Making Peace

Today was the first time I saw snow on my commute since April, when the last dusting happened. Today was the first time I saw snow on my New York commute. I wonder if there will be more a year from now.

The sun has gone under its blanket about half an hour ago. The sky is still a dark blue, illuminating the white strips of snow along the tracks. The cars that race past the train, at least those on the fast lane, all have their lights on, and from the comfort of my seat, I see them as alien spacecrafts in the sky. The commute to New Haven didn't have cars along the train track like this, and I usually saw them with their red tail lights glistening like Christmas tree lights.

Making peace is the step I am trying to take today. "Making" peace, not just talking about it, analyzing it, but rather, making it, making it with myself, with the life I have now.

Just before I started writing this entry, I realized, already thinking about peace, that I have spent much of this year being away from peace, or having no peace because I was busy in the war with the French girl. She is constantly surprised at how long it is taking me to get over my anger and frustration with her. Just this past Friday I got upset that she chose to spend Friday night with her guy than with me. She doesn't understand why I was still upset.

You can't blame her; it's been so long, this relentless war. But luckily, it is dying, breathing its final months.

What I was thinking wasn't really about her. It was about how I have preoccupied myself with tension all this year, so out of touch with peace. Watching the snow, watching the anonymous cars and their headlights, I remember the feeling of peace when I started commuting to Stamford. But I also remember the weekly battles with the same French woman. It was a proxy war with my past that I couldn't fight then, as a child, as a teenager.

Saturday night I went to a concert with the pianist, who gave me free tickets to hear one of the best known violinists play with a pianist at the 92Y. Afterward we had a poorly prepared dinner at a nearby restaurant and then the battle started. The snow was falling heavily when she refused politely and indirectly my entreaties to go home with her. She tried to make the best out of the walk to the bus stop, but I was upset. I told myself before hand to not get upset if she said no, but as always, I couldn't take a rejection. It didn't matter that nothing good would have come out of going there with such an ambiguous relationship, as I could tell first hand from many experiences in the past few years. It didn't matter. A rejection was a rejection.

Peace was nowhere to be found inside me despite the quiet streets, the quieted city blanketed by a quiet blizzard. I couldn't sleep that night. The heat was making whistling and clanging sounds, but the loudest clanging came from inside me. I spent the night absorbed in my own chaos.

The next day we followed up on our plans to go to the opera house to see a recital by an upcoming male tenor, the next star, the next Pavarotti, perhaps. We enjoyed it. But afterward I had to tell her, simply, but not without immense difficulty that it was best if we didn't have any communications at all. She stood up and was about to leave. I touched her hand without really knowing what I was going to do. She gave me a hug when I told her that in the end she needed to know at least that I liked her a lot. She said she liked me too. But without words we knew that was somehow not enough.

Then she left. This time her back to me.

She wanted to be friends. Like all these other women who somehow couldn't handle what I wanted to give and what I wanted from them.

This is how drama permeates my life.

I walked from Columbus Circle where I saw her last all the way to Herald Square where the milonga would be. On the way I picked up a lamb gyro from what I was told the best street car in the city, a block from Rockefeller Center. That made me feel better. The City, I could always count on to make me feel a little better. It was cold. My winter clothes were still in New Haven. I was wearing my corduroy jacket for the opera house. But I was sad. I felt numb inside. I couldn't understand why it always happened to me that women in the end wanted to be my friend. But I was grateful, and I told her too, that she didn't try too hard to be my friend, like the French girl did. She is a bitter Russian woman from the middle of Siberia. She knew that life was never fair, that she could never expect much good from life.

And if I am not her knight in shining armors, there was no reason for her to be in my life.

There wouldn't be drama in a person who lives with peace. I am full of drama and of little peace. I realized it slowly. I got to the milonga before the pre-milonga class even started and I felt an urge to explode, let me feelings go. There was a friend who didn't take the class and who was just hanging out. So I had her sit next to me and I asked her if she had ever been in a situation where she wanted to be the friend of someone she didn't want to date but that he refused that friendship. I asked because I wanted to sympathize with the pianist. It hurt me to see her turn around and leave.

Drama is for those who can't just let go, who hangs on the sentimental for as long as possible, making a taffy out of it just so he can drag it out a little longer.

It was good to be with my friend. She was, to my surprise, going through her own drama that she didn't want to specify either. At least we commiserated each other, and we reminded each other that in the end friendships are important, and we were the living example right there.

The turning point for my decision to make peace was this morning. On the train I realized I couldn't understand and therefore couldn't accept that a woman who likes me would still not date me. She felt guilty she couldn't give me what I wanted when I was giving her more than she could ever expect from a man. And her guilt materialized into sharp pain whenever I showed disappointment with her distance. She couldn't take it anymore so she had to cut it off. I thought that was such a stupid reason to break up. It would be my reason to break up with her, not her reason since she was the one getting the better end of the "deal", if that is the best way I can put it.

At work I couldn't take it anymore so I got myself a notebook, went up to the cafeteria, and wrote an imaginary letter to her, demanding that she explain to me why her guilt was the reason we weren't together. Why it could be accepted as a reason to break something that had so much potential. As I wrote it out, I started to make peace.

I realized making peace is not about making sense of the nonsense. It's about letting go of things. Letting things be. Not controlling everything, not even to comprehend it, for the desire to comprehend is very much a form of desire to control. I started to allow the reality that people will do what I might not find reasonable, and no amount of reasoning on my part, overt or just in my mind, would change what other people do. The best way is to accept it.

And slowly, I started to let go of the past, the future that I fantasize. I started to let go of the beautiful few weeks we had together, minus the very few battles. The images that had been hurting me started to find their places in the peaceful seats of my heart. The image of us posing for the New York Times photographer as we looked at the twilight over the Washington Bridge that evening before the hurricane came. The image of all my poems I have written to her. And many more. Many remain difficult, and just the thought of them creates a constriction in my throat.

But at some point, I was started to see the phrase I think she deserves to know, that I think I deserve to hear from myself. "Don't feel guilty about not giving me what I wanted. I never thought you took advantage of me. I always felt grateful to have the opportunity to show my love." It's true. No woman I can remember had allowed me to go so far, to be the gentleman I wanted to be, to treat a woman the way I wanted. All these women were so afraid of what I was offering that they just fought back much sooner than the pianist did. It's true I deserved someone who liked me just as much, who lived up to the erratic and irrational expectations I had at a given moment. But I wasn't focusing on that then. Having written that imaginary letter I started to remember how happy I was, how I was looking forward to writing her the poems, to getting her the flowers, or just opening the door for her. My happiest moment was when she told me that no one has ever made her feel so special before. She gave me that chance to be the boyfriend I had always wanted to be.

Making peace means letting go. It means not let the ego get in the way. It kills me to know I have failed. I have failed to build a long-lasting relationship. It kills me that a woman I cared about could just break something I thought we were both building, willing to build. Obviously, as with the French and India girls, it was torture to see them choose someone else before my wounds had healed. But whatever right I have to be angry, the problem is that it doesn't do me any good. It doesn't matter if these women become my friends or not; I am tired of spending another month being angry, being spiteful over a lost past and a forbidden future. I just have to live in the present.

One day can't change everything. I wish today I can make peace with the French girl and not let her current relationship get to me. I wish today I can see the pianist and not feel regretful that we couldn't build what we wanted. But I am not so far. I will see her tomorrow because she is coming to the practica now. I wonder if by then I will have made enough peace to offer her my olive branch. It still feels like defeat: friendship. It still feels like it is the best I can get from not winning. A consolation prize. But my anger, my frustration, can't compare to that with the French girl's even before I started suspecting her nascent relationship. I hope I am maturing in this sense. To let things go. To live in the present. To live in the present for my own sake, not for someone else's, not for someone else's desire to be my friend, to have my company. It is for my own peace that I will decide how I interact with these people who just couldn't handle my love.

Fast Mover

"You write so fast, I can't keep up with my responses." That was more or less what the Swiss pianist said. I admitted and I am admitting now that that's one of my problems in my interactions with people. I send them a million emails, one for every tiniest thought. I answer right away, as if it were a conversation. This in itself isn't a bad thing, but in my case it reflects a degree of longing for company, longing for attention.

I had dinner with my Italian friend last night. She had just moved to New York last week. We went to a bad Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. It was bad to me, and imagine what it was to her, an Italian cook herself. We talked a lot. She is the one person who is most aware of what I have been going through with women. She has known about this part of my rocky life for eight years, more or less. And so she was confident to tell me what she thought, although being Italian, she is confident to say just about anything. (In front of the waiter she complained nonstop about how much burned garlic her spaghetti had as she spooned one after another out onto a growing pile in front of the poor man.) I like her unrestrained frankness. We Chinese, and Americans, like beating around the bush a little too much.

She told me that she was worried. Not so much that I would be single forever, as I joked, but worse, that I would suffer forever. And why? She thinks my problem is I only go after pretty girls, girls who put a lot of makeup, shameless in showing skin. I realized she was basing all this on the India girl, and on that one occasion, my birthday party, where she showed quite a bit of skin, but that was because she wanted to look like that for my party. The point is I realized my friends are helpful not only being there for me, which is the only thing I ask for and is the most important thing they do for me, but also they offer perspectives that I don't see because I am not outside. Nevertheless, I have to be aware of what they see from the outside because, even with this friend who knows my fiascos best, they only see a small portion of what I go through.

