Longing for Friday

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

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

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

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

I was right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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