking

A quick note before I go to another short sleep.

A friend told me he was a little heartbroken that he suspects his ex-girlfriend is dating someone. He wants her to be dating, but the suspicion was hurtful. He wants to ask her if it's true, knowing that it's true. For what, I asked. So he could feel the pain and be over with it.

One Wednesday night ago I finally got an email from the French girl saying she was seeing this guy. I had suspected it before, suspected something would happen even months before, seeing how he was in his own idiosyncratic ways trying to court her, suspecting that such idiosyncrasy would be her fancy. But like my friend, the suspicion was more tormenting than the truth itself. When I got that email I was about to let go, let the emotions come out, finally accepting that I wouldn't want to talk to her again. Like my friend, I would have asked her if she hadn't told me first, to feel the pain just before the catharsis.

I took a taxi home, alone, and I passed by 51st street, on Third Avenue as we raced toward the 59th Street Bridge. I remember the shops there. Why? I never lived there, and it wasn't some place interesting. But I saw that corner twice and I remember, because it was where the hotel was, where I booked a room for a weekend of tango, when she came with me for one night before going to brunch on the other side of the island. I remember things so clearly it's starting to feel like a disadvantage.

I came from that direction because I wanted to walk this girl home, the girl in red and black (not tonight, of course). She was going away for a month, most of the time with her boyfriend. But live for the moment. I wanted to enjoy the last bit of time with her in the present. We shared more. If she didn't have to pack and I didn't have to go to work in five hours, we would have kept talking all night. We danced half the time I was at the practica (the other half I was practicing, you know, to be the best dancer, etc, etc). And we walked all the way to her building. I was happy. Despite that corner on 51st and Third, despite remembering that I was not chosen while someone else was, despite still going home alone (well, to a guy), I was happy that someone thought I was cool enough to walk home with at 1AM at night. Now I need to sleep.

Sweatshop

I'll keep this short, unlike the novel I wrote yesterday. I am tired. The heat kept me awake, but also my guest, who was talking on the computer 3 in the morning. I need to talk to him about that. It's very hot in my apartment. The irony is that there's an 80-lb air conditioner still sitting in its box by the door. I simply have no time to open it.

I didn't have time last night to take care of the AC. I hardly had time to cook for the week and eat some dinner. I went to kungfu after work. It was an oven in there. Some men were sweating so much that their kungfu suit (or whatever you call it) was soaked entirely and sticking to their skin. Gross.

The elevator wasn't working, so I had to walk up the stairs, for the first time. When I passed the second floor I saw through the door that it was a sewing factory. A Chinese woman was putting things in order, standing among mountains of cloth. I didn't think any clothing factories still existed in New York. Even sweatshops couldn't compete with the sweatshops of Mexico and Indonesia, or, for that matter, China.

Then I spent the next two seconds remembering my childhood in the sweatshop. I wasn't really working, though my confused memory suggests that I at least helped. It was illegal to have minors in a factory, but then again, the factory was illegal in more ways than you can count. I remember the spindles, the sewing machines, and of course, the mountains of cloth waiting to be transformed into clothes. I remember the smell, which was the same here, on the second floor. I remember the sounds of the spinning machines, the presses, and people all talking as loosely and angrily as my Mother, the person who dragged us there because she couldn't watch us at home without working. I remember my little baby sister was there too, toward the end of my high school when I no longer wanted to have anything to do with the so-called family. The factory wasn't a fun place. It wasn't a horrible place, but it wasn't fun. Nothing to do, pretty boring.I remember my mother complaining often about how she was cheated of her wages. She wasn't an illegal resident, but there was no way for her to pursue an employer who skipped town with the workers' wages. I remember one time she even tried to write a defamation note to whatever authority exposing the illegal nature of such and such factory.

I realize I have forgotten about the sewing factory as a part of my growing up in this city, as much as I have forgotten that there were roaches here, there was suffering in many corners of this city of thousands of bars and restaurants and trendy clothes and fancy cars, and tango.

Slowly, living in New York, I am remembering the things that I thought were gone, disappeared with the new face of a city I really didn't know, only pretended to know so I could tell people I was a New Yorker. There was an article on the Times about how the weekend ridership on subways was actually increasing to nearly that of the weekdays. It attributed this phenomenon partly to safety of a city that wasn't there before. True, I would not have ridden the subway past 11PM. The train back home went through the bad bad neighborhoods that are now more expensive to live in than New Haven, have more trendy shops and galleries and restaurants. Now I go home at 4 in the morning and the 7 train is packed, the same 7 train that brought me out of Jackson Heights where the Colombian drug cartels operated while I was busy visiting my best friend and waiting for her attention.

Every now and then I saw those old subway trains with the corrugated exterior. I think the E-train is the only I have seen like that, though most of them were now the modern kind that has robot announcing the next stop. When I see those trains, I wonder where the graffitis are. There were so many graffitis on the trains I took to school, including the inside. I wonder where the heroine addict was that I saw one morning in my sleepy mode to school. Dead? A writer? Politician, of course. Or perhaps found God.