Having said this, their perspectives help me a lot. The French girl the other day gave me an interesting analysis of my current pattern, which is a desire to reconstruct the pain from the loneliness of my childhood. It's an irony that when we suffer, some of us seek a future free from that suffering, while others, more complicated people, I would say, seek a future to reconstruct that suffering. The two aren't contrasts if you look deeper. The point of reconstructing the suffering isn't just masochism, but rather, there's a secret desire to see if the past can be undone by reconstructing it. You repeat a pattern hoping magically it will stop on its own. The tragedy is that you try so hard to reconstruct it that you will never actually permit it to be the exception you're seeking.

So regardless of whom I meet, I will do my best, unconsciously, to make her do the same things to me, make myself suffer for the same reasons. Maybe that's why I never have this kind of drama with my friends and family; I don't seek to reconstruct this kind of environment.

Last night the Russian pianist wrote to me about her day. And in it she asked me to call her the next day. Then she added that I could call her now if I wasn't too tired. I didn't call her then. I was tired. But also, I didn't want to repeat the pattern of super-availability. Of course, things would be far simpler if I just focus on myself. When I do, I will naturally be less available. There's a part of me that made me want to see her. Then again, I knew that I wasn't feeling the same enthusiasm I did when I was dating.

I told her the day we broke up that I was giving her space, that my door was open when she was ready. That implies I would wait for her. I suppose that's not something wise to say the moment you break up, but it's in my case the expected thing to say. That is why I don't take back the opera concert we are going to see in December. Or the recital this coming Sunday. It may have been a mistake to promise my door was open (for how long?), but it would be much worse to take it back, to break it. There's an expiration, of course. We weren't married and had a lot to build on to justify some eternal promise. But it has only been three weeks, nearly, and I can live a few more with this promise. I don't suffer from the promise. Curiously, I don't ache from her absence. I am happy when I see her. I even wonder if we would get back together. I wonder if I will be happy with her if we were together. But I know that I can't repeat the pattern. I can't be running after her and forget about myself. Or after anyone else. To lose myself and watch the other person leave me, that's the pattern. My sister told me I should have goals and stick to them. If I must have a goal in my love life, I think it should only be this: stop reconstructing the pattern. It doesn't matter how pretty the girl is, how soon I want to sleep with her, if I want marriage or whatever else from the relationship. It will all fall into play, it would all make sense, if I make the effort to stop the pattern. And the simplest way, though so difficult that I haven't in all my adult life succeeded, is to be present with myself. When I do that, I will not be answering emails with lightening speed.

Forgetting

I forgot about my little sister's birthday. I haven't checked on the emails concerning the sale of my house, or the deadened nature of even starting the sale. I am neglecting a lot of things. I don't know where my time goes. I don't remember the last time I ate at home. I cook lunch and then I eat it at work. Every night I am meeting someone. My nights have disappeared. Often I am not even aware of my absence in the house. I go home and I check what's happening to my "friends" on Facebook, see what emails I get, and what horrific news on various websites. I have forgotten even what it means to be home. Perhaps a tea alone, without the computer, just with my thoughts.

I do that already in the subway. I don't listen to music; I often get lost in thoughts watching the different faces in the subway. My mind wanders and I forget to leash it so it doesn't go too far. Many things I am forgetting to do, even though I know perfectly well how to do most of them.

Tonight I am meeting up with my New Haven Italian friend who has just also moved to New York. She is the demanding one, but somehow I have grown out of being the one that always accommodates to her demands. It's ironic that while she always complains that my problem with women is that I am too accommodating, she is the most demanding of all, even though she was referring to my romantic problems and she and I have no romantic problems. She is Italian and it is in her nature, it seems, to be demanding. But even before I moved to New York I have learned to stand up on my own and not buckle under pressure. After all, she is my friend, and I don't need to be anyone except myself. She was unhappy that I wouldn't be able to stay long in our meeting tonight. I told her I shouldn't stay late anyway, but really, I was hoping to see the Swiss pianist one more time before she goes off to see her boyfriend this weekend. I don't think that would happen since she will be done teaching very late and very far away. Still, while I would like to see my Italian friend now that she's finally moved here, I want to do what I want, not what is convenient for her. She lives many blocks away from the nearest subway. She said I could take a taxi, and I realized she doesn't know that's not something I do.

Tomorrow I will not have any plans, unless the Swiss pianist decides to go away Saturday. I will finally have a night in my apartment, that foreign, expensive dominion of mine. Perhaps then I will get to collect my thoughts, sort out my feelings. Last night I went to the 92nd Street Y to hear a reading by this Israeli author who was presenting bits of his new book. I had never heard of his name until yesterday, and the excerpts of his book reinvigorated my desire to write. It is the style I enjoy. The style of details. The style of describing ordinary things. It reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the fantasies and everyday details in that One Hundred Years of Solitude. The details, the solitude, the disconnection, especially that of the family, resonated with the chords of my soul.

I am tired of my job, less than ten months later. I am not learning new things. I am finding myself fixing a lot of things, investigating problems, most of which I didn't create. Solving problems is a joy in my life, but that's only because it requires creativity. Somehow I am feeling tired and discouraged. If I am doing these little things with requirements of little creativity but results of much frustration, I would at least like to get paid more for it. I am not getting paid what I should in finance.

I feel the channel of my creativity is all cluttered. Cluttered by the mundaneness of everyday life, by being absent from home, by fear of doing something different. Don't get me wrong; I like the time I have spent away from home. Not only for the attention. More than that: I like connecting with people. Nevertheless, I think it is time to rejuvenate the connection with myself. I was going to do nothing this week. I succeeded in not going to tango last night, to probably my favorite milonga. But I still went out last night. Listening to the writer read and talk about Israeli life, being among American Jews and Israelis, all had a positive effect on my connection to the world, my own life.

I was told of this reading event by the Russian-Israeli pianist, the one who broke my heart two weekends ago. She was there, of course. And we went out for a short dinner afterward. It was natural. As promised to myself, I haven't made drama out of anything with her, never mentioned about "us". We reconnected, through the topic of the reading, of Israel, of Jews, and about what she's doing now. She was happy to see me, it was obvious. I didn't allow myself to think much further than that. Each moment as its own event, disconnected to the past and the future. I enjoyed being with her, talking to her. And now I realize I am capable of living in the present, if I give myself the space to do it.

Morning for Patience

It's morning again, and the rain is playing drums on my windowsill. I woke up with that frustration again, though this time it wasn't directed specifically at the French girl as it had been a few months ago. On the 7- train platform I didn't see the twilight that engulfed the Manhattan skyline, but rather, those glass behemoths were blindfolded by the low hanging rainclouds, standing erect, looking like prisoners waiting before the firing squat. The sun that had faced them yesterday morning was nowhere to be found. Everything was gray.

My frustration came before my ascent to the 7-train station. It came before my eyes were open. It came sometime around the torturously slow sound of raindrops outside my window. It was new. Droplets from the eaves above drumming outside my bedroom.

I don't know where this came from. Perhaps it started last night. Last night the pianist invited me to a concert at the newly renovated Alice Tully hall for the Chamber Music Society in Lincoln Center. The music was flawless and amazing. I was happy to be there. I was happy to see her. I wasn't sure if I still liked her, but when I looked at her, I was sure. But that wasn't necessarily good. I have started to think that perhaps it was no longer a good idea. She's taking her time, taking advantage of the space I am giving her in whatever unnamed relationship we have. In the meantime, I am not sure that I can really be as patient as she needs me to be. After the concert there was some awkwardness. We weren't sure what to do. Before we left the concert, an elderly woman fell on the marble floor and became unconscious with a small pool of blood around her head. The EMS came very quickly, but that shook us a bit. Now she was going to go to the practica that I wasn't planning on going because I hadn't thought about how late the concert would go. I wasn't sure where the awkwardness came from. I sensed that she wanted to spend more time with me. In any case, I took the train with her and we went to Chelsea, where the practica was. We grabbed a slice of pizza each and both went to the practica. But there I was sitting a lot. People go to the practica to practice and they spend a lot of time dancing with the same person. When I went I usually make sure there were people to practice with. She was going there to practice with someone.

That put me in a bad mood, sitting there not dancing, knowing I hadn't planned to come. We left earlier and left together. I walked her to the train station and took the same train together. But I left her in Time Square to go home. I wasn't sure if she wanted me to come with her, and of course, if she offered, and she wouldn't have, I wasn't sure what I was going to say. Not sensing any hint from her that I should come with her, I just big her farewell. There was some silence already in the train ride. We were talking about the whole Shalit prison exchange that happened the previous night in Israel, but that was before going to the practica. That connection was over. Now we couldn't really find a connection with this awkwardness lingering in the air, the awkwardness of not know what the other person wanted, or what each person wanted for himself.

It's all stupid and it in the end made me feel strange. Sometimes I just want to be left alone, away from all this stupid awkwardness. I don't have the patience I need. I want a girl to like me and be with me right away, and if she doesn't I want to move on. Often times that didn't end up like that; often the girl wanted me to be friends and see. I lack the patience, but at the same time, I am not entirely sure what I want. I think I am impatient about not getting what I want, whatever that is. It's that feeling of not getting what I want, and not really about what it is that I want.

Post Recovery

In a few weeks, couple of weeks, really, we will need to turn our clocks back and the night will come an hour sooner. Before I leave work, I can see through the giant windows that twilight was arriving noticeably sooner every day.

I get up before the sun does. By the time I get to the 7 train platform, dawn has just given rise to the sun behind me, illuminating the Manhattan skyline. I know, soon, within a few days, I will be at the platform before the sun rises. Of course, once we turn the clock back, the sun will get ahead of me again.

Time is passing quickly. I've been here for nearly half a year now. I still remember when I walk home the feeling of anxiety over moving the car away somewhere so it won't block street cleaning, and I had to strategize it so as to minimize the number of moves each week. I remember still a messy apartment, an apartment with guests while I myself felt still like a guest sometimes, in this foreign apartment. I didn't know then what adventures awaited me, just as now I have no idea what lies ahead.

I saw the pianist Saturday when she invited me to go up to Inwood with her and get some groceries from the local farmer's market. We then cooked and chatted. We never chatted about "us", about the breakup. After that, she gave me a one-hour lesson on what a sonata was, since I saw that word in her repertoire. Her lesson was her way of feeling the relationship less off-balanced since I was helping her a lot with just about everything. After that I gave her a longer lesson on the web, on how to make things work.

After that we went to the monthly milonga together. That part wasn't planned. I was slightly surprised that, when I told her I was going to go next day to a friend who lived just a few stops south, she told me it wouldn't make sense for me to go all the way back to Queens. I showed none of my slight surprise.

How I am handling this breakup is very different from all the other times. There is no drama after our talk last Sunday. I didn't write to her at all, let alone endless tragic and angry emails. I told her, as I have mentioned in earlier blog entries, that I would give her all the space she needed. My door would be open.

She didn't call me until last Wednesday, which wasn't that long after the breakup, and by then, surprisingly to me, I was very much over the pain. And that was the only contact last week. And here I was in her apartment talking about everything except the breakup, except "us". I could sense that she was getting more comfortable with me.

Nothing happened in bed. It was, ironically, very much like before, except that when I wanted to stroke her hair she resisted. I respected her small step away from me. I crossed the line, however innocent it was. I couldn't sleep much, not because of her, just because her corner is really noisy, and we went to bed a little after 5AM. I also couldn't sleep because of the French girl. We were starting another round of vicious fights.

I made the pianist French toast and she asked if she was being spoiled again. "Again" referring to how I was spoiling her plenty when we were together. I didn't hear any alarm in her voice, no fear, just being coquettish; I said I had to eat myself.

We didn't hug when I walked in that Saturday morning. It was a little awkward despite my determination to have a nice day with her, knowing that the next time I would see her would be uncertain. But that slight cool air between us warmed up as the beautiful Saturday wore on.

After I left her place on Sunday to go to that friend's place a few blocks down, I didn't call her or contact her in any way. I was slightly surprised to see her at the Sunday milonga later, perhaps because I still had a small piece of possessiveness that partially drove her away. I was expecting her to let me know she was coming, like before. But that feeling was small, even if noticeable. We walked out together but this time, unlike exactly a week ago, I wasn't sentimental. I was tired, having slept only 4 hours in her bed before the honking at the corner. I hugged her and I walked away without, unlike last time, looking back. I have to say that I did so with some effort. I wanted her to want me. I don't know if she looked back. But I want her to come to me. I don't want to chase after her when she doesn't want to be chased. I have shown her how much I could offer. She turned it all away, but it seems only momentarily. Today she called me to check on me, and to confirm our little date, romantic or platonic, tomorrow at the Lincoln Center to see her former teacher perform. She was giggly, happy, and silly. I didn't restrain my own happiness, but I did nothing sentimental.

Perhaps I have recovered. But I am thinking about something else. There is a certain degree of lamentation in all this. I have a lot of love energy to give and so far, in every case in my life since returning from Europe, it was sort of, wasted. It was as if I was sending a powerful beam into space and it just disintegrates eventually into the very darkness it vainly attempts to illuminate. This weekend was the monthly milonga, and all the crazy tango people from outside the city come down. I saw some of the women I had wasted this energy in, even danced with a few of them. And now I wonder why I seem to have it together with this pianist. I wonder if I still like her as much as before but figured out how to control my feelings. Or perhaps I am becoming jaded and losing interest in all things romantic. It's not just wasting the romantic energy; it's also believing that following your heart and showing your love is the right thing to do, and yet, you rarely, rarely get rewarded by it, reward in the sense of a different love of the same intensity and nature.

The French girl and I had a huge fight this weekend, as I mentioned. I won't go into the details. But in the end, I realized a few things. I realized I was ready to be her friend, that I had been ready for a few weeks now. But at the same time, my wound from all the drama of the past two years with her hasn't had any significant period of healing. We eventually made up and for now things are all right. But still, today, I thought, what was all that about? What was the point? Why did I waste my romantic energy on someone that is now clearly best fit in my world as a friend. Not why did "I" waste the energy, since I don't have control over whom I direct the energy to, but rather, why did the world, fate, God, or whoever, direct that energy to her. What was the point? The lesson? The two of us have expended immense emotional energy in fighting each other just to build the close relationship we finally have now. What a waste!

This, of course, is nothing compared to the drama with Rose, over more than fourteen years. And it's not like I will get wiser and fall for the right girl next time. You never get to choose whom you fall in love with, so there is no lesson to learn. The lessons are in how to deal with people, how to connect with yourself during these times of wasting energy. I have yet to see deeper about these lessons.

There is a part of me that wants to get excited about seeing the pianist. I don't know if I am simply no longer as excited as before or I am being much more careful. It's still too early to tell. For now, I want to get to know her. Just as I want to connect deeper with the French girl, as well as other elements of this new life in New York City. I will try to remember to do the same with myself.

Taking Space

I saw a picture posted by someone on Facebook that says something like, every human relationship is difficult, it's a question of which is worth keeping.

Every morning I emerge from the subway and hear a newspaper seller shouting something incomprehensible behind me as I rushed to the train track. That is familiarity. It is part of my routine. The memory of traveling from Washington Heights through Harlem in order to get to the Metro-North station still remains a little bitter. It was becoming a routine and now that routine has ended.

What is worth keeping? Part of the problem with pack rats like me is the irrational desire to keep everything.

Part of the problem with irrational behavior is that it's hard to know when it is irrational and when it is not.

The Swiss pianist organized a very nice little concert. For me, at least, very avant-garde (if that word isn't too cliché now) classical music. I was very touched. In any case, she shared with me a poem that she had written a while back, inspired by a piece by a composer I had never heard of until I met the Russian pianist, who has a piece by him as part of her repertoire. Scriabin. Reading the background of the poem and the poem itself, I realized I didn't know a lot about the Russian pianist that I would have liked to know. I never asked her about the pieces she played, what they meant to her, their relationship to her as a musician, the historical and present relationship. And while too busy writing her poems, I never asked about her poetic side. During the breakup talk (the one after I stormed out of her apartment), she told me she has actually a lot of emotions but that she devises ways to protect her lover from those emotions. I never tapped into that. I was too busy figuring out when the next time it was to see her, how often we were seeing each other, and what it all meant to me.

I don't need to be so harsh with myself. I found out a lot about her Jewish background, her ideas about being a Jew and carrying the legacy of persecution and survival. But that connection markedly faded a few weeks after we started dating. In the final two weeks I can't remember what our connection was. We cooked and ate together. We talked about tango. Surely there was more, but nothing as memorable as the connections we made earlier.

Time and patience. And what to do with the space that time and patience yield. I am not entirely sure what I was rushing to do. Perhaps I wanted her to get me to some ideal place in life, like being married, having children, or simply be in a relationship carved in stone by my imagination. I was rushing to something whose form and shape I didn't really know; there was just the insatiable need to attain that goal. And in the growing rush, that space I needed was shrinking. And without that space, the connection between us devalued or disappeared. What do I do with this space? It is for me, of course. To see what I can do for myself. What I can do to enjoy the road to whatever posts of goals there are in life. And from this space, I listen and not demand. I would listen to her relationship with Scriabin's music. With other music, and then, perhaps, I can finally begin to understand her interpretation of the music on the keyboard.

But what am I saying. None of this is likely to happen. What is important is that I learn to take that space. Next time I feel the connection between me and a girlfriend is fading, it's a good time to look inward and see if the reason is my own disconnection. It's a good sign that I am again at my old pattern, giving away myself too fast and too much, hoping someone else will take me to where I think I've always wanted to be instead of savoring every cobblestone that I lay on the path toward that end.

Recovery into Self

It hasn't been a week yet. Just half, I guess. My recovery, comparing to the past ones, has been quick. It's still hard to not think about the beautiful memories we built and what I wanted for our future. The leaves are changing colors quickly, as if taunting me with the defunct desire to spend the autumn days with her. Nevertheless, I am sleeping fine, functioning fine. I am almost as bothered by the memory of seeing the French girl leaving with her guy than with the pianist.

She called me today. Just like the email we didn't talk about "us"; we just updated each other one what we have been doing the past few days. She asked if I was going to the concert organized by the Swiss pianist tonight. She told me that a common friend of ours went to this opera that she knew I had been dying to see; she said the friend thought it was great. But she stopped short of asking if I wanted to go with her. She did invite me to a concert next Tuesday of her former professor. And she wants to exchange Russian lessons for some computer lessons that would help her with her online self-marketing tasks. I didn't know how to take all this. I wasn't jumping for joy with hopes that she might come back. Perhaps it's because I have healed enough. Perhaps it's because I remember how I did that with the India girl after she started making plans with me a few month into our breakup. How I was excited and hopeful.

It hurts me to think that she would, like all the others, want to be just friend. At the beginning it didn't feel like it. She was giggling a lot, either from nervousness of talking to me for the first time since Sunday, or missed my company that often gave her so much joy. I know I can't be her friend forever. I am not interested in it. I am healing rapidly enough to know that life wouldn't be so bad if I never see her again.

On that front there's not much more to say.

I am going to the concert organized by the Swiss pianist, as I said. She won't be playing, but I am curious what kind of music she has put together. It will be something crazy but still classical. She herself is having some trouble with her boyfriend. Last night we shared a cab together (it was more like she shared a cab with me to Queens and then paid the remaining trip back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn; she likes my company). Her boyfriend is a Mainland Chinese living in Boston and is apparently becoming more and more possessive and self-centered. They had only been dating for about half a year and they are very serious. She's always been a contrast to the other pianist; although they both had a really rough time in their own ways with men, the Swiss is seeking something serious even more now while the Russian doesn't feel she is ever going to be ready. And so the Swiss pianist is serious about this guy and they see each other every weekend. They even went to Switzerland together. When I heard her say this I thought they had been together for years. But no matter how crazy you are and how intense the relationship is, time is always a factor in getting to know someone, and tango has a way of accelerating that. So half a year later she is finding his possessiveness very troubling; she's very worried about their future. I thought again how sometimes life really is easier when you're single.

Tomorrow I will see the folks, for the first time in a while. Without kung fu I do have more time. Of course, without dating I have even more time. Last night I went dancing after having dinner with the Swiss pianist in Brooklyn Heights. I sang our way to the milonga and she, as a musician, was quite impressed. It's a lot less dramatic being with friends. I had some nice dances after practicing for an hour. I have decided that I would stop dancing once I get tired. There is no more need to struggle on for the sake of being in a milonga. That is an important turning point for me, helps me take things a little lighter.

First Contact

Short sleep, but it was sleep. It was short because I went dancing and then I decided to get up early to catch the earlier train. The previous days I'd been catching the later train, arriving a little after 9AM. I went not so much dancing as practicing. By the time evening had arrived I was already feeling depressed. It was difficult trying to practice and not sink behind that curtain I spoke of in the last entry.

On my desktop is a picture I downloaded from the New York Times. I've mentioned this. It is the picture of the George Washington Bridge, sunset, before the the hurricane. It was the first time I was invited to her castle overnight. It was one of the many signs I took as an encouragement that this relationship might just work, might be different from the previous. I think I need to put this picture away, as a compromise between leaving it there as a tormenting reminder or deleting it with fury and resignation.

Because she hadn't ever stayed at my place, there isn't any memorabilia from her I can bump into there. But my computer is full of her stuff. It is a sign of connection, I guess, one that has ceased to exist.

Or perhaps not. She wrote to me. I found myself neither excited nor fearful. My only feeling was caution.

At the practica last night I didn't want to think about what had happened on Sunday. But my mouth was bigger than my heart sometimes. I asked one of the people if she thought I felt different on Sunday when we had last danced. She said I was softer, and asked me why. She showed me her sympathy when she found out; I wasn't sure if I felt more sympathized; I am not sure why I told yet another person. I had spent the evening alone before the practica. I had the opportunity to meet my tango buddy, who offered to have tea. But I felt I needed to be alone. It's great to have friends and a sister who opened their hearts and offered their company, but at some point, I have to stand up alone.

It didn't help, of course, seeing couples around. One of the teachers there to help with the practices was with his long term girlfriend. As I was leaving I saw him give her a little kiss on the cheeks. It stung me; just a few days ago I was giving someone I liked a lot a kiss on one of her cheeks. It didn't help that the French girl was there with her guy, whose relationship together is becoming less and less discreet. They were leaving together, and I didn't want to have anything to do with them. I didn't want to be rude to her because she has been one of the most important elements of my support group, and without a doubt the one who had given me the most attention in terms of time. I wanted to leave earlier so I didn't have to see them leave together, but that was not meant to be. My consolation prize was not to see them walking alone outside.

I was happy to see one of my New York friends who had been away (with her boyfriend) on vacation in Cyprus. I didn't have time to chat with her because of my back-to-back practices. Right now I just want to be surrounded by supporting faces, even if they don't know what happened.

Despite all this, it couldn't have been so bad. I slept without interruption. I slept peacefully even after getting that email from the pianist. She mentioned nothing of Sunday, and the closest reference was the subject of "How are you?" I wanted to sound upbeat while being careful not to seem to be attempting to reach over into her space. I am not certain that I have accomplished the latter part of this goal. I realized my uncertainty is a sign that I wasn't ready to talk to her normally. She simply gave me an update on what was happening to her since Sunday (we really have just missed each other two days). She thanked me for the few things I did that Sunday before we parted.

I have memories of visions and thoughts from the experience with the India girl because there are some similarities between the two breakups that reflect problems with how I handle such breakups. It's hard to describe because I haven't fully figured out the problems. I remember, just as with the pianist, how the India girl was so sad but determined about stop dating me. That mixture of sadness and determination frustrated me. And soon after the breakup, she wrote to me, asking how I was doing. And then after some unnecessary drama, or perhaps necessary for this next step to happen, we stopped talking completely, during which time I was very depressed. Back then I didn't really have a big support group. Really just my best friend, who was in England and who probably had a hard time being supportive to a man whom she finally wanted after many years of rejecting him, but only to find him running for someone else (different story, not going to go into it now). And there was my Italian friend, the one who is about to move here in just over a week.

And after that respite of a few months, the India girl wrote to me and started talking to me. I guess the problem is that she couldn't take my attention, which sometimes felt like intrusion, or too much love. I don't know. But once she got away from it, she missed it. I was her best friend, on par with her mother, who was probably her only other person in her lonesome life that she had felt free to turn to. She was writing to me as if we hadn't broken up. She was looking into cheap tickets to Hawaii and had thought about me as company. In retrospect, I don't think she was thinking about the trip as something romantic.

Sometimes I feel I am so disarming for a woman that she gets confused about her feeling of attachment to me. And even after she vows to stop dating me, there's a big part of her that wants to be with me. Often times she calls it friendship. Of course, I call it cowardice. And I understand why now: I didn't "disarm" you on purpose; it is my personality to make you feel comfortable being with me, being in your own skin. But intention is unrelated to this disarmament; I do the same with someone I want to be friends with or want to date. And you should know better because ever since my ex-best friend from high school, I always make it very clear my intentions, and it is not up to you to decide that we are now going to be friends.

All these women have put up a fight to convert me into a friend, but it's harder than converting me into some religious person. All but one have given up and they are no longer people I talk to. The exception is the French girl, who still insists and is very patient and optimistic about it. So despite showing off more than more that she's in a relationship, she is still chasing after my friendship. I don't know where this friendship will go. Often times my feelings are embittered by the knowledge, forget the actual witness, of her relationship. And I can only get more frustrated and upset if their relationship becomes more open.

She knew I was feeling sad last night and tried to comfort me. But I told her, indirectly, that she could tell me that because she was, unlike me, not going home alone. The memory is still quite fresh: the memory of hoping she would be my New York girlfriend after I moved to New York, that we would be coming home from milongas together. When I was looking for an apartment I had her in my mind, in my plans. It is no surprise that I almost didn't shake the hand of her guy last night when he offered it before taking her home.

I don't know if it was a mistake to write back to the pianist. I don't want her to think now we can be friends. We weren't together long enough for me to be her best friend, but there was a lot of connection that I am sure she, just as I, didn't want to lose. Nevertheless, it would be another example of selfishness if she wants to pick and choose, pick the connections for a friendship without having to date me. The French girl did the exact same thing and I want that to be the last time to happen in my life. I may not be able to choose the kind of relationship with a woman, but I can choose not to have certain kinds of relationship. The veto is always within me.

Bumpy Recovery

The second night was far better than the first night. Perhaps five weeks, or even six if you count from when the romance started, was perhaps really not that much. The French girl said that I am hurting because I built up all these feelings and all these hopes for the future, so when they come crashing down, it feels a lot worse. She's right, but I somehow don't think I would have done any differently if I had known about this little simple rule. I behave as my feelings dictate, and, as a few of my friends say, that is something to be proud of, that is something many human beings are incapable of doing.

Still, I was hurting in the 24 hours since the pianist dropped the bomb on me under the George Washington Bridge. The sense of hopelessness, guilt, frustration with myself, poured through my body and heart like the roaring Hudson River on whose left bank that bomb was dropped. The anti-poetry of the situation can't escape my mind: we started out in the cloudy, misty day of the hurricane's tail, and ended it on a hopeful Indian summer so full of sun and smiley people on the same bank of the same river.

Nonetheless, last night was far better. I woke up before the sun, but then again, it is October already. I woke up a little before 7AM. That is an improvement from the 5AM that began many alternations of bizarre dreams and sitting up surfing the web for answers. For what answers? Something to make sense of all this when my mind was incapable of making sense of anything.

Last night I talked to my sister and everyone of my friends that I told about my unpleasant Sunday afternoon. I was tired by the time I returned the last call. But everyone made me feel more secure in one way or another, and each had a different perspective to offer. In every difficulty, there's the opportunity to learn something about myself, as I mentioned in the brief blog entry last night. And it's obvious that I learned again how caring my friends are, how great a person they see me. This reaffirmation of the love I am surrounded with is so far the most powerful counterbalance to the loss of all the love I have given away and I would have given away. I initially felt shameful that after telling every one of my closest people I was dating someone special to me, the relationship was over. But instead of shame, I felt love. So perhaps it is fine to share my joy with them, and when that joy is gone, they won't be shaking their heads with an I-told-you-so.

This morning I woke up feeling surprised, a little, that I have recovered so soon. But it's not a full recovery. I didn't feel the pain so much, barely, really, but then I couldn't stop thinking about her. I wondered if she thought about me. She must have. She was on Facebook, with that green light on. We never chat on Facebook, something I hate doing in general, and so I wasn't thinking about talking to her, but that green light was almost glowing, as if the devil had animated those pixels.

I thought about her and started imagining a letter I would write to her. I wanted to tell her that it didn't make sense to just end it like this when she still liked me. It was more a matter of figuring out a simple solution. If she wanted space, we can just agree to see each other less frequently. Be disciplined about it. It would be a shame to throw away what we had built and what we would have gained.

But who was talking? Who was devising this letter? I wondered if it's part of me that is scared to lose what might be the only chance left for happiness. That would be the irrational part. My tango buddy said that I had everything to be the good man a woman would want. I didn't need to be better at anything. What keeps me from being with the right woman is the disconnect within myself, but nothing that someone else would want. And remembering that is where I stopped imagining that letter to the pianist. It is not about her, not about her readiness, her walls, her inability to really love and be loved. It is about how I am disconnected with myself, failing to take care of myself, failing to give myself the space. When I know how to give myself space, which is yet another manifestation of love, it would be natural for me to give space to the person I want to love.

Right now, less than 36 hours after the Hiroshima by the Hudson, I should stop thinking about her and start the journey back into my heart, that inner journey the French girl calls "The Mission." The mission to rediscover that beautiful person that somehow all my truest friends see but I don't. I start out today with a lot more optimism. I hope I don't drift back into whatever road of mistakes that would bring back recurring suffering with this pianist. However, at this stage I miss her, and I do wish that she would come around and take little steps toward me. But I have a feeling she is too stubborn to do that, too fatalist, too easily giving up on relationships. And to be good to myself, and to her, I have to stick to my promise to her that I would give her space.

So that was the morning, very optimistic. Why not? It was really just a five-week relationship. We held hands, we cuddled, but not much more. So not much to miss. I should just go on with life. Easy. But then the day started to roll out its carpet of memories and dashed hopes. I started wondering if she would text me. At the weekly group meeting, I saw the tips of the trees outside turning red and remembered that she wanted me to take pictures of her for her marketing material in the fall colors. That is now just an echo from the past. And then I remembered how she often would call me up around 5. I would be anxiously waiting for her to call and be so happy to see her name on the phone. That wasn't going to happen today, and not going to happen again. Still, when 5 o'clock rolled around, I let my last remaining hope puncture my nerves. Throughout the day that familiar feeling hang in my head, like a stinky wet shirt that never dries in the humid air. It is the feeling of despair. It is very familiar. It was there when the French girl told me she was with someone else, when the India girl left my house (twice!) after saying it was over, whenever someone left me. It is as old as when I was in the old apartment of my parents before we all moved to a house they bought. The feeling of the sun being eclipsed by something impalpable, something dreadful. I remember being in the old house and feeling afraid. Afraid of being alone. The demon of loneliness was my only company. I am not sure where my sister was. I was just alone. And at work today, that curtain was there, blocking out the morning sun that made me feel so optimistic that I thought perhaps the recovery succeeded.

She, of course, didn't write me an email. But there's nothing to say. I am smart enough to know that it is impossible for her to change her mind, and even if she did, it would be bad for us for the reasons she had said, the same reasons I have elaborated. I have to stop wondering about her, and start figuring things out with myself.

One more point is about charm. Not mine, since I am not aware of it much. One of the reasons I am afraid of losing someone is I feel I am losing the effect of that charm on me. Whether it is the charm of a Southern voice and posture, or the charm of French humor and way of seeing life and food and wine, or now, the charm of the piano keyboard, the charm of a Jewish background, the the attractiveness of Israeli life, I am afraid when things end I will not have another chance. I was half joking with the Swiss pianist that she should find me a nice, single musician (I didn't say pianist since she would instantly figure out who it was that dumped me). I miss the sound of piano while I fall asleep in a nap. I miss how she plays the piano, with so much enthusiasm, love, that dance with the beautiful machine. I want it back. I know that the rational thing is to just love the experience I gained, feel grateful that life exposes me to all this amazing experiences led by charming women. Now I am not crazy about finding a Southern Belle, or a French girl with that sexy voice and charming sarcasm. And so this obsession with musician may simply pass as well. But for now, I miss her. I can only wonder how long this will last, considering how quickly I am recovering.

Before Sleeping

Before I go to sleep, a summary.

After wallowing in a lot of pain, sending a million messages of agony to, don't hold your breath, a friend, and not the pianist, I felt better. I could face the sun. I went outside, to the train, and ended up in Union Square, waiting for the Swiss pianist. We had a blast. Lots of laughter coming out of making fun of the situation. I was entering my "anger phase", but it was very much ridiculed. My life was a comedy show on display.

We went to Chinatown for what we thought would be free ice cream from the famous ice cream factory. No deal, but the girl treated me to it. We found ourselves in Columbus Square, where a whole bunch of middle-age to old Chinese people were doing lots of stuff: opera singing (Cantonese opera), instrument duals, Chinese chess, cards, and some sort of dance. Very happening place, made the Swiss pianist very happy. She has dated a bunch of Chinese guys, including the boyfriend she has now, and somehow none of these people told her anything about Chinese culture. It's very rare for me to find someone who is interested in Chinese men before they meet them.

After that I went back almost to Union Square and did yoga in NYC for the first time. Very liberating. At the end, when we were doing the "corpse pose", lying there in the dark very still, the instructor read out loud some passage from some Hindu prayer, I guess. It was something about difficulties in life, that in each difficulty there is the opportunity to learn something beautiful about ourselves. I was starting to learn about myself through this unpleasant difficulty.... Her words helped me put some perspective in the matter.

To show you how I was already recovering, I went into Strands Book and bought a real copy of the story the pianist (the "ex") had inspired me to read. She told me how all these poems I was writing to her made her feel like Margarita in "Master and Margarita". I instantly looked and found that book online and started printing out pages and pages to read. I lost interest last night, in Russian, in that book, as well as anything Jewish and Israeli (I wrote a whole blog last week just about how those things had always connected to me since I moved to this country). But after yoga I decided to get the book to continue reading it.

Then I met up with my tango buddy and we chatted over sushi. She always knew how to reinvigorate my self-esteem, how to genuinely tell me what an amazing guy I was. All the while the French girl was texting me and calling me, to check on me and try but failed to arrange for us to meet. In the end I called her and we talked. It's unexpected for me to be sharing with her something so painful but also very reminiscent of our own drama. It was helpful. And after that a whole lot of other people called, three more. Basically, everyone I reached out to called me back. I felt lucky. What happened to me was unlucky. I again got involved with someone who was emotionally unavailable to me. But what I was lucky about was having amazing friends and family to back me up when crap hits the fan.

Now I am going to catch up on some sleep!

Confusion at the End

I am in my unlit living room.

I am thinking, wow, I am alone here. She was here three weeks ago, right before I sent her an email that jolted her to start a train of thoughts that finally made her believe we aren't a good match.

That's what she told me under the Washington Bridge today. The same place where we started our relationship. It was a coincidence. That day was a rainy one, at the tail end of Hurricane Irene when she devised to get me to stay at her place. That was the weekend before Labor Day.

It has been a short but extremely intense five, six weeks. But that is the symptom of the problem.

She is someone who needs a lot of space. Things in her life are always upside down, thrown into chaos constantly, and at the same time, she has always had to juggle her problems alone, very independently. And emotionally she had to always shield herself from whomever she's dating. And this makes it very hard for her to connect to someone in the beginning. This is what she tells me, and I believe it.

While there I came, wanting to break down all her walls. I see all her problems, all her struggles, and I wanted to help her with all of them, whether she wanted me to or not. And she probably didn't want me to because she isn't used to anyone helping her. She has told me multiple times that I have "spoiled her." Not only with practical help, but also showing her how a man can really love her. It's not something she's used to since 2001 when her the dissolution of her last serious relationship left her devastated, and all the men since then have treated her far less than the woman she deserved. I spoiled her, and that shocked her and pushed her into a retreat.

That's what she said.

But what I also realized was my own pattern of misbehavior. This conclusion is with the help of that French girl, who experienced this pattern herself when I was with her. When I am crazy about someone, I forget about myself. I go doing everything for that person, make that person the center of my world. The French girl's complaint is that by doing so I don't give a chance for the girl to get to know me. That's true again in this case with the pianist. But one other major problem is that I keep taking space from her, not letting her breathe. Not only does she not get a chance to get to know me, but also she starts to become a stranger to herself because the network of her world was now being eaten away by my uninvited help. She needs space and I was not only failing to give it to her, but also taking away what she had before.

So she told me in the sunny sky under the awesome bridge that we weren't a good match, that she was convince of it. The final trigger for her conclusion was a reaction to an email I sent last Thursday that detailed a plan I had for this long weekend, how we would spend time together outside the city, etc, etc.

Mind you, this is a plan for two people who have only started dating a month ago. It has been an intense month, but the intensity didn't make her feel more intense about me, which might have justified such an elaborate plan for a long weekend.

I was devastated to hear what she said, even though part of me was not surprised. I have indeed been feeling the strain of the imbalance of feelings in this relationship, and lately, I have been feeling her apathy more and more. And now it made sense. Not only was I making her feel inadequate with all my help that she couldn't "pay back", but when I showed any sign of complaint, like with that whole intimacy problem, and now her refusal to go to this long weekend trip with me, her guilt of this imbalance was justified.

That was what she said to me; she didn't want to continue feeling so bad about the imbalance of the relationship. She said that although I always said "I like you", she knew that I really meant I was in love with her but that I was afraid such words would scare her away. That's when I realized how I have been lying to myself. Not just for her sake, for mine.

There wasn't much we could say, or that I could say. I am not for changing anyone's mind. I accept my fate. There was a few minutes of silence. I was plucking off blades of grass and breaking them. I couldn't look at her.

We walked back up to her place I had called the Castle a few weeks ago. It was a painful walk. And I started feeling really guilty. I felt I have made the same mistakes again. I thought about the French girl, about her warning. I realized I have been like this since I can remember.... Since when? Since Switzerland. I show my love in the way of unsolicited help, of getting into someone else's space. And in the meantime, I forget who I am, I forget to build myself.

I asked her if she liked me just as a friend. She said yes. I was devastated again.

In her apartment, I gathered the stuff I have left there over the past few weeks. Some clothes, some kitchen stuff. Memories, bitter now, memories of the fun we had together, the connections we built. Now there was no connection. I was just trying to finish the last bit of this relationship by finishing up a few things I was doing for her. I made sure she didn't give me anything. I wanted to remember nothing about her. No reminders. When she started to play, I begged her not to play anything. I was leaving soon, and playing would sadden me a lot. That point I could hardly hold my tears.

After I finished what was needed, I picked up the bag of belongings, along with the bag I brought with me, and walked out the door. Just before walking into the elevator, she asked if she could at least give me a hug. I said to her, "No, that would remind me how you just want to be friends."

I have something against becoming friends with someone who just dumped me, and not just anyone, but someone I liked a lot, and in her worlds, someone I was in love with. How can I not be in love with someone who plays the piano, who had shared so much with me?

After I left the front door of her building, and feeling absolutely devastated, I turned around and rang her apartment bell. And the next thing I knew we were embracing like, well, like a bad novel would have, I guess.

Embracing as friends with a very complicated connection. But the important point is that there is a connection, finally.

She asked me to come in and talk. She just wanted to talk a bit.

The embrace was the starting point of a connection.

But that wasn't the reason I came back. I told her that. And I proceeded to telling her why I came back. I wanted her to tell me in my face, and this time I wanted to look at her, if she really just saw me as a friend. She hesitated, not sure if that was out of amazement that I was so deaf, or if she wasn't sure. Then she repeated that it was true, she only saw me as a friend. "So like any other of your friends? You don't find me attractive?" I inquired. She gave in and said, "Of course not. I find you attractive!"

That didn't change matter, of course. That didn't change what was said above, how we aren't a good match, how we weren't giving each other what the person needed.

I was taken back to the world of the India girl. She told me similar things: I was a great person, an amazing person, but she constantly felt inadequate, felt I was giving a lot to her but why should I when I got nothing back from her.

And she said something else too: that in reality, despite everything I was giving her, I wasn't giving her something she was looking for, that no one was.

This was the same case again. I wasn't giving her space. I wasn't her savior to get her out of her emotional barriers. She believes the only savior was herself.

I got what I wanted: to hear that she still liked me. I am not sure what good that did, really. The outcome remained the same. We were no longer together.

But I told her one thing in response. I said, "I like you a lot. But I will give you the space you need. And whenever you're ready to take a step toward me, my door is open."

That is the conclusion I actually drew yesterday while I was on the beach alone. Going to Fire Island was part of that insane long-weekend plan. Now I was implementing that part of the plan alone. I had many hours swimming in the sounds of the ocean and the winds that competed with the sound of the waves. And in the end I concluded that for my own happiness, and for hers too, I had to give her all the space she needed. And if that meant she would stop dating me, then so be it.

"So be it."

Easier said than done, because that's exactly what she has decided to do. What we, now that we had a connection again, decided to do. Yes, she still likes me. She's afraid of me because she's afraid of hurting me, afraid of feeling even guiltier about the imbalance of feelings and help. Yes, I hope she would take some steps back toward me. But for now, we agree that she needs all her space back and keep it that way for an indefinite amount of time. I will leave her be.

We got tired of talking, so she started practicing, and this time her practicing didn't hurt me. It made me feel more connected. I was, with her request, helping her figure out what to do to make her computer go faster. Before that, before the practice, we cooked together. I don't know like what. We didn't say anything. In other words, she didn't make me feel we were "just friends", a phrase I hate with all my heart, though she, parroting unwittingly the French girl, said that for her friends were closer, dearer, and faced far fewer walls than a boyfriend.

What kind of crazy women do I have to encounter??

After the practice we went to the milonga together. Picking up my stuff again was suddenly hard. The evening since I came back in seemed like a dream away from the nightmare of the breakup. Now that I was picking my stuff again, reality hit me again that clearly, it was over, clearly, I was not coming back tonight to enjoy her beauty tomorrow morning, to listen to her breathing, to feel her warmth. Clearly, that was not going to happen, and probably never going to happen. Walking out of that door I realized it might very well be the last time I was walking out that door, the door that for a week in the beginning of the relationship I had my own keys to.

This is all very sappy, I know. It sounds worse than the cheese in the tango songs, and nearly as sappy as American pop songs. But as one of the dancers later told me, we love the sappy songs because we identify with them, because at least once in our lives (and in my case, multiple times) we experienced the sappiness not with rolled eyes and sarcasm, but with a great deal of pain and disillusionment.

And so the trip to the milonga was difficult. I invited her to dance the first dance. It was difficult to invite and difficult to dance. The memory of how we started, all the uncertainties and flirtation typical of the beginning of a courtship, now seemed so remote. I suddenly remembered all the things we talked about that connected us, and worst, how she introduced me to her favorite place in the city where we talked about personal experiences that shared a lot in common.

And at the end of the milonga, we walked out just one block. No longer would I be allowed to walk her to her train station like I was doing from the very beginning when the courtship started. That was our agreement: giving her space. I just reminded her of that, but that my door was open if she decided to take a little step.

Turning around and walking away from her, well, you can imagine how deeply that cut into my heart.

Part of cowardice way of dealing with all this was to tell the closest people in my life what happened. It's sad. This final week of our dating adventure was when I told two of my friends about her, introduced her to them. I wanted to be more open. Too late.

I guess no more taking morning rides across Harlem. No more frustrations with the A-train.

I find myself starting to think about whom else to date. Who is my next possibility.

Of course, I catch myself doing that and slap myself for being weak.

I have mentioned some important lessons here, lessons about how to really love a woman, how to give her space, how helping her, especially financially, isn't anything good when what she really wants cannot be bought by money.

But the most important lesson is about me. If I am more connected with myself, if I allow myself to remain the center of my universe, I wouldn't be chasing after someone, losing my own identity and trying to interfere with theirs by becoming part of theirs. This whole talk of space and patience wouldn't be an issue if I was busier giving myself space, giving myself patience and attention.

I think it's possible to be in love with someone but not make them more important than you. It's still my dogma in life to follow your heart. But that heart is not allowed to stray away from my soul. To love someone is actually very hard, even though falling in love with someone is a matter of luck and can happen quickly. To love someone involves giving them what they want, not what I think they need.

I am in the mourning mode. I feel lonely in this dark living room. I can't help remembering what we have done. I can't help remembering what else I wanted to do with her. I wanted to live with her so she could save on her rent. I wanted to help pay for the piano she had always wanted. And if she decided to move back to Israel, I wanted to follow her.

I write this out so I can see for myself how insane I have been, would have been, and how, as my best friend said (I finally got in touch with her 2 in the morning), it's better this ended now than later. True true, and she didn't know half of my craziness. As the French girl reminded me, this relationship was starting to make me unhappy. A few days ago I actually bumped into her in the train and I was telling her that I was unhappy enough to want to break up. That was about the long weekend plan that the pianist refused to partake. Now I got what I wanted, and more. This breakup did not end in the sort of drawn out drama that I had to experience with the French or the India girl. It ended rather sweet.

And the pain is really from the normal cut from the past memories and the future that would not be arriving. I hope this pain will pass. And similar ones in the past had always passed. What is important this time is whether I truly will do the right thing: take care of myself, whether single or deeply in love. I really don't want to lose another woman I like as much I did with the last few....

Connecting, Again

The sun had just set below a horizon I cannot see. It was waving a farewell to me just above the tree lines as the train was zipping over the state line. I noticed I got an email when there was still internet in the station. It was from a Russian friend, an old friend, the one that got me into tango, another chapter in my many dramas of this never-boring life. We are good friends now. The drama was short and small compared to everything else. However, we weren't always very close.

Unsurprisingly, I was also her best friend. Of course!

In any case, she had moved back to Russia a few years ago. She was in love with a man here who didn't deserve her, and mistreated her, not in any abusive way, but just didn't treat her with the dignity that she deserved as a human being. She had always been looking for love. A lot had gone wrong before I knew her and that man she fell in love with didn't make her life any more hopeful in the realm of romance.

But then a few years ago she got interested in some sort of Hindu sect after she became more involved with yoga. She even traveled to India twice to participate in ashrams. And after her return she continued her path with the vedic lifestyle, its (vegetarian) food, way of thinking, way of feeling. And little by little, she connected with herself, freeing herself from the torment of searching for a man, of pinning her happiness to the discovery of a man in her life. She had given up her career before her second trip to India. She still lives in St. Petersburg (that's the one in Russia, not in Florida).

And one day, she started to get to know a man from the mission she regularly attended. They became friends. And later, something more.

Without actively seeking anymore, a boyfriend found her. It was icing on a cake that was already bursting with joy and peacefulness. And now they made plans to leave St. Petersburg and move to Thailand and join a mission there. Just for a few years. It's exciting. I am excited for her. And it's a story that inspires me, at least to remind me that life need not be always the way it is; that we can always change it if we want to. The greatest barrier is within ourselves, not money, not politics. But to even know what we want, we need to be more connected with ourselves. She found a way, and little by little, she became more in touch with herself.

Twilight is the chameleon behind the coops of the South Bronx, changing now into a golden orange but also dimming slowly. A woman sitting on my right is texting someone, probably not someone as important as she thinks. A man on my left gives out a long sigh that made his lips flutter. And I am in the middle, wondering about the sun, about my friend, and about the pianist. The Harlem River is turned dark purple by the darkening sky, and people are ending their day. I am supposed to go to kung fu now. I even have my uniform all ready. But I have come to the conclusion that I am not ready for kung fu. It is good for me. I has even changed me a little in the less than three months I have done it. But I am not ready to commit more than three days a week to it when I hardly have two days for it the past month that I started dating this pianist. And it isn't for her alone that I am giving up kung fu. My love still is with tango and I am determined to take myself to the next level, whatever that is. There are simply too many things I want to do and these days I don't do most of them.

My Russian friend (the one in Russia, not the pianist) has found her path, her way, at least for now, to happiness. It is her path, her unique path she paved by herself. The boyfriend came later and was no longer the aim of the path. I am seeking my own path. I am seeking that which makes me happy. But more than happy, that which makes me feel connected, to myself, to the buildings around me, to the fellow commuters, to the darkening sky, to the sun that comes out less and less frequently. Tonight I am going to tango, to dance more, to see the pianist, but also to see the teacher that I was once very infatuated with. She is a good friend and we have not really reconnected much the past month or two. She is one of my New York friends. She just came back from a visit to her country so I want to see her.

For now, this is the most I can do to be connected. I am not going to kung fu because I had to drop one of the three things I have to do tonight: kung fu, nap, and tango. I might be making a mistake, but it wouldn't be a big deal. Reading my friend's email, I am simply reminded that life is bigger than how far I can see now. But in order to see further, I need to know what I am seeing now, the things within this limit, I need to connect to.

The Jewish Girl

A couple of mornings ago, while waiting for the infamous A-train to take me to Harlem before boarding the cross-town bus to the Metro North station, I noticed a woman looking staring at an open, slightly worn out book, thick but small. My intuition told me that it was the Torah and she was a Jew reciting passages. I walked behind her and confirmed the Hebrew written on the pages, and at the same time I noticed her lips were moving rapidly.

The Yeshiva University of New York is a few blocks east of there, though her association with it might not be so obvious. Still, there are lots of Jews in Washington Heights, according to the pianist. She herself isn't a practicing Jew; often she doesn't even know what people do. Most Russian Jews aren't very religious; after all, they did emigrate from an ultra-secularist country that didn't have much patience for any religion.

Nevertheless, ever since we started dating, I have become even more aware of Jews around me. Jews have played a very curious role in my life in this country. Before I came here I didn't even know they existed. And as I grew up, I guess I heard about the Holocaust, and you can't escape the remembrance of the Holocaust if you are go to school in New York City. I have no connection to it and didn't understand why I needed to know it more than other destructive events in history. Most of my teachers were Jews, though one time I remember hearing teacher grumbling about how silly it was that some people "even considered Jews a separate race." Whether its Jewishness or Anti-Semitism, I never got away from Jews. And living in Sheepshead Bay means it's impossible since it was swelling with Russian Jews as the next neighborhood, Brighton Beach, was bursting at the seams with Russian Jews. Most of my junior high school classmates were Jews. I even started learning Russian then because of a Russian (Jewish) girl.

In high school I had a crush on two Jewish girls. One didn't care for me much, and she was very religious, and in retrospect, she was very Jewish not only in terms of culture, but also in terms of physical look. The intenseness of the curliness of her hair was matched only by the fervor of her religion. Later I learned (from that other Jewish girl) that she went to live in Israel and got married, though it's not clear to me if she got married while living in Israel. Her name was Rena, and now I can even write it in Hebrew. How crazy is life?

Besides the exposure to so many Jews, the other important role Jews played in my life is galvanization of my pro-Palestinian sentiments. There isn't really an obvious connection, but my political stance in the matter is greatly influenced by my upbringing in a very pro-Jewish environment. I've always had a liking for Jews, even though I didn't really understand their culture much, and what the fuss had been about all these thousands of years. I mean, for a long time I didn't understand why they were so hated, so persecuted. They seem to do fine in New York.

My connection to them also had an element of commonality in the immigrant experience. One day some gentile told me that the Chinese immigrants in Southeast Asia are sort of like the Jews of Europe. The Chinese have had a long history of living among themselves in these foreign countries, and many have had jobs in commerce, like the Jews, and like the Jews, they valued education and grabbing on the best parts of society possible. And like the Jews, they often became targets of anger from the host nations when things went bad.

This idea was further reinforced from a long conversation with the pianist, who told me a little more about the pogroms in Russia where mobs would go about killing Jews and destroying their homes. And as she was telling me this, and expressing her thoughts after much analysis of what had been happening to her people, I felt an even greater bond with the Jews.

And so it should seem a little strange that I would side with the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel. But of course, to draw that conclusion is to fall in the trap that Pro-Israelis always lay: to be on the side of the Jews you must be on the side of Israel, for Israel's existence is linked to the continued existence of the Jews. Anti-Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. That's obviously a pathetic argument that I don't subscribe to. I believe that the Jewish people deserve a land of their own free from persecution by any hosting nation. But what strikes me as incredibly difficult to understand is how a people who have suffered so much would feel righteous, even vindictive, to exact a similar kind of suffering on its own neighbors. Politics in the Middle-East is complicated, but in the end, I still can't understand how you can build a wall around a people, caging them in, in the same way the Germans and the Russians and all the Europeans who had built walls around the ghettos. To side with the Jews is to side with struggle against oppression, to draw from the suffering history of an incredibly resilient people and apply it to today, including, and especially in, the case where the Jews are the ones with better weapons, the ones calling themselves the hosts.

This entry isn't about the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It's about this girl I saw on the subway platform. She had curly hazel hair, very pale but not sickly white skin, and a face very serene, a serenity I often identify with Jewish women. It is one of the reasons I like the pianist so much. Since the first time I saw her, and every time thereafter, I saw a very kind person whose kindness I associate somehow with Jewish women. And in many ways she is very kind to everyone, and extremely kind to me. I don't know if it's because she likes me a lot or she is just naturally kind. When I saw this woman with the Torah and her lips reciting some passage repeatedly, I felt a sense of warmth knowing how fortunate I was to have a wonderful Jewish woman in my life. I don't know for how long, but already the footprints she has been leaving behind in the dense forest of my heart will always remain warm reminders of my fortune.

We know very little about each other, of course. But her Jewishness was very important in our initial connection. After all these years of being with Jews for different reasons, it seems amazing but also obvious that I would end up at some point with a Jewish woman who though very secular is very proud of her Jewish culture. She is also very proud of Israel and, as she said, would defend it against any arguments. That's a part we haven't explored. I don't know if she knows about my very fervent stance with the Palestinians, but we haven't made the right connection to start expiring that. However, she has opened up my eyes to Israel, to a young country with one of the oldest histories in the world, if you can understand the paradox.

Unknown Future

There's an advertisement for some condominium in Stamford, and its selling point is that if you work in Stamford, why would you waste all this time commuting from New York and spend the exorbitant New York real estate price when you could be saving money and spending the time doing what you like in Stamford.

There's nothing I like doing in Stamford, of course. Perhaps my taste for life is more eccentric than the clients of these condos. And for the cost of this eccentric taste I have to pay not only higher rent but the commuting cost. And what a commute.

I have two different kinds of commutes. Today I did my commute number 2, from Washington Heights. The A-train went local, and my bus was letting the bus behind us get in front of me, and then on the commuter train I realized I didn't have my October monthly pass. We will find out in a few minutes if the conductor will let me use my September pass. What a way to start a Monday. But still, I got to do what I want that cannot be done in Stamford. I got to dance last night. I got to hang out with my pianist, before the dance and after the dance. I wasn't sure if she was going to invite me over. I no longer take that for granted. But she did, and we talked about my tango. I have been cautious about talking to her about tango. We both tango, of course; that is how I met her. But I always feel that tango can get in the way of developing a relationship that cannot rely only on tango. However, she is very open minded, very patient about it. I am, I guess, more concerned about my own ego. She and I don't have the best connection a lot of times, and worse now that I am nervous about tango interfering with our relationship. But last night's talk made me feel more relaxed with her. She is, after all, a piano teacher, and so she knows how to handle students, and while she isn't "better" than me in tango, she knows how to approach someone, especially with an ego in the way, if she wants to make suggestions. I was surprisingly open to listening to her.

Who is this woman?

It takes time to get to know someone, to develop a connection, a relationship. That's patience. But it also takes also a lot of courage in the face of uncertainty. Before we went to the milonga, we talked a little about all the uncertainty that awaits her. She mentioned that there's an opening in a music school in Jerusalem that a friend of hers had suggested. My heart naturally sank a little before bobbing back up. And in the darkness of her bedroom she told me she still saw no future for us, but at the same time she didn't want to lose me now. I told her that on one extreme I wanted to end it all now, and on the other extreme I would follow her to Jerusalem if I must.

The New York City subway is the bastion of weirdoes in the world, I can nearly say. In a crowded train, was it on the under-construction 7 line or the ever troublesome A line?, a man still in his hospital patient clothes lay across two seats. His head was resting against the wall of the train, and his feet were separated from the next passenger by an empty seat that no one wanted to take up, even though the train was super packed. Oh, I remember now, it was a 7 train. I had my grocery from Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Union Square farmer's market, my hands were tired, and the train was a brewing tuna can of discontent. For whatever reason, there hadn't been a train for a while so I was lucky to board the first train after this hiatus in which a whole platform full of human creatures shoved its way into this can. This hospital apparent-runaway lay there oblivious to the discontent. He was in his, I suppose, late eighties, early nineties, though possibly only looked so old because of whatever ailed him. On his right sleeve was a big blotch of dried blood. His hair was completely silver, and his face was difficult to look at. It wasn't in pain, but it was transfixed by past pain. He moved a little, but said nothing, not even moved his mouth. He closed his eyes for a little while. He didn't notice when someone standing outside the door of the train on the Queensboro Plaza platform shouting for people to move in so he and his other human beings could squeeze in, refusing to wait for the next train that the PA was saying would arrive in three minutes. I was amused by the man shouting, especially when he directed his command to "you there, in red", to move into whatever tiny space that the shouter could be using if that selfish man in red would move in. We suddenly become pieces on this game you play, the game that has tiles on a board with one tile missing, and you're supposed to shove the tiles around to make some pattern in the end. It was a game that everyone was playing except the old man in hospital gown occupying three seats.

I thought about this man when sadness and uncertainty grips me. I thought about my sadness and uncertainty when I saw him. New York is full of weirdoes whose weirdness belies some human tragedy of some degree, of some sort.

On a different subway train I saw one disheveled man had his dinner all splayed out on the seats around him. He and/or his food reeked of some unpleasantness that created an empty radius around him. The smell of rotten garlicky good propelled me to the other end of the subway so quickly that I didn't get to see his face. A woman stood not far from me with the handkerchief covering her nose. This is New York for you, I guess. And that man has better things to worry about than some girl worrying about her emotional unavailability and its effect on our undetermined future.

She said very bluntly that she didn't want to tell me in three or four months that this wasn't going anywhere, thereby hurting me. I thought about it. It made sense. It made even more sense since it has happened to me not just once in the past couple of years. It would be the same cycle. A woman finding comfort in me, for whatever reason, and then for whatever reason, or different reasons, she comes to accept that what she felt wasn't some intense romantic love but something more like a friendship, or insultingly worse, a brotherly love. I thought about that happening again. I was very tempted to just leave. Leave everything behind, the hopes, the wishes, the present. How do you live in the present knowing that there isn't any shred of hope for a future. There must be something between a full promise and complete detachment from the future. I asked her why she invited me over this night, and without hesitation she told me she liked me. I remembered the Polish girl. I remember too many things. Too many things people have said and done that in the end didn't make sense and often unfair.

Then the morning came. I saw her face, so peaceful, her breathing, her everything, her presence. I can't think. To leave and give up not only an unpromisable future but also a present that actually does make me happy. Every morning I am there I leave behind a small poem for her, a poem before I started my day, before she started hers. A poem to remind her that some men in this world can be dedicated, can still be romantic fools. I never took upon myself the task of reinvigorating the lost romance in her, lost ten years ago in a man who put it in a suitcase to Australia and never returned it to her. I never thought I could be that person. But I could be me. And my decision on whether to end all this depends solely on whether the decision would make me happy, would maintain in me the dignity I deserve.

Crossing Time

There's an advertisement for some condominium in Stamford, and its selling point is that if you work in Stamford, why would you waste all this time commuting from New York and spend the exorbitant New York real estate price when you could be saving money and spending the time doing what you like in Stamford.

There's nothing I like doing in Stamford, of course. Perhaps my taste for life is more eccentric than the clients of these condos. And for the cost of this eccentric taste I have to pay not only higher rent but the commuting cost. And what a commute.

I have two different kinds of commutes. Today I did my commute number 2, from Washington Heights. The A-train went local, and my bus was letting the bus behind us get in front of me, and then on the commuter train I realized I didn't have my October monthly pass. We will find out in a few minutes if the conductor will let me use my September pass. What a way to start a Monday. But still, I got to do what I want that cannot be done in Stamford. I got to dance last night. I got to hang out with my pianist, before the dance and after the dance. I wasn't sure if she was going to invite me over. I no longer take that for granted. But she did, and we talked about my tango. I have been cautious about talking to her about tango. We both tango, of course; that is how I met her. But I always feel that tango can get in the way of developing a relationship that cannot rely only on tango. However, she is very open minded, very patient about it. I am, I guess, more concerned about my own ego. She and I don't have the best connection a lot of times, and worse now that I am nervous about tango interfering with our relationship. But last night's talk made me feel more relaxed with her. She is, after all, a piano teacher, and so she knows how to handle students, and while she isn't "better" than me in tango, she knows how to approach someone, especially with an ego in the way, if she wants to make suggestions. I was surprisingly open to listening to her.

Who is this woman?

It takes time to get to know someone, to develop a connection, a relationship. That's patience. But it also takes also a lot of courage in the face of uncertainty. Before we went to the milonga, we talked a little about all the uncertainty that awaits her. She mentioned that there's an opening in a music school in Jerusalem that a friend of hers had suggested. My heart naturally sank a little before bobbing back up. And in the darkness of her bedroom she told me she still saw no future for us, but at the same time she didn't want to lose me now. I told her that on one extreme I wanted to end it all now, and on the other extreme I would follow her to Jerusalem if I must.

The New York City subway is the bastion of weirdoes in the world, I can nearly say. In a crowded train, was it on the under-construction 7 line or the ever troublesome A line?, a man still in his hospital patient clothes lay across two seats. His head was resting against the wall of the train, and his feet were separated from the next passenger by an empty seat that no one wanted to take up, even though the train was super packed. Oh, I remember now, it was a 7 train. I had my grocery from Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Union Square farmer's market, my hands were tired, and the train was a brewing tuna can of discontent. For whatever reason, there hadn't been a train for a while so I was lucky to board the first train after this hiatus in which a whole platform full of human creatures shoved its way into this can. This hospital apparent-runaway lay there oblivious to the discontent. He was in his, I suppose, late eighties, early nineties, though possibly only looked so old because of whatever ailed him. On his right sleeve was a big blotch of dried blood. His hair was completely silver, and his face was difficult to look at. It wasn't in pain, but it was transfixed by past pain. He moved a little, but said nothing, not even moved his mouth. He closed his eyes for a little while. He didn't notice when someone standing outside the door of the train on the Queensboro Plaza platform shouting for people to move in so he and his other human beings could squeeze in, refusing to wait for the next train that the PA was saying would arrive in three minutes. I was amused by the man shouting, especially when he directed his command to "you there, in red", to move into whatever tiny space that the shouter could be using if that selfish man in red would move in. We suddenly become pieces on this game you play, the game that has tiles on a board with one tile missing, and you're supposed to shove the tiles around to make some pattern in the end. It was a game that everyone was playing except the old man in hospital gown occupying three seats.

I thought about this man when sadness and uncertainty grips me. I thought about my sadness and uncertainty when I saw him. New York is full of weirdoes whose weirdness belies some human tragedy of some degree, of some sort.

On a different subway train I saw one disheveled man had his dinner all splayed out on the seats around him. He and/or his food reeked of some unpleasantness that created an empty radius around him. The smell of rotten garlicky good propelled me to the other end of the subway so quickly that I didn't get to see his face. A woman stood not far from me with the handkerchief covering her nose. This is New York for you, I guess. And that man has better things to worry about than some girl worrying about her emotional unavailability and its effect on our undetermined future.

She said very bluntly that she didn't want to tell me in three or four months that this wasn't going anywhere, thereby hurting me. I thought about it. It made sense. It made even more sense since it has happened to me not just once in the past couple of years. It would be the same cycle. A woman finding comfort in me, for whatever reason, and then for whatever reason, or different reasons, she comes to accept that what she felt wasn't some intense romantic love but something more like a friendship, or insultingly worse, a brotherly love. I thought about that happening again. I was very tempted to just leave. Leave everything behind, the hopes, the wishes, the present. How do you live in the present knowing that there isn't any shred of hope for a future. There must be something between a full promise and complete detachment from the future. I asked her why she invited me over this night, and without hesitation she told me she liked me. I remembered the Polish girl. I remember too many things. Too many things people have said and done that in the end didn't make sense and often unfair.

Then the morning came. I saw her face, so peaceful, her breathing, her everything, her presence. I can't think. To leave and give up not only an unpromisable future but also a present that actually does make me happy. Every morning I am there I leave behind a small poem for her, a poem before I started my day, before she started hers. A poem to remind her that some men in this world can be dedicated, can still be romantic fools. I never took upon myself the task of reinvigorating the lost romance in her, lost ten years ago in a man who put it in a suitcase to Australia and never returned it to her. I never thought I could be that person. But I could be me. And my decision on whether to end all this depends solely on whether the decision would make me happy, would maintain in me the dignity I deserve.