I can't believe I am in McDonald's. There is nothing here I could order that wouldn't gross me out. I often get sick, literally, from eating their foods. I don't know what they put in there that makes me feel sick.
I am here. In the middle of the dark canopy called Night, in this forlorn forest called Chinatown, inside this cave of the ultimate bad American food that, oddly, attracts all sorts of foreign tourists (most unlikely French). I am listening to some catchy 90's music. Or is it the 2000's? What do you call songs that came out between 2000 and 2010? Not to mention those that are coming out now.... No one thought of it?
I am here because I am waiting for a woman. But I am not thinking too much about her, except that one moment wondering if she is really coming out to dance. Without much effort, she convinced me to go dancing with her tonight, here, in this dark and forlorn forest of faded Chinese signs. I danced last night, I will be dancing the next two nights. What have I become?
I have lost my head, that's what happened. I am in a McDonalds, waiting for the princess to descend in her steel and noisy chariot so I can dance a tanda or two with her. I have truly lost my head. I am reading this Russian novel by a very famous writer from the Soviet times, a searing critique of the Soviet society. Naturally, she inspired me to read this book. Anyway, one of the scenes involved a man losing his head, though he didn't die; in fact, the head was still talking, quite shocked that it had been dislodged from the body that just slumped against the wall. The head was put back but the person was no longer "whole", complaining bitterly and painfully that the head was still not fully reconnected to the body.
My head is disconnected from my body. My body needs sleep. My head needs sleep. But the dictator that is now disconnected from the governed nation of me decides that this woman is worth it, decides from having read the jumbled telegraph from the heart that it is important to see this woman, even for a little bit.
What does a man do for a woman? Lose his head.
But while waiting here, I don't think much about the pianist rumbling down underground from the highest point of the island I am sitting on. I am trying to connect to the forest around me. My head and my body might be disconnected, but this couple, head and body, still wants to be connected to the surrounding.
A man in a burgundy buttoned-up shirt sits nearly perfectly still with his face glued to the laptop, whose screen light illuminates his face with different kinds of light. It is as if his face, twisted a little from the fingers that it is resting on, is a canvass for the different paintings coming out of the screen. Outside, just outside the door, over the door, a huge sign, the infamous Golden Arch, recently given a facelift, glows in the dark forest. Every now and then trucks roam by one of the busiest arteries of the city, Canal Street. People are coming and leaving the Manhattan Bridge, and most are coming and leaving the Holland Tunnel at the other end of this lower section of an island shaped by Nature but just as much by human beings. Its natural forests long replaced by concrete and human beings, their exuberance as well as excrement.
I am not just waiting for a woman who just broke up with me yesterday before I clarified some misunderstanding that brought her back. I am waiting in the city that still has so much to offer me. The yellow cabs outside are like the red blood cells (or yellow blood cells) that carry the fuel and oxygen needed to make this city at once fun and scary. I hated them for a while, until I started using them to leave the milongas. I haven't forgotten getting into a taxi to take the very same princess back to her castle before going back to my little tent across the river. That was before she let me kiss her, that one weekend. Before she held my hand.
Before coming to McDonald's I ate at the usual Chinese restaurant. Had a $5-noodle soup. While waiting for the soup to come (which took only two minutes), I called my Dad. He sounded happy. He called me the usual way, not with my normal name on the passport. He told me things that are rather mundane but that wasn't the point of the phone call. I asked if he opened the link in the email I sent him. I sent him and my married sister a link to the pianist's website. I tried to explain to him that even though he didn't feel like going anywhere, when that pianist gives a concert, I am going to try to drag him there.
I want to stop being afraid to show to my family the person, at the moment, that's making me happy. For so long, and still so, I am afraid they would be disappointed when things don't work out. They have given up on ever seeing me get married. The point, however, isn't to get their hopes up. It is simply to share my joy with them, to be open with them. And for myself, the point is not to build these imbecilic walls. They only leave bitter resentments against women in the past for having failed to live up to the hopes of two old people they hardly knew.
I didn't tell my Dad much about the pianist, just dropped enough hints that she was someone important. It was good to connect to him.
It is just about time for the pianist to arrive in the cave of dances. I hope I can stay awake. My head is gone so I don't know what I am doing. Without my head, I can still, however, touch. Having her in my arms, just for a few minutes, especially to music we both love, is worth the loss of my head. And even without the head, I can still love this city.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Breakups
Most relationships break up, and even more so experience at least one breakup (and sometimes the two looneys come back).
I don't think the pianist has been counting, but since I like numbers, I have been counting. To do that I have to make up a starting date. I use Labor Day, when she finally let me in her bed, let me kiss her. Now looking back, it seems a little less than accurate. That's because, as I have mentioned in the past entries, I haven't been very intimate with her, and not even a real kiss, since Labor Day. Of course, at some point, it doesn't matter. Hopefully we will stay long enough that the starting point is only useful for the good man to remember the "anniversary" that is all so kitsch in this society.
But the counting is mentioned for a reason here. Not even three weeks we broke up.
And it took a few hours, a long long train ride made long because of the imbecilic A train's mechanical problem (again), and some tears and some hugs, it took all this to bring back smiles, calm the worried heart. It also looks suspiciously familiar. The pattern is me feeling insecure, sends out some email expressing some dire conclusion based on my insecurity, and the result is the other person feeling inadequate because she's obviously the cause of my insecurity, and then she takes a step from me. In this case, the step is huge and her written response ends with the familiar, "I hope you find a woman that would truly make you happy; you deserve that."
I filed a formal complaint the night before, after she came to visit me and had dinner with me that I made for us. We had a good time, as usual, but I felt a need to complain to her on the topic that I mentioned in the past blog entries and hinted again above. I complained that we are more like close friends than a couple because we don't do very much in bed. I said it simply, while she is very trusting of me, feels very comfortable with me, the one exception is in bed, where she puts a big tall wall around her. She didn't have anything interesting to say. She knew what I was talking about and could do nothing about it. I told her in such relationship there is a man and a woman, but in ours there doesn't seem to be such distinction.
She gave me a very tight hug before boarding the famous 7-train. That hug didn't help much. I just got more upset. So as the pattern goes, I couldn't sleep, and the feelings of righteousness and self-pity mixed together into an email where I asked her to come back and be a woman. She didn't take that well, and thought I set up an ultimatum. The drama is predictable, and so is the resolution.
One good thing that came out of this was that I realized how much I like her, how much I want her to be in my life, when I came so close to losing her. Another positive outcome is that because she wants to take things slow, as opposed to all her previous crazy speedy adventures with me, it would mean I am not under pressure to spend all my time with her. I can actually do my own things in New York and she would not be more likely to leave me. And I realized she really likes me. She's being crazy when she overreacted and decided to break up with me on email (wow!). She's been hurt too much and I have to be extra careful not to let my insecurity push her away.
So yes, I went all the way up to there to at the very least break up in person. But we made up. I wish we didn't need drama as a way to get closer faster. I let her go back to her piano practice for a major recording the next day for some video audition, and I myself went back down to the center to get some tango dancing. She came later that evening and I danced a little with her. I was happy to see her. It was sweet for her to tell me she was looking for me when she arrived, and that she was a little disappointed thinking I wasn't there.
There's a part of me that says it's not enough that we just share a bed together as if we were friends. That especially in this day and age and in the beginning of the relationship, the couple should be "doing it" everyday, as a friend of mine told me (she used a more crude version of the phrase!). This part of me thinks that I deserve better, I deserve a woman that would give me that. And I did get women that did that for me, one even seemed to really made me feel great, very manly. But none of them liked me as much as this pianist. And if symbols and words matter, none of them acknowledged that we were dating, as the pianist acknowledges. If I have to weigh the good and bad, the happy and sad, the hopes and disappointments, than everything becomes super complicated and everyday becomes another episode of drama. The simplest and probably most difficult thing to do is enjoy what I have, and not focus on what I don't have that, frankly, even if I have it, brings me very short-term joy.
Sometimes you have to earn the best stuff on earth. To open her doors, to be allowed into her world, I need to earn it with time and patience. Only, of course, if she's worth it. Somehow somewhere in me I feel she's worth it. She makes my whole body, literal and figurative parts, giggle. That's good enough a reason to stay. I have felt the same way for others in the past and they all turned out to be the wrong choices. Still, if I am going to focus on how good a choice this person is, I won't be able to focus on enjoying those inner and outer giggles.
I don't think the pianist has been counting, but since I like numbers, I have been counting. To do that I have to make up a starting date. I use Labor Day, when she finally let me in her bed, let me kiss her. Now looking back, it seems a little less than accurate. That's because, as I have mentioned in the past entries, I haven't been very intimate with her, and not even a real kiss, since Labor Day. Of course, at some point, it doesn't matter. Hopefully we will stay long enough that the starting point is only useful for the good man to remember the "anniversary" that is all so kitsch in this society.
But the counting is mentioned for a reason here. Not even three weeks we broke up.
And it took a few hours, a long long train ride made long because of the imbecilic A train's mechanical problem (again), and some tears and some hugs, it took all this to bring back smiles, calm the worried heart. It also looks suspiciously familiar. The pattern is me feeling insecure, sends out some email expressing some dire conclusion based on my insecurity, and the result is the other person feeling inadequate because she's obviously the cause of my insecurity, and then she takes a step from me. In this case, the step is huge and her written response ends with the familiar, "I hope you find a woman that would truly make you happy; you deserve that."
I filed a formal complaint the night before, after she came to visit me and had dinner with me that I made for us. We had a good time, as usual, but I felt a need to complain to her on the topic that I mentioned in the past blog entries and hinted again above. I complained that we are more like close friends than a couple because we don't do very much in bed. I said it simply, while she is very trusting of me, feels very comfortable with me, the one exception is in bed, where she puts a big tall wall around her. She didn't have anything interesting to say. She knew what I was talking about and could do nothing about it. I told her in such relationship there is a man and a woman, but in ours there doesn't seem to be such distinction.
She gave me a very tight hug before boarding the famous 7-train. That hug didn't help much. I just got more upset. So as the pattern goes, I couldn't sleep, and the feelings of righteousness and self-pity mixed together into an email where I asked her to come back and be a woman. She didn't take that well, and thought I set up an ultimatum. The drama is predictable, and so is the resolution.
One good thing that came out of this was that I realized how much I like her, how much I want her to be in my life, when I came so close to losing her. Another positive outcome is that because she wants to take things slow, as opposed to all her previous crazy speedy adventures with me, it would mean I am not under pressure to spend all my time with her. I can actually do my own things in New York and she would not be more likely to leave me. And I realized she really likes me. She's being crazy when she overreacted and decided to break up with me on email (wow!). She's been hurt too much and I have to be extra careful not to let my insecurity push her away.
So yes, I went all the way up to there to at the very least break up in person. But we made up. I wish we didn't need drama as a way to get closer faster. I let her go back to her piano practice for a major recording the next day for some video audition, and I myself went back down to the center to get some tango dancing. She came later that evening and I danced a little with her. I was happy to see her. It was sweet for her to tell me she was looking for me when she arrived, and that she was a little disappointed thinking I wasn't there.
There's a part of me that says it's not enough that we just share a bed together as if we were friends. That especially in this day and age and in the beginning of the relationship, the couple should be "doing it" everyday, as a friend of mine told me (she used a more crude version of the phrase!). This part of me thinks that I deserve better, I deserve a woman that would give me that. And I did get women that did that for me, one even seemed to really made me feel great, very manly. But none of them liked me as much as this pianist. And if symbols and words matter, none of them acknowledged that we were dating, as the pianist acknowledges. If I have to weigh the good and bad, the happy and sad, the hopes and disappointments, than everything becomes super complicated and everyday becomes another episode of drama. The simplest and probably most difficult thing to do is enjoy what I have, and not focus on what I don't have that, frankly, even if I have it, brings me very short-term joy.
Sometimes you have to earn the best stuff on earth. To open her doors, to be allowed into her world, I need to earn it with time and patience. Only, of course, if she's worth it. Somehow somewhere in me I feel she's worth it. She makes my whole body, literal and figurative parts, giggle. That's good enough a reason to stay. I have felt the same way for others in the past and they all turned out to be the wrong choices. Still, if I am going to focus on how good a choice this person is, I won't be able to focus on enjoying those inner and outer giggles.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Going back to an Old Home
This is a very noisy train. Not because of the passengers, not even with the presence of annoying little toddlers that make weird and loud sounds as they got more tired. It's the conductors talking to the engineer over the PA. I never understood why they carry conversations (loudly) over the PA. Doesn't "PA" stand for Public Announcement? "Public" as for the public. I don't think we need to hear what track they are dumping the train into after the final station.
The final station is New Haven. That's where I am going. Last time was a month and a half ago. The mission this time is to move everything is mine out of the apartment. That depends partly on what my roommate might want, and if she's staying till the end of the year. I am going back to gain some connection with the house that is a constant nag. Unlike a souring relationship with a woman, I can't just end it so easily. The barriers aren't the emotional baggage and drama, but rather the bad economy and the tricky real estate world. The real deal. But the heart still is a factor. If I find some peace, I wouldn't have so much trouble with it. Because, well, in the end, it's really about money. When I am disconnected, the only thing I can hold on to is the idea of money. It's easy for people to just hold on to money when they feel lost.
I passed Bridgeport when I started writing. I remember writing every morning coming from New Haven. I remember the cold. The dark mornings. Now we are returning to those dark mornings and darker evenings. Soon, when they turn the clock back, I will be boarding the 7 Train before the sun rises, just as I boarded the Metro North diesel engine train before the wintery sun woke up. Now I am pulling into Milford, one more stop to go.
There is no nostalgia here. It's funny how 8.5 years in a place and my nostalgia had worn away so quickly, in less than 8.5 months, at least. I sometimes wonder what I have done those 8.5 years. What the significance was in my life. I have grown up, for sure, matured in a positive way, in the right direction. But I wonder if I couldn't have done it somewhere else, too. Like in New York. What would have happened if I had come to New York after my sister left. Everything would have been different, unless you believe in the immutable fate. I think about the people who have affected my life, my best friends, the girls that have broken my heart, and sometimes they are the same people. My work? And I think about the people in my present day. I think about the pianist. I wonder if we would have met. She told me last week she wish she had met me before, before all the trouble she had gone through with very vicious men. It was a nice compliment. Still, we are here for no reason, but the reality is that simple: we are here. And we get to enjoy wherever we have ended up, and the paths that we have taken we should be grateful for.
I will spend about four hours in the house, around the house. Don't know if that's too little or too much. But I hope to find some connection that will allow me to get through the rest of the year without going crazy over the issues of the house. Like being in New Haven, the best thing to do is appreciate and be grateful for the path I have taken with this house. It has not only given me some extra revenue in the form of cash and equity, but it gave me, well, a place to live, a place to invite friends, all the conversations, all the connections, they happened in the house that I decorated, that I in my best efforts took care of. Perhaps I should love it. That's just an idea.
The final station is New Haven. That's where I am going. Last time was a month and a half ago. The mission this time is to move everything is mine out of the apartment. That depends partly on what my roommate might want, and if she's staying till the end of the year. I am going back to gain some connection with the house that is a constant nag. Unlike a souring relationship with a woman, I can't just end it so easily. The barriers aren't the emotional baggage and drama, but rather the bad economy and the tricky real estate world. The real deal. But the heart still is a factor. If I find some peace, I wouldn't have so much trouble with it. Because, well, in the end, it's really about money. When I am disconnected, the only thing I can hold on to is the idea of money. It's easy for people to just hold on to money when they feel lost.
I passed Bridgeport when I started writing. I remember writing every morning coming from New Haven. I remember the cold. The dark mornings. Now we are returning to those dark mornings and darker evenings. Soon, when they turn the clock back, I will be boarding the 7 Train before the sun rises, just as I boarded the Metro North diesel engine train before the wintery sun woke up. Now I am pulling into Milford, one more stop to go.
There is no nostalgia here. It's funny how 8.5 years in a place and my nostalgia had worn away so quickly, in less than 8.5 months, at least. I sometimes wonder what I have done those 8.5 years. What the significance was in my life. I have grown up, for sure, matured in a positive way, in the right direction. But I wonder if I couldn't have done it somewhere else, too. Like in New York. What would have happened if I had come to New York after my sister left. Everything would have been different, unless you believe in the immutable fate. I think about the people who have affected my life, my best friends, the girls that have broken my heart, and sometimes they are the same people. My work? And I think about the people in my present day. I think about the pianist. I wonder if we would have met. She told me last week she wish she had met me before, before all the trouble she had gone through with very vicious men. It was a nice compliment. Still, we are here for no reason, but the reality is that simple: we are here. And we get to enjoy wherever we have ended up, and the paths that we have taken we should be grateful for.
I will spend about four hours in the house, around the house. Don't know if that's too little or too much. But I hope to find some connection that will allow me to get through the rest of the year without going crazy over the issues of the house. Like being in New Haven, the best thing to do is appreciate and be grateful for the path I have taken with this house. It has not only given me some extra revenue in the form of cash and equity, but it gave me, well, a place to live, a place to invite friends, all the conversations, all the connections, they happened in the house that I decorated, that I in my best efforts took care of. Perhaps I should love it. That's just an idea.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Morning Thoughts
Little kids sit listlessly on this early morning among the giants who have business to take care of, businesses the little creatures aren't aware of and do not care to understand. They "stand out" because they are so small, almost hidden from view sitting in their seats often given up by kind giants. I saw one kid today in the bus, looking into some distance. He had these long straight dark hair that nearly reached over his entire shoulder blades. Next to him was his custodian of some sort; sister or mother, I can't tell these days. She isn't paying attention to him, didn't notice his wandering mind in the infinity of distance.
I managed to get to the Harlem station early this time, having caught the previous train only five minutes earlier. That makes a difference because I caught the buses that left right when I surfaced, and that in turn, got me to the station early, and will get me to work twenty minutes earlier than I did on Monday when I missed the train I caught today. Such is the strangeness of a life with schedules.
And what a life with complicated schedules. The house situation is driving me crazy. I am still struggling with the tenant search for the first floor, and then the headaches of preparing for the sale of the house (not even talking about the actual selling of the house!). I wonder if there's some other way to deal with this. Some zen way. Meditation? Reconnection with myself? I met up briefly in the train with the French girl who was going back to the City to pick up a few things (!), and I just blew up on her. I felt bad; I was surprised how stressed this house situation had been for me. But partially at her expense, I guess, I felt better afterward. I went to kung fu and I felt even better after that, though I left my uniform there on my rush to the land of castles.
And in the land of castles I met with the unofficial sister of the princess, who just returned from a summer in her homeland of Israel. I listened to their occasional Hebrew. I wondered if I will ever find myself in a foreign country with everyone speaking that language, especially when the pianist told us how she had always wanted to start a music department in her parents' city of Haifa.
But where am I going with this? Is she my girlfriend? The situation hasn't changed since the last blog entry. I still wonder if we aren't closer being friends than being lovers. I should talk to her about this. It's not what I want, but I also want to be patient and give room. Otherwise we get along well. She showed a lot of enthusiasm in seeing me, in expressing her desire to see me yesterday. I felt very happy being wanted. After her Israeli friend left, we danced a couple of pandas. Wednesdays we usually go to that milonga, but last night we wanted to see each other.
But in the back of my head, I wondered, why? Why did I want to see her? Why she wanted to see me? For the pure and simple desire for company. That's what she said, "I would love your company." What does it mean, "company"? Her friend was also offering her company. How was I different? That I share a bed with her. That I try to kiss her. But she refuses.
The night before I didn't see her. But instead, I met up with another pianist, who apparently, coincidentally, of course, dating some Chinese man (though not as cool as me since he was a recent addition to the country). They had been together only three months before she got him to go to Switzerland to meet her friends and parents over the summer. And she left home for the summer, she was telling me she was going to Boston every weekend. I had thought they had been together for a while for such serious commitment. But sometimes three months is all you need to want to be with someone for real, for serious. I wonder what baggage she carries that wasn't enough to prevent her from building something so fast and serious. Or perhaps, the baggage was what propelled her into this relationship. We didn't talk much about her life, which was quite complicated, especially the past ten years she had lived in New York. We talked more about philosophy, the yin-yang of life. I miss talking philosophy, actually. Most people shy away from it. I never understood why.
But still, listening to her talk about her current relationship, I wonder where I was. I think I have the right to worry, just a little, about the slow, slow pace of this relationship. I feel like I'm back in high school, or junior high. The kiss comes a certain number of months later. Except that it came in a tidal wave of passion the first weekend. Suddenly it faded into the junior-high stage. Strange.
I managed to get to the Harlem station early this time, having caught the previous train only five minutes earlier. That makes a difference because I caught the buses that left right when I surfaced, and that in turn, got me to the station early, and will get me to work twenty minutes earlier than I did on Monday when I missed the train I caught today. Such is the strangeness of a life with schedules.
And what a life with complicated schedules. The house situation is driving me crazy. I am still struggling with the tenant search for the first floor, and then the headaches of preparing for the sale of the house (not even talking about the actual selling of the house!). I wonder if there's some other way to deal with this. Some zen way. Meditation? Reconnection with myself? I met up briefly in the train with the French girl who was going back to the City to pick up a few things (!), and I just blew up on her. I felt bad; I was surprised how stressed this house situation had been for me. But partially at her expense, I guess, I felt better afterward. I went to kung fu and I felt even better after that, though I left my uniform there on my rush to the land of castles.
And in the land of castles I met with the unofficial sister of the princess, who just returned from a summer in her homeland of Israel. I listened to their occasional Hebrew. I wondered if I will ever find myself in a foreign country with everyone speaking that language, especially when the pianist told us how she had always wanted to start a music department in her parents' city of Haifa.
But where am I going with this? Is she my girlfriend? The situation hasn't changed since the last blog entry. I still wonder if we aren't closer being friends than being lovers. I should talk to her about this. It's not what I want, but I also want to be patient and give room. Otherwise we get along well. She showed a lot of enthusiasm in seeing me, in expressing her desire to see me yesterday. I felt very happy being wanted. After her Israeli friend left, we danced a couple of pandas. Wednesdays we usually go to that milonga, but last night we wanted to see each other.
But in the back of my head, I wondered, why? Why did I want to see her? Why she wanted to see me? For the pure and simple desire for company. That's what she said, "I would love your company." What does it mean, "company"? Her friend was also offering her company. How was I different? That I share a bed with her. That I try to kiss her. But she refuses.
The night before I didn't see her. But instead, I met up with another pianist, who apparently, coincidentally, of course, dating some Chinese man (though not as cool as me since he was a recent addition to the country). They had been together only three months before she got him to go to Switzerland to meet her friends and parents over the summer. And she left home for the summer, she was telling me she was going to Boston every weekend. I had thought they had been together for a while for such serious commitment. But sometimes three months is all you need to want to be with someone for real, for serious. I wonder what baggage she carries that wasn't enough to prevent her from building something so fast and serious. Or perhaps, the baggage was what propelled her into this relationship. We didn't talk much about her life, which was quite complicated, especially the past ten years she had lived in New York. We talked more about philosophy, the yin-yang of life. I miss talking philosophy, actually. Most people shy away from it. I never understood why.
But still, listening to her talk about her current relationship, I wonder where I was. I think I have the right to worry, just a little, about the slow, slow pace of this relationship. I feel like I'm back in high school, or junior high. The kiss comes a certain number of months later. Except that it came in a tidal wave of passion the first weekend. Suddenly it faded into the junior-high stage. Strange.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Morning Confessions
The boy got up and joined his dad, but he didn't pay much attention to the adult, just looking into the distant behind the subway train doors. Another adult awkwardly maneuvers toward the empty seat the boy left behind, trying to get between the tiny space between the seat abandoner and another adult oblivious to his environment. The seat seeker seemed nervous, fearful, perhaps, that someone closer to the empty seat would grab it just a split second before he reached the Promise Land.
After he has reached the land of comfort and settled down with his morning reading, my attention was switched to the people getting on at 168th Street, where the boy and his dad got off after some brief discussion on whether to take the C train across or walk. The bell outside tolled to advise commuters that the C train was about to leave from its terminal station. The door closed and ushered in more students. They always made me wonder what I was like when I was taking the train to school. I was taking a different train that traveled on the same West side as the train I was on now. My journey was far longer than these boys' (unless they were all going to Brooklyn Tech, but even so, it was still a shorter trip than mine that traversed three boroughs). I dressed differently, no doubt; these boys were in a different era where many of them liked wearing jeans that whose belt level was low enough to show most of their underwear. And they were different from the younger me because they were not of my cultural background. If I had seen the likes of them back when I was their age, I would have been a little afraid, assumed they were up to no good, trying to cause trouble. They were wearing not only baggy and super-low-cut jeans, but crooked baseball hat, and headphones to show clearly their walls of disdain for everyone else around them. Now I see them as just boys who looked different, and behind that facade of clothes they could be violent or tame, dumb or smart, no point judging. Of course, I no longer need to judge because I no longer needed to protect myself physically from the real danger that was pervasive around me back then.
Behind the new arrivals was a man that had been sitting next to the Promise Seat since I got on an express stop ago. He was wearing a camouflage shirt with a four-letter word of which I could only see the last three: "A-P-E". What would the first letter be, I wondered. Can they really make a daring shirt saying "RAPE"? Or something lame like CAPE or TAPE or NAPE. NAPE would be the optimal. The man wearing it was a not-so-young black man, a little skinny, and looking rather tame. He wasn't a business person, I had an inkling. He seemed shy next to a friend of his that he was whispering to, whom I couldn't see with the passengers standing in my line of sight. I was too curious about the first letter of that word on his chest to return to my reading.
The anticlimax was that a little before I got off the train I saw finally the word was "BAPE", which doesn't mean anything, not in the formal dictionary, not from some urban connotation. But by then, my curiosity had worn off a great deal, mostly from my thoughts that morning.
It was the first time since last Wednesday that I was going to work from Washington Heights, the land of the castles. I came to the pianist's home after she spent an exhausting weekend preparing and performing at her concert that apparently was a great success. She told me about what happened, and how it worked out overall but not her own part because of this and that reason. I listened, but at the same time, I realized I was tired. I was hungry. I paid attention until she was done and went back to her practicing, and then I made dinner for her, which she thoroughly found delightful. After that we chat a little more before falling asleep. I got my more-than-six-hours of sleep, surprisingly. But in some ways, that's not altogether great.
I woke up few minutes before the alarm went off, and stayed in bed for another two-three minutes. I was thinking on this gray morning whose silence was regularly punctured by the rush hour traffic outside. After getting out of bed I realized I only looked at her once. Something was weighing increasingly heavy, and I knew what it was. What I didn't know was what to do about it.
There is always a fear I have that with whichever girl I have a relationship I inevitably end up being asked to be their best friend, only. And in this case, I feel we are more like a couple married for ten, twenty years. We are sweet to each other. I still write and leave a poem for her every morning that I leave. I still surprise her with flowers. Our embraces are deeper and longer. And it goes without saying that we are always very happy to see each other. I have a feeling she missed me. She talked about what I missed there, that I would have liked it. (I didn't go because she had no room in her car. But then again, am I her boyfriend?)
But what's missing here, in this nearly picture-perfect poetry of romance, is that basic connection between a man and a woman. That flame was there that Labor Day weekend, but that was it. That was three weekends ago. Now we are always tired when we get to bed. And I always felt her physical wall when I try to approach her. And when that happened, the fear of let's-be-friends returns.
There are many couples out there, even in this day and age, who don't have sex until they get married, who believe in taking things easy. But I didn't think we were that kind of couple.
On a layer deeper than the fear of let's-be-friends is the fear that I am in the mode of nothing-is-enough. I finally have someone who likes being with me, lets me sleep in her bed, spends a lot of time with me, and let me do all these romantic things for her, and occasionally, expresses her own romantic attachments to me. And yet, I want "more". I am not sure if it is "more". A part of me thinks without that basic connection between a man and a woman, I am not sure how we are "dating".
That fundamental dilemma is haunting me again: when am I asking for too much, and when am I giving up too much of what I want? Am I demanding too much because deep down I want something else completely different, like approval, like assurance? Or am I justified to believe that what she's offering me really is just a very cute and deep platonic love?
The best way out of this is to talk to her, I believe. Get the stuff out, rake the muck, put everything out in the open. Maybe she doesn't want to go fast because she has had more than her share of that kind of relationship in short span of the past few years. Maybe we simply don't have the energy and time to make that connection; we're always so tired and we're both very busy. If this is the case, is it acceptable to me? With my schedule, which already has sacrificed significant time for tango and kung fu, not to mention other things I like such as photography, can I realistically believe I have time for dating? If by "dating" I mean a girlfriend I do more with in bed than just chat until we fall asleep? I need to figure these things out, perhaps with her help.
I missed the train because I stayed in bed a few minutes too long in contemplating this, because I brushed my teeth, because I wrote her another poem. I am on the local train to Stamford; I will be a little late today. But at least in this slow train, among strangers, I had the time to do another thing I like: writing.
After he has reached the land of comfort and settled down with his morning reading, my attention was switched to the people getting on at 168th Street, where the boy and his dad got off after some brief discussion on whether to take the C train across or walk. The bell outside tolled to advise commuters that the C train was about to leave from its terminal station. The door closed and ushered in more students. They always made me wonder what I was like when I was taking the train to school. I was taking a different train that traveled on the same West side as the train I was on now. My journey was far longer than these boys' (unless they were all going to Brooklyn Tech, but even so, it was still a shorter trip than mine that traversed three boroughs). I dressed differently, no doubt; these boys were in a different era where many of them liked wearing jeans that whose belt level was low enough to show most of their underwear. And they were different from the younger me because they were not of my cultural background. If I had seen the likes of them back when I was their age, I would have been a little afraid, assumed they were up to no good, trying to cause trouble. They were wearing not only baggy and super-low-cut jeans, but crooked baseball hat, and headphones to show clearly their walls of disdain for everyone else around them. Now I see them as just boys who looked different, and behind that facade of clothes they could be violent or tame, dumb or smart, no point judging. Of course, I no longer need to judge because I no longer needed to protect myself physically from the real danger that was pervasive around me back then.
Behind the new arrivals was a man that had been sitting next to the Promise Seat since I got on an express stop ago. He was wearing a camouflage shirt with a four-letter word of which I could only see the last three: "A-P-E". What would the first letter be, I wondered. Can they really make a daring shirt saying "RAPE"? Or something lame like CAPE or TAPE or NAPE. NAPE would be the optimal. The man wearing it was a not-so-young black man, a little skinny, and looking rather tame. He wasn't a business person, I had an inkling. He seemed shy next to a friend of his that he was whispering to, whom I couldn't see with the passengers standing in my line of sight. I was too curious about the first letter of that word on his chest to return to my reading.
The anticlimax was that a little before I got off the train I saw finally the word was "BAPE", which doesn't mean anything, not in the formal dictionary, not from some urban connotation. But by then, my curiosity had worn off a great deal, mostly from my thoughts that morning.
It was the first time since last Wednesday that I was going to work from Washington Heights, the land of the castles. I came to the pianist's home after she spent an exhausting weekend preparing and performing at her concert that apparently was a great success. She told me about what happened, and how it worked out overall but not her own part because of this and that reason. I listened, but at the same time, I realized I was tired. I was hungry. I paid attention until she was done and went back to her practicing, and then I made dinner for her, which she thoroughly found delightful. After that we chat a little more before falling asleep. I got my more-than-six-hours of sleep, surprisingly. But in some ways, that's not altogether great.
I woke up few minutes before the alarm went off, and stayed in bed for another two-three minutes. I was thinking on this gray morning whose silence was regularly punctured by the rush hour traffic outside. After getting out of bed I realized I only looked at her once. Something was weighing increasingly heavy, and I knew what it was. What I didn't know was what to do about it.
There is always a fear I have that with whichever girl I have a relationship I inevitably end up being asked to be their best friend, only. And in this case, I feel we are more like a couple married for ten, twenty years. We are sweet to each other. I still write and leave a poem for her every morning that I leave. I still surprise her with flowers. Our embraces are deeper and longer. And it goes without saying that we are always very happy to see each other. I have a feeling she missed me. She talked about what I missed there, that I would have liked it. (I didn't go because she had no room in her car. But then again, am I her boyfriend?)
But what's missing here, in this nearly picture-perfect poetry of romance, is that basic connection between a man and a woman. That flame was there that Labor Day weekend, but that was it. That was three weekends ago. Now we are always tired when we get to bed. And I always felt her physical wall when I try to approach her. And when that happened, the fear of let's-be-friends returns.
There are many couples out there, even in this day and age, who don't have sex until they get married, who believe in taking things easy. But I didn't think we were that kind of couple.
On a layer deeper than the fear of let's-be-friends is the fear that I am in the mode of nothing-is-enough. I finally have someone who likes being with me, lets me sleep in her bed, spends a lot of time with me, and let me do all these romantic things for her, and occasionally, expresses her own romantic attachments to me. And yet, I want "more". I am not sure if it is "more". A part of me thinks without that basic connection between a man and a woman, I am not sure how we are "dating".
That fundamental dilemma is haunting me again: when am I asking for too much, and when am I giving up too much of what I want? Am I demanding too much because deep down I want something else completely different, like approval, like assurance? Or am I justified to believe that what she's offering me really is just a very cute and deep platonic love?
The best way out of this is to talk to her, I believe. Get the stuff out, rake the muck, put everything out in the open. Maybe she doesn't want to go fast because she has had more than her share of that kind of relationship in short span of the past few years. Maybe we simply don't have the energy and time to make that connection; we're always so tired and we're both very busy. If this is the case, is it acceptable to me? With my schedule, which already has sacrificed significant time for tango and kung fu, not to mention other things I like such as photography, can I realistically believe I have time for dating? If by "dating" I mean a girlfriend I do more with in bed than just chat until we fall asleep? I need to figure these things out, perhaps with her help.
I missed the train because I stayed in bed a few minutes too long in contemplating this, because I brushed my teeth, because I wrote her another poem. I am on the local train to Stamford; I will be a little late today. But at least in this slow train, among strangers, I had the time to do another thing I like: writing.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Train Spotted
My activities in the train attract attention. (And that's not the reason I do these activities.) Yesterday morning on my way to work I started working on the CD cover for the pianist. Before I could start, the woman sitting next to me asked if I was a graphic designer. With some regret I said no, I wasn't. But then we started talking. And we talked all the way to Stamford. How odd. I never attract the attention of a young woman before. If I ever talk to one it's because I make the (daring) effort to strike up a conversation. Strange how sometimes once a man starts dating someone serious, women notice him more. Perhaps simply because he stops looking desperate.
This morning I started reviewing my Hebrew. Did I mention I started learning Hebrew since I started spending time with the pianist (reminder she's Israeli as well as Russian as well as, passport-wise, American). This man, obviously some overconfident trader, sat next to me and stared at my notes for sometime. I know that Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of traders, just as they do in medicine and academe, so it didn't come to me as a surprise that he was interested and asked if I was studying Hebrew. Actually, he asked the more obvious question: why I was studying Hebrew. Why would an Asian man study Hebrew? For a girl, stupid!
I said I was curious, especially since I already studied a bit of Arabic. I don't know if he's Jewish, but if I must bet my Anti-Semitic hands I would bet he is.
I've always been aware of Jews and their coexistence with me in this country, and of course, my whole pro-Palestinian stance has a lot to do with my mixed feelings regarding Jews. But one thing has always been clear: I always had the hots for Jewish women. I don't know why. I haven't figured that part out. I told the pianist that since I was in high school, no, junior high where half the kids, more than that, were, like her, Russian Jews. That singer, my recent crush before the pianist, is Jewish, though more like a lot of the secular American Jews who know just a bit more about Judaism than I do.
So that was my morning today.
Now I am in the bar car of the Metro North train. I have never been in a bar car. I in fact hate the bar car because it occupies space that could be used for sitting. It isn't meant for sitting; most of the car space is for standing, chatting, having beer. I always avoided it with a big huffing exasperation and opted for the next car, which invariably would be more crowded because I wasn't the only one who wanted to sit. Now that I am in the bar car, I don't even see any bar-related things served. No beer, no drinks, no merrymaking. People just have their headphones plugged into their souls and/or reading, or their fingers, like mine, stuck to the keyboard of their laptops.
I am here because there are actually seats left so I decided to sit. But I am sitting facing the windows, which means I am moving sideways, and that makes me a little nauseous, especially when I am typing on a screen. So I will stop. It's funny how I don't have a lot to say sometimes. But I need to write, nonetheless. I could talk about the mini-drama I had with the pianist that ended happily. I will see her in an hour to meet with her roommate and her boyfriend, a roommate that spends almost all her time at the boyfriend's in Brooklyn, close to my parents. I could talk about the French girl, who has returned and who played a pivotal role last night in helping me avoid drama with the pianist by letting me vent. It was strange to talk to the French girl like a friend. When she left for France a month ago I wasn't sure if I would talk to her at all. I could talk about my work, the changes, about the details I notice at work, getting there, returning from there, but my head is getting a little nauseous. The train is screaming and swerving left and right (which for me is forward and backward). The wind and rain smashing onto the front window of this bar car that also serves as the front car. And I will stop and start reading this Russian novel called "Master and Margarita", a masterpiece satire of the Soviet society. Don't be surprised that I am reading Russian literature, or that I am studying Russian along side Hebrew, two rather useless languages in the world, but I guess, not so useless for me.
This morning I started reviewing my Hebrew. Did I mention I started learning Hebrew since I started spending time with the pianist (reminder she's Israeli as well as Russian as well as, passport-wise, American). This man, obviously some overconfident trader, sat next to me and stared at my notes for sometime. I know that Jews make up a disproportionate percentage of traders, just as they do in medicine and academe, so it didn't come to me as a surprise that he was interested and asked if I was studying Hebrew. Actually, he asked the more obvious question: why I was studying Hebrew. Why would an Asian man study Hebrew? For a girl, stupid!
I said I was curious, especially since I already studied a bit of Arabic. I don't know if he's Jewish, but if I must bet my Anti-Semitic hands I would bet he is.
I've always been aware of Jews and their coexistence with me in this country, and of course, my whole pro-Palestinian stance has a lot to do with my mixed feelings regarding Jews. But one thing has always been clear: I always had the hots for Jewish women. I don't know why. I haven't figured that part out. I told the pianist that since I was in high school, no, junior high where half the kids, more than that, were, like her, Russian Jews. That singer, my recent crush before the pianist, is Jewish, though more like a lot of the secular American Jews who know just a bit more about Judaism than I do.
So that was my morning today.
Now I am in the bar car of the Metro North train. I have never been in a bar car. I in fact hate the bar car because it occupies space that could be used for sitting. It isn't meant for sitting; most of the car space is for standing, chatting, having beer. I always avoided it with a big huffing exasperation and opted for the next car, which invariably would be more crowded because I wasn't the only one who wanted to sit. Now that I am in the bar car, I don't even see any bar-related things served. No beer, no drinks, no merrymaking. People just have their headphones plugged into their souls and/or reading, or their fingers, like mine, stuck to the keyboard of their laptops.
I am here because there are actually seats left so I decided to sit. But I am sitting facing the windows, which means I am moving sideways, and that makes me a little nauseous, especially when I am typing on a screen. So I will stop. It's funny how I don't have a lot to say sometimes. But I need to write, nonetheless. I could talk about the mini-drama I had with the pianist that ended happily. I will see her in an hour to meet with her roommate and her boyfriend, a roommate that spends almost all her time at the boyfriend's in Brooklyn, close to my parents. I could talk about the French girl, who has returned and who played a pivotal role last night in helping me avoid drama with the pianist by letting me vent. It was strange to talk to the French girl like a friend. When she left for France a month ago I wasn't sure if I would talk to her at all. I could talk about my work, the changes, about the details I notice at work, getting there, returning from there, but my head is getting a little nauseous. The train is screaming and swerving left and right (which for me is forward and backward). The wind and rain smashing onto the front window of this bar car that also serves as the front car. And I will stop and start reading this Russian novel called "Master and Margarita", a masterpiece satire of the Soviet society. Don't be surprised that I am reading Russian literature, or that I am studying Russian along side Hebrew, two rather useless languages in the world, but I guess, not so useless for me.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Strange Night
It was a strange evening. I missed the stop on the Harlem cross-town bus so instead of getting in the subway I ended up wondering where I was in the middle of Harlem. It was frustrating to be in a New York City bus that stops at every corner.
Then after I decided to actually take the train from one of next express stop the bus got close to, I encountered something weird. On my way out of the train once I arrived at the pianist's station, I encountered a mugging. I didn't know it was a mugging. I saw two men wrestling in front of the vending machine. I thought maybe they were just fooling around, but then no one was laughing. There were other people too, and they were equally puzzled. But when the small white man under the towering black man started stammering "Help!" we had to finally overcome the natural denial and recognized that something was wrong, that an assault was taking place. But we didn't know what to do. Until one man started going closer to the wrestling match. At that point the black man released the small white man and started backing out. What I didn't understand was why he didn't just run away. The one brave man who confronted him asked if there was a problem. The black man didn't run away and denied that there was a problem. He then walked out coolly but he left jacket behind.
I was shocked, and felt a little ashamed that I did nothing to help the small man. I was in denial that something like this could happen in front of me, in front of three people. We didn't walk away like people say New Yorkers would, but we didn't know what to do. The other man, the one not me and not confronting the black man, started calling someone, presumably the police. I thought about taking a picture of the situation, but then I got scared. I was afraid the black man, who was really muscular, would come attacking me. I wasn't thinking, just feeling that the best way was to avoid confrontation, especially now that the assault was over. I was protecting my own hide, I guess.
After I surfaced I saw a police car just right outside. How ironic. I went up to the officers and told them what happened and pointed out the small white man that was also emerging from the subway. Then I left, turning around once to see that the police was talking to the gesticulating small white man. I was continuing my life after that. I was picking up some grocery for the pianist and going up her apartment. There she was preparing dinner for us. There life was back to the familiar picture. The familiar picture that I didn't know was familiar, the familiar picture that I thought was full of dramas, until I saw something inexplicable happen in front of me, something that made me wonder about my own cowardice, my own humanity. I realized all that two months of kung fu didn't give me the confidence to confront someone whom I could in theory defeat, but our kung fu was never put in practice. There was shame in me. I was in denial until it was obvious that a crime was happening. I didn't leave, at least, and I backed up the man that actually confronted the attacker. But still. The moment for heroism came and disappeared.
I tried to tell this to the pianist, but she had her own drama of the day, the drama with organizing for her concert, the drama of distance. I felt distant and alone when I was listening to her because, well, there wasn't anyone to listen to me. It was touching that she took the trouble to make dinner for us. It was important that I didn't go back to an empty home as I have done for most of my past nine years. But then I felt the shaken spirit didn't get to release itself because I had to listen to someone else's distress.
So today I told her just now that I felt a little disconnected and don't know what to do this evening, am not sure I would see her. And when she said perhaps it would be better that we took a short break from each other, until after her concert was over, I got upset. I hate "short breaks"; I hate when someone takes distance from me because they can't handle my loneliness. When I am feeling lonely the last thing I want is to be told I need to be alone more. It's one thing to say you aren't capable of taking care of me; it's something different to say I am the reason you're disconnected so I will leave you alone. A subtle difference, I guess.
There's a constant fear in me that despite all the beautiful things that have happened between us, drama is just around the corner because we are always carrying our past. I hate being alone, being left alone. I know that it's only a matter of time before we find areas that we will drive the other person crazy. It's normal when you spend so much time together, when you invest so much of your hope and energy to shake off that baggage. High expectations, tiring.
But tonight perhaps it is good I will be away from her. I didn't like to hear that I will be away from her until next Monday. But so be it.
Then after I decided to actually take the train from one of next express stop the bus got close to, I encountered something weird. On my way out of the train once I arrived at the pianist's station, I encountered a mugging. I didn't know it was a mugging. I saw two men wrestling in front of the vending machine. I thought maybe they were just fooling around, but then no one was laughing. There were other people too, and they were equally puzzled. But when the small white man under the towering black man started stammering "Help!" we had to finally overcome the natural denial and recognized that something was wrong, that an assault was taking place. But we didn't know what to do. Until one man started going closer to the wrestling match. At that point the black man released the small white man and started backing out. What I didn't understand was why he didn't just run away. The one brave man who confronted him asked if there was a problem. The black man didn't run away and denied that there was a problem. He then walked out coolly but he left jacket behind.
I was shocked, and felt a little ashamed that I did nothing to help the small man. I was in denial that something like this could happen in front of me, in front of three people. We didn't walk away like people say New Yorkers would, but we didn't know what to do. The other man, the one not me and not confronting the black man, started calling someone, presumably the police. I thought about taking a picture of the situation, but then I got scared. I was afraid the black man, who was really muscular, would come attacking me. I wasn't thinking, just feeling that the best way was to avoid confrontation, especially now that the assault was over. I was protecting my own hide, I guess.
After I surfaced I saw a police car just right outside. How ironic. I went up to the officers and told them what happened and pointed out the small white man that was also emerging from