I have been here for about two months. I haven't thought much about my past here, as you can tell from the kinds of blog entries I write, most of which are about some girl or another. I guess that's good, in a way. Why let painful memories drag you down. But perhaps part of growing new roots back in the old pot is about searching the places of the roots left behind.

Besides, I thought plenty about how girls were torturing me already when I was going to high school in New York. That's never news….

Revealing Weekend

A weekend has passed and thoughts swim like the fishes of a coral reef. Many but none stands out, but collectively they are the dynamo of this weekend passed. Instead of writing about what happened, in some boring prose form, I will just lay down my thoughts, each a fish that is important in its own right but stands in equal terms as other thoughts. I am in the train now. Usually I fall asleep on this first morning of the work week. But my mind is scattered and restless. Those fishes of thoughts still swimming but more like phantoms in a haunted house without the drama of scaring any living human. It is this empty house I am describing with these thoughts, this coral reef now quiet despite the movements. Of course, I have many other thoughts, much less significant, such as why my subletter isn't responding to whether she has sent in the check, whether I am just worrying too much, about the roof, about not finding the time to cook for Monday (today), about preparing for Kungfu again after an hour of grueling class and another hour of practicing on Saturday. Many other thoughts. But right now, these are the thoughts that are keeping me from my Monday morning nap in the quiet train that is creaking through the tunnel below the Upper East Side before emerging out to Harlem. There are more than one player here, and the thoughts aren't listed necessarily in the same order they had emerged in that coral reef of mine called the head.

She's not here. I guess that's good. I wouldn't know what to do if she were here. But my friend is here, and he seems nervous, because, I can relate, in some way, because his ex-girlfriend is here. He's sweating, smiling difficultly, and there's an invisible wall between them, at the table, more visible than the one I am leaning on.

She is here. She appeared without warning. There was warning. She was coming. Of course she's coming. He's here. The man with the red shirt and dark pants, whereas I am wearing dark shirt and red pants. He said earlier that if he and I were to dance, we would look so gay. Now she has arrived and the wall around me has risen.

It's impossibly insane to not talk to her. To not even look at her. I don't think she knows how much pain that gives me. I don't think she remembers how much more pain it would be for me to even look at her. She's here, in the same room as the man who would look gay dancing with me.

I am talking to this girl. At a milonga, when I usually don't talk much. We're talking about relationships. She falls in love too easily. Now after all those broken hearts and disappointments she remains single, sort of. I don't expect us to be good friends, but somehow I like being with her. She asks me if I am going to her festival in San Francisco; if we were close friends I would tell her that the girl just behind her was my travel partner last year to that same festival, but that now, I am not even looking at her. Still, I couldn't help it. I told her that there's a girl in the room that is distracting me. She smiled and we both felt a bit more connected with the trust we are building.

"They are everywhere." My friend was referring to all the beautiful girls walking on the streets of New York. I said I didn't know what they were eating, but yes, all these beautiful girls. He's a young boy who wants to settle down but has all the hormones to drive his attention to all these cute girls. "That chick was like a pornstar, big boobs, skinny, and platform shoes." I thought, really, that's what a pornstar looks like? I missed my opportunity to see who such a creature was. We were having ice cream in Washington Square. We wee sharing thoughts about women, well, more he was sharing his. I talked to him about things related to him. I didn't talk to him about last night. I don't know why. Perhaps because he's still, nonetheless, a guy.

"You wanna wait too?" The same young man asked, next night. "No," I said, very uneasy. I didn't feel I could say that without an explanation, and yet, I didn't feel like giving one now. I didn't want to wait a minute longer to create an awkward situation. I looked at her, and looked then him, both in the distance, cleaning up the milonga, and I told my friend, without looking at him, with a mixture of shame and frustration, "I can't. I will explain later." Yes, he can go back to our neighborhood together, in that man's car. But I can't. He and I had this implicit agreement that her presence would mean my absence in his car. It's silly. It's drama. But it's there to keep order, emotional order. "You should stay and wait for him. You will get home before me."

Then I ran out. For another reason. Not just to run away from the two people I am too ashamed and angry to be next to, but to be with someone whose voice I wanted to hear, whose timid smile I wanted to see, whom I want to give a fake hard time to so that we can both smile.

I screamed her name, not only to get her attention, but also because I was relieved I didn't miss her. She disappeared after I told my friend that I couldn't wait with him for the ride home. There she was, disappearing into the night. Like me and that man two nights ago, she was wearing red and dark. She was funny earlier by saying she almost texted me to warn me she was wearing the same color combination I was on Friday. Now she disappeared.

And I ran.

And I screamed her name. Twice because the first time was a little suppressed. She stopped. That was a good sign. She didn't just wave and continued. A car was about to hit me as I ran across the deserted street. The car stopped, the driver, a tango dancer, smiled to let me cross.

And just like the previous day, we talked, very naturally, nothing contrived, nothing forced, no awkward silence.

I had to take the bus, supposedly, to get closer to the bridge before taking the taxi. So now we had a reason to stand at the corner continuing our chat. The bus was within sight, and I had to say goodbye. No dramatic hug, just a natural one you'd expect from someone hurrying to catch a bus. But then the bus just ignored me and drove past. I turned around and saw her back disappearing again into the darkness. This time I didn't scream her name.

I jokingly gave her a hard time because she stopped dancing with me after one set for the reason that she didn't want me to miss an opportunity to dance with all these great dancers with just fifteen minutes left in the milonga. It's silly, but that generosity and caring nature of hers reminded me why she's such an appealing human being.

Who was I dancing with this whole night?

Let's try this pizza place the brother of a friend of mine says is the best in New York. OK, I am up for it.

You've lived in all these places? I hate you, I want to leave. Silly, you can do the same, but don't leave New York so soon yet.

I think you are really beautiful, not just physically, but also your generosity, your overt display of love for others, that's attractive, maybe not for the superficial men like me who like playing the physical attraction game, but you don't want their attention. You're a good human being.

I am realizing what I need to do from now on; for too long I have fallen for women because of the game, the game of attraction, that I fall for their looks and for how they look at me, the game even if they aren't conscious of the game, the game of I will give you a little but you have to come running after me for the rest. In the end, they don't take me after I've run so hard after them. I am understanding what my art friend had said. There's a deeper level of attraction, attraction for the humanity in a person. Like this woman who is generous, giving, loving, to everyone. She has what I am told I have, what I know I have, those same traits. But I am not confident enough that I am attractive because of those traits. Those traits are for friendships, I have thought for a long time, and so with someone I am attracted to I don't want those traits to come out, but instead, I am stubborn, petty, and my love and generosity is conditional, when it comes to someone I want to be my girlfriend. But here's a woman who has those traits. Here's a woman I never really even noticed for the past year and a half, almost, mostly because she was a good human being, that I saw nothing "attractive" about her. And now, she was sitting before me, talking to me.

Talking to me again.

Talking to me yet again, since the sun had fallen, since the stars have risen, and now the clock says 3AM. I am in the train back home. I am exuberant that I had such an amazing conversation. I haven't had it in a long while, not since two Aprils ago when I met that French girl and we talked a long time, into the night.

Be proud of who you are, because you are a great person. She couldn't look at me when I told her that. She didn't know that those were the words for myself too.

His bike was still in the apartment. I knew she had a boyfriend, a boyfriend she would leave New York for. But I didn't care. I don't want that to be the reason we would miss the opportunity to connect. I have today in my memory, the day I spent more than eight hours just talking, sharing thoughts, connecting to a human being. I was being generous to myself, not letting those dramas and barriers get in the way of happiness. I am happy.

A little sad she has a boyfriend, but I am happy we are friends.

I'm happy there's hope for me to meet someone who is actually good for me. I look back at the last handful of people. Again, the words of my art friend, "I think you want girls that everyone wants, at least that's the image. It would make you feel good." Often sources of happiness is about finding the hidden gem, the lady that not everyone is looking for, but I, if my eyes and mind were open, could see the beauty of.

Above on the roof of her building, we looked down at the tall concrete trees of Manhattan. Not only is she smart and beautiful, but she is also successful. She told me before this boyfriend she had only three others, and long before, too. It did take long for the world of superficial men to notice her.

Before she arrived in red and black, my heart had already started beating like a wild horse. That's because the French girl was there. I shouldn't be surprised. I looked for her, to prepare myself, when I walked in. I didn't see her until I had put my guard down.

A line of people sitting, a line of friends. I started from the left and she was the last one in the line. Do the mature thing. I did. I gave her a hug and kiss like I did with everyone. I sat awkwardly in the only empty chair in the group.

A milonga comes up. How can I be sitting here already pretending she doesn't exist in the room and not dance with her to the music we always danced to when the cold war wasn't heating up. She didn't change her seat but I, having felt stupid sitting in front of everyone alone, sat next to a friend. An empty seat separated us, while the milonga was sweet and beautiful, taunting me. Can I do the right thing? What is the right thing? To interact with her risked repeating the cycle of hopes then anger. But something was becoming ridiculous. I was nervous, but I was also trying not to laugh, laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

The first song is over. Two more to go before the set ended. I couldn't contain that joker inside me; I would just start laughing like a crazy in front of everyone. So I got up and asked her. I half expected her to say no, or at least asked me what the point was. After all, I didn't even look at her in her face on Friday.

It's dangerous. The scent, embrace, the voice, all so familiar. I was nervous, I thought my heart would leap out like a wild horse tearing through the hurdles. I forgot that her man was there, DJing. I forgot that I have taken a very risky step that could soon cause another ending full of anger and frustration. I listened to each note in the music, I listened to each step she took at my suggestion, I followed her. It was one of the best dances I have had in all these years, and it was my first dance of the evening, and it was a milonga (which is still not the easiest dance for me). But because it was a milonga that I asked her, to stop laughing at the absurdity of the situation. I didn't want to talk. I just wanted to embrace her. Listen to her. Letting her in my life for just a little bit.

I forgot about the stubbornness, the declaration of not wanting friendship, of not talking to her until she's single again. There was music. There was her there. I did not want to talk. Talking would open up reminders of what I have forgotten.

I looked at her in her eyes, no doubt making her feel uncomfortable. I wanted to know who this woman was. I wanted to know if it was about ego and winning a Yes from her, or if I really loved her. Or how much of each. We danced another two sets.

And another couple of sets after.

And the last two sets.

Maybe that was all. Leave it as it was. To imagine more would mean opening wounds and creating more pain. She still went home that night with someone else. She has been reading at least some of my blog entries, knowing at least of my lofty goal of becoming the best tango dancer. I was touched. But let's just confine the memory of the evening to just the beautiful dances, because, in the end, she went home with someone else.

It was enough to remember how much I missed embracing her.

So I left without waiting for a possible ride with them. I left to join someone who reminded me that there are actually good women out there who are emotionally available to me. But I had to open my eyes. Focus away from the games, the superficial attractions. Here was someone who liked me enough to stand there 1:15 in at night chatting with me until the bus came (and went). Someone who wanted to travel the world, live the world, live life. Someone who thinks I am smart and funny. She can't be the only one.

When I stop, I don't just smell the roses that are so easily noticeable, but also the hidden lilac somewhere among the bushes, among the groves.

So that was my weekend. So full of thoughts, full of events.

Sitting there in the middle of West Village, among half-drunk teenagers, we sat side by side, commenting on people, philosophizing about life, relishing the its simple beauty of allowing us meet, every now and then, wonderful people.

But sometimes, we have walls that should be laughed at. Here we are, in the middle of the infusion of beautiful music, all I could think about was laughing at the absurdity. She and I could also be sitting somewhere, without plans, talking about impromptu topics, exchanging ideas, and ultimately, making each other feel safe and away from the loneliness that are our shadows. She said she hasn't been doing well. In my mind, I thought I wish I could be there. But the wall said she had abandoned me in the path that she refused to take. The wall said she had chosen a similar path with someone else with whom she was going home tonight. The absurdity is that two people who could make each other happy choose to do the very opposite. I had to laugh.

Now I have to lean on that wall.

A Different Side of Dad

The week ends, the work week, at least.

And here I am, in the train, through the rain, under the gray sky.

Speaking of rain, I wonder how bad the leak is on the roof of my house in New Haven. The roofer will have something complicated and distressing to tell me, I am sure, perhaps Monday. I have called two other roofers and see what they think. They haven't called back.

These phone calls and getting the news are all very annoying. Emotionally they take a toll, and they disrupt my work flow, not only the act of calling but that emotional toll distracts me from working. I wonder still what the worth is of keeping the house. Is it really making money for me now? When will its price go up? Is the wait and possible income worth the trouble? It also costs me money to keep it. I don't know if I have the time to figure it all out.

In an hour I will be having Turkish food with that guy friend of mine. The one that I had steak with. His birthday is coming up, next weekend, a week from now. He shows his birth year on his Facebook page. He's turning 41. How did he celebrate his 40th? I wonder. That was around the time he moved to New York. Maybe he, not being Chinese, didn't care about the number 40 and coinciding it with his move. Maybe he did. If I were him, it would mean a lot. Forty. Me, I have three years left. I wonder what those three years will be. Hopefully, I won't be worrying about my house, by whatever means. Maybe I will have my own apartment in New York by then. Maybe I will be the best tango dancer among the amateurs. Maybe I will be done with finance and start something else.

Looking back a human being sometimes wants to know the meaning. I haven't done that yet. I am guessing you do that as you get older. Some years I go over the old letters, journal entries, and reflect upon the steps I've taken, and the ways to go. I think about this now because I think my Dad has been asking himself this question for a while now. Specifically, he has been insecure about being a good father. I suppose, knowing him, he has always been insecure. I wonder if he has ever thought he was good enough of a father. Probably never. He apologized about a year ago being a failure, failure to put his children into "middle-class" America (by that he meant I didn't have more than one fancy car and didn't even have a flat-screen TV).

This time his insecurity manifested in a darker way, at least in a way that upset me. He called a couple of weeks ago, actually, two weekends ago, asking if I could pick up Granny again from that infernal traffic swamp of Chinatown. I explained to him that driving was one of my most hated activities, and driving in Chinatown was just about the worst thing I would let myself do. He didn't sound upset, not terribly disappointed. I felt I needed to justify this because I didn't think he would understand. Then, I forgot about it.

But later in the week, Mother called and told me how I upset my Dad to no ends, how he wept after hanging up in pain and anger, how he was disappointed not only in me but also in himself in being a failure to raise a son that would do the right thing. The right thing, to him, was sucking up whatever inconvenience I had to help a woman who suffered many years to bring us happiness. He complained that if I wouldn't do this for my Grandmother, how could anyone expect me to do anything good for him, who's already old.

I was seriously upset hearing this. At one level, I hated the face that he hid this from me, that I had to hear it from someone else. At another level, I hated the way he said everything was fine but really he was exploding inside. Furthermore, he was setting up a trap for both of us. He knew, and Mother told him so before he called, that I hated driving and hated it a thousand times more driving in Chinatown. He nevertheless tested the impossible, tested to see if really even his own son would refuse him. He never likes asking for favors, and it's not only because he's self-reliant, but also because he is afraid of rejection. He set up this trap to play out that rejection onto himself using me. Then the icing on the cake is his childishness. He said later in the week, after I called (not knowing he was upset) about all of us meeting together because my little sister was in town, that if it weren't for my little sister he wouldn't want to see me. How does a seventy-something year old man behave like a seven-year old?

The deepest anger I had is reserved for myself and how I became like this. If you know me, you know that I do more or less the same thing as I have just described about my Dad. I have inherited a lot of these traits from him. Suppressing anger, letting people do as they wish, not asking for help, and being childish. I am sure other people do this too, but other people didn't inherit these traits from my Dad.

When the anger subsided, I started to forgive myself, because finally, I realized, I wasn't at fault. I didn't choose these traits. Someone spoon-fed them to me just as he spoon-fed me the best food he could afford. Parents do what they can, and it is never perfect in the sense that every spoon is full of the right thing to do at the moment. So I forgive him a little bit, too.

I saw them along with my little sister. It was a little awkward at first. But we talked more, nothing out of the ordinary. They still needed me to be the bridge between my sister and them, the same sister I rescued from them. I was still angry, however. But with a greater concentration of disappointment. Here was the man I had until college relied on to be my moral and intellectual guide. He's the person I could always turn to for an answer. Now I see he was childish, insecure, and didn't know still how to love a son. If you love your son, how do you manipulate him to do what he explicitly says is painful for him. How do you put tradition before filial love? He's not perfect in that sense, and no father can really do that all the time. But I felt a lot of disappointment.

I also felt I had to make a greater effort to walk away from the legacy of those spoons of bad traits fed to me. Or reconcile with them, I guess. I don't want to feel dishonest with my friends. I want to be more straightforward. I don't think the Chinese culture is deceptive and dishonest; but it can feel like that when it is implanted in the Western culture where there are fewer rules and more explicit communications. I want to show my anger when someone so much as annoys me, I want to be able to tell people what I need and be prepared for refusals.

As for my Dad, I haven't decided on what to do with him. I need to tell him this, even though my Cantonese isn't strong enough to express my thoughts thoroughly. I don't want him to feel even more inadequate as a father. I guess I need to get over my anger first through some other channel before I can talk to him in a rational way.

A friend of mine wrote me an email (to which I still haven't found the time to respond, so busy) in which she stated that her Dad was diagnosed with cancer. She's one of the reasons I can speak Spanish so well. She was in New Haven for just two semesters, but because she wasn't comfortable speaking English, we spoke a lot in Spanish (she's actually Italian). Her email reminded me that parents, if you're "lucky" in the most twisted sense, will not outlast you. So while they are here, find your path back to them if you have broken the the connection. No matter how bad the relationship was, you will lose a piece of yourself once that parent disappears permanently. Lost it forever. So when I am done with being angry, I will talk to him. For now, I will rest.

Window to a Wedding

I called the roofer today, and he says the roof is a mess. Disheartening, but at the same time not so surprising. Like the flooring in my apartment, the roof has multiple layers made by people in the past who didn't want to spend the money to actually remove the previous layers before putting on a "new" roof. The roofer says it's getting really heavy, with seven layers already. He will give me estimates for different options at the end of this week. I wonder how I will pay for this. But it didn't bother me long. I take things as they come, I guess.

I am sleepy. Last night came home around 2:15 and went to bed 2:45, four hours of sleep. I have a new guest, a guy. A friend. A teacher. An ex of someone else I know. I don't think they are talking much. In some twisted way I am relieved to see that not all breakups eventually become friendships. Relieved that it's not so abnormal to never be friends with people who have disappointed you in giving you the connection you want.

I just finished going through the pictures I took at the wedding last Saturday. I like them. I still don't know what direction to take next with photography, but at least, I like them. I want to tell stories. Personal. Subtle. Not big ones like in photojournalism. Personal smiles, personal relationships, personal struggles, small ones, ones we don't think anyone cares. But of course, if we didn't care about the small ones, then we wouldn't know how to connect to people on the big issues they have.

The wedding was unorthodox. It took place on a rooftop of a friend. The newly weds managed to make friends, deep friendships, enough to be able to pull this off, without hiring caterers, without renting a venue, without even sending out fancy invitations. On a budget, but more importantly, fun. Fun in that bohemian way, without totally throwing away the old institution of marriage. The gay communities of the world are struggling to make their marriage recognized legally, but then marriage can be too traditional for the people I hang out with. I don't know anyone who says for sure they would like to get married, including those with longterm partners. One of the people who attended the wedding had been with her partner for over 28 years. And someone who didn't attend said she didn't because she didn't want to support the institution of marriage. These are the type of people I hang out with.

Still, here we were, on the rooftop with an invisible alter and a secular "priest" who made sexual jokes and said in the end, "With the power *not* entrusted in me, I pronounce you man and wife." She's the best friend of the bride. There is no mockery of marriage because they wanted this ceremony with their closest friends in their new city. If there's any mockery, it is about the materialism and formality of marriage that hasn't changed much in centuries. There were some formalities. The father of the bride still brought her to the "altar". We had to wait a bit for them to show up (walking very steep stairs to the rooftop). And they read each other their vows. The bride's was so moving that many people had wet eyes. The groom's was moving in its own way, memorized, filled with nervousness.

She made her promises. They promise to be together and when things are tough and rough they will remember that day when those promises were made. You don't need formalities to make these promises more real, more keepable. Their sincerity was not hindered by formalities that often could make things look contrived. For me, no better sign that they loved each other enough to make those promises before their friends and family (without reference to God) is they couldn't stop looking at each other. I've never seen a couple so involved with each other after all these years dating. They came to the scary city of New York together, for New York, for themselves. Not for a job or for anyone else.

I was jealous, as you can guess. I have always wanted to move someone with someone for us. To start an adventure together. To make a decision together and implement it, not because we can't do it ourselves individually, but because the sum total of happiness and value of experience outweighs the individual happiness many folds.

It was also a time to get to know this tiny clique of tango dancers even more. I had already known them, been welcome to their world before. But now I am getting to know them. I don't think I've made real friends, apart from my "date" (my art buddy) and the teacher I always want to hang around with. There was, surprisingly, hardly any tango danced or played.

Looking back at the photos I saw a lot of joy, from the newly weds, of course, but also from the people around. While we don't always want to be in a crowd, while we sometimes desperately want to be alone, something about the rooftop, about the view of Manhattan, about the sunset over the skyscrapers, about the view of the surrounding factory-converted-to-lofts, about this artsy neighborhood of Bushwick, something about all this that made us feel connected in one way or another, to at least some extent, to ourselves, through this surrounding, through the people we know. I was not ecstatic, but more peaceful. The wedding made me a little pensive because, of course, I wish something like this would happen to me. But much more than that, I was happy to be there. I was happy my closest friend in this country was my date.

When I saw the couple again (at a milonga, of course), they seemed like before the wedding. The exchange of vows didn't make them look older, more mature, didn't make them grow wings of angels. That wasn't the point of the wedding. The exchange of the vows were internal. The enjoyment with friends was an event. But still, when I see them being sweet and beautiful together, I remember the sunset, the Manhattan skylines, the rooftops of Bushwick. I feel happy that day happened in my life.

Independence Thoughts

He had a short haircut perfect for the summer. His face seemed almost gentle, a smile perfect for the camera. One wouldn't know what a face for the world champion hotdog eater (gorger) should look like, and I am not sure if the marketers had an idea, but his face looked good on the big screen, on the newspaper next day. He's not some big fat human eating machine, not your average American obesity freak show. He's actually quite muscular, without a visible belly, but then again, that smile might just distract you from any sign of that if the big Nathan's T-shirt doesn't cover up any evidence to the contrary.

I didn't see him in person. I saw the woman who won the women's competition while we were waiting for our own one hotdog (which I shared with my sister). She walked past behind us and the crowd cheered. She's a tiny woman with a big smile. Unlike her male counterpart, she was not white and well built; she was like some sort of Hispanic tennis player. How she managed to devour 48 hotdogs in 10 minutes I didn't witness because we came just as she was getting her trophy and belt (yes, a belt, like the ones they give to boxing champions and American "wrestlers").

That was how I spent the first part of my Independence Day with my sister.

Before meeting up with our parents, we walked on the boardwalk all the way to Brighton Beach, the closest beach to where I had grown up. It is the beach where my first best friend in the country, if you recall, a Slovak immigrant defected with his family, showed me his boomerang right after he opened it from the mail, flung it to the sea, and did not see it boomerang back to land. It is where I snuck in to a theater to watch part 2 of Robocop. Brighton Lane was the approximate name of the first real crush I had that lasted a whole semester. (The brother of this crush was also the person who showed me for the first time a condom he kept, of all places, in his wallet.)

I had never walked the boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton Beach. It was beautiful. Though my sister was getting thirsty and hot under her non-summer getup. She's a good sport. She's the only person I can feel comfortable dragging around doing stuff I want. With my friends, I always feel I have to cater to what they want to do and don't have the courage to tell them what I want, lest they leave me, or worse, feel obliged to do what I want.

Coney Island itself was a slightly new experience for me. I went there once before I left for college. I can't remember why I was there. Or maybe it was after college. Maybe it was much more recent, when I returned to New York for that one year, maybe with my girlfriend who came to visit me from Switzerland. She's like me, always wanting to explore things. So maybe we went exploring a place I had actually never been to even though Coney Island is a famous landmark of New York. In any case, it was different from whenever it was that I went last time. New rides, and plenty of Latin Americans, whose food stalls and markets stand side-by-side with the decades-old shops you see in vintage photographs of this New York landmark. The old Cyclone still was running, and still making that rickety danger-sounding creaking sound as the old car rumbled on that wooden frame. In all the twenty odd years since I had heard of the Cyclone, I had not heard of an accident that I had sometimes been dreading to happen.

We ended our tour of this part of Brooklyn with a visit to a Russian store, where I found these dairy treats that a Russian friend had introduced me to a while back. I got to practice my farewell greetings with a typical-looking middle-age Russian woman who didn't understand enough English to answer my question, "Is this white inside?". My sister was tired and thirsty, and hot.

I thought she needed new clothes. I thought this woman needed to have a collection of clothes beyond the thick, black, long types that protect her from the world, from human beings. So we went shopping. But it was a failure. The vintage stores in Williamsburg were, as I feared, closed for the holiday. These yuppies apparently didn't share the same profit-seeking spirit as the big chains we ended up going to in Midtown later. I thought it was a waste of time. I even though I should get a Smartphone so I could find the number and call to see if these places were open. But I remembered, eventually, that I was spending time with my sister, in whatever form, and it wouldn't, from this perspective, be a waste of time.

In the end, she didn't find anything her size, which was teeny. In the end, I felt perhaps I was not the right person for her to go shopping with. Not because I wouldn't have a clue what goes well with her, but because I didn't have that feminine bond with her that would encourage her and give her tips.

I thought, who would? Maybe one day, if I have someone close, someone who would bond with my sister. But it's Independence Day, and I didn't want to think about that "someone", because too many "someones" have come on Independence Day and have left.

We parted ways and I went home finally to have a moment to myself. As you know, I have trouble with the idea of being alone. When I am alone, I complain that I am left alone. But then I get antsy when I have no alone time and thirst for it at the end of every weekend when every weekend I am with someone. So finally, some alone time. I did some business with the house in Connecticut, reviewed a bit my budget, read some emails, and practiced my Kungfu. Then a quick shower and before I knew it, it was way past my bedtime.

I thought about who my best friends are, or is. I thought about it because of the tension I have with my Dad. I wondered who to call. I have been here for nearly two months. Really, a little more than a month if you start counting when I stopped going back to New Haven. I have met up with people here. I have gone to different social events not counting milongas. But a best friendship takes years to develop. My art friend was here for the weekend. Being with her is part of developing a best friendship. I sometimes feel awkward with her, but that, I realized, was because it's normal to feel the disconnected parts of a relationship when you're with someone all the time. It's one of the reasons I want to be in a romantic relationship, to take up the challenge of building a connection with someone who didn't grow up with you, but whom you have chosen and whose relationship you chose to build. We went to a tango wedding on Saturday, and we both got teary eyes when the bride read out her promises to her now husband in front of their closest friends in the city as well as family from a different timezone. I don't know exactly why we got teary; it was my first time at a wedding. But I think it has something to do with our common desire, despite all our cynicisms, for promises to be fulfilled at least with one person in this world, one person that we choose.

The same goes with best friendships. It's not as intense as a romantic relationship. But it is equally important. And I wonder who in this world I can call and say what is on my mind. My best friend in London I hardly talk to, though we are strong together, strong enough that each time we talk we feel close, and hopefully I will see her in September. My art friend I have done many times calling up with anger and anguish. And she has done the same with me. But like I said, we are still walking that road, and we have a long way to go. There's the friend with whom I shared the last moment of her dog. That moment was arguably the most intense moment I have shared with anyone. And I have called her up once when I was on the verge of explosion not too long ago. And she has called me a few times to just not feel alone. Nevertheless, we have a distance between us, marked by difference in personality, mutual desire for the other person's presence. I still call her once a week to check on her, which is more than I do with my family or my best friend in London. That's because I am trying.

Then there is that crazy Latina from New Haven. When I get her attention, she's great, in sharing her thoughts, in calling me out on my misjudgments. But she disappears very often, sometimes because of family, sometimes she needs her space. That's fine. And there had been times when I couldn't reach my art buddy, when she picked up the phone. I hope those days won't repeat soon, but I am glad I have someone like her to be around. Still, she can disappear. Still, she's one of the few people I could say "I love you."

I think about the French girl. I miss her, sometimes a lot. I miss her for many reasons, many of which need to be put in their resting place of the past. I do miss that she came closest to being my best friend since my best friend left for London. Despite my complaint that she didn't listen well, she tried and did quite well. More than once she figured out how to give me the right mixture of space and attention to let me feel safe with my dilemmas. I never had doubt that if that relationship had continued to grow, a beautiful bond would have been forged despite all our differences. But we could never agree on what that relationship looked like, and so there is none.

Before parting with my sister we had dinner with our parents. But I will write about that another time because it involves some background that leads to more background involving my Dad. I will also write about the tango wedding another time. This has been a very long weekend. The train ride is nearly over, and then I will start my first day of work of this shorter week. Now some rest.

New York between New York

Tomorrow two acquaintances will be getting married. The guy's bachelor's party was where I went last week. Yesterday they went to City Hall and was officially married, so tomorrow they will have their spiritual ties and then party in the evening. But then, one of the largest monthly milongas comes after and it is organized by two of their closest friends. So I guess we will all head over after.

This is my life. Building ties with people I hardly know. How strange it is. When I was here in 2001, when I returned to live in New York for the first time since leaving for college, I was by myself a lot. I couldn't make friends. Partly it was because I was involved with my family, its drama between my mother and my soon-to-be married sister, and with my little sister who was sinking deeper into her dark teenager hole of depression. I remember looking for people to hang out with. I remember meeting this girl who lived all the way at the tip of Far Rockaway, at the end of the A-train. I remember taking the A train that far, beyond JFK Airport, to meet up with her. I remember she drove a Saturn, a company I hardly heard of except for the few commercials from college when it first came out. I remember how desolate the place was. People complain New York is crowded and a concrete jungle. They haven't been to Far Rockaway.

We were friends, and I saw her a couple of more times, including after she moved from Far Far Rockaway to Hamilton Parkway. I remember going to Lower East Side and discovering that there were so many bars and restaurants in New York.

I didn't know New York. I wasn't a New Yorker because I knew where the hip and fun places were in New York. I am not that kind of New Yorker. I behaving like an old New Yorker who never went out but my past with New York was one of teenager. I remembered New York as a dark and scary place, and that night when we all went out for pizza and beer I realized how little I knew New York. So for that year I went out a lot to the city, not in the sense of partying, but to discover it. It was during that year that I took a class in photography and actually stayed in Times Square at night, something all tourists do but I didn't when I was growing up that concrete jungle. I spent a lot of time with my little sister, to get her out of the hole called our parents' home. (It never really felt, for me, and probably for my little sister, our home.) I took a lot of photos, film photos, long before I bought my first digital camera. I tested with slide film, and reverse slide (developing slides as if they were negatives). I did that when I was living in Boston, and did a lot more in Europe. It was the first time I did so with my little sister, whom I had disconnected since I left college, probably since I was in high school.

For some reason I still don't understand, despite the disconnect, she was the one I was concerned about most of everyone in the family, enough to rescue her and uproot her to New Haven. But I will leave that story for another day.

That year I had trouble finding a job. The World Trade Center was destroyed just after I moved back. The mood of the city was somber. I got a part time job through connection with my ex-boss in England. My first job in the concrete building, just below the tallest building in New York that was the second tallest just a few days before I started working. I finally got a full time job a few months later, in December, at the NYU Medical School. It was a depressing job. I worked with a burly man who was in love with his solitude. He was a middle-age geek who prided in being the only bioinformatics person in the prestigious research institute. I saw him a few years later, actually, about a year ago. We said hi but nothing more. Our relationship was not complicated or bad. Just not very interesting. He isn't talkative, but I could tell he loved attention, but was too proud to show it. I remember one time a stranger knocked on our door and showed a summons when my boss opened the door. When he saw the summons, he screamed at the stranger and threw him out. I didn't know what that was about. I didn't ask.

It wasn't the first time I heard a New York boss screaming. The manager from the part time job before NYU screamed at the phone once, with lots of curse words too. I thought he was also crying, from the whimpering in his voice. It always startles me when someone screams. Maybe that's natural. Maybe because my parents always screamed at us. And during that year as things got more and more sour between my other sister and my mother, the screaming between my parents got louder and more frequent. I was 26, and I felt I was living as a teenager again. I had to leave.

So I left New York after just one year. I realized it was a different city. It was safer, cleaner, even the stinky Chinatown was cleaner, just by a bit. It was also expensive. I almost bought an apartment there, but I couldn't afford a nice one. It would have to be two-bedroom, for me and my sister. It would have to be outside my parents' neighborhood. Too expensive. Too popular.

From an investment point of view, I should have bought one. But I guess life didn't care much for investment back then.

From the point of view of my social life, I am not sure if I could live in New York. I had no friends. The girl from Far Rockaway, I can't remember, but our fragile friendship just faded. I remember her name, Veronica, because it was a pretty name. She was a nice girl. Not crazy. Not stunning. In other words, not like the girls that I've been getting in trouble with. I made no friends from my photography class. And beyond that I didn't know what else to do. I had no guidance. I was too preoccupied with the drama of my family to really figure out what I could be doing outside work. Looking back it's funny how now I am aware of all these possibilities: yoga, kungfu, opera, and many more, and, of course, tango. A few years ago I heard about gyrotonics. And now so many people are doing it as if it were some fad among the tango dancers.

I was very disconnected with myself that year. I had just returned from two years abroad, just broken up with the last real relationship, had to tie up the dramas that accompany most breakups. Then there was my little sister. Looking back, it's no wonder that I needed my best friend's help, once again, even though she didn't plan on talking to me again. (More drama, already talked about it in one blog entry or another.) So I left New York, who showed me she had changed but still remained a stranger, remained a stranger, remained distant from me. I left without the same nostalgia I had felt before, when I returned from college or from Boston or from Europe. I was starting a new life, scary, new life, with my heart and mind placed in the care of someone who wasn't sure if she wanted to talk to me again, in a little city that was pretty in autumn but I didn't know more.

I left. And now that I am back, it feels different again. I feel more connected. I am about to make my first guy friends. I will meet up with one now, in Brooklyn. He has agreed to dry clean his white blazer for me to wear tomorrow. He's the one I went to the birthday gathering for a few weeks ago. And I will make friends with the groom. After his bachelor's party, all the guys agreed we needed more guy time, and have already tentatively made plans to meet once a month. For so long I thought making friends with men was the most impossible thing to do. Now it seems easy when I am ready. It seemed so hard to make friends that year in New York, but now I am having trouble finding time for myself. Funny how life works, when you have some patience, when you live your life for your own connection first. Maybe it will work out with me and my bachelorhood, that really, some girl will discover me while I try to discover myself. For now, I am happy for the soon-to-be-wed couple tomorrow. I am happy to be in New York.

I feel home, finally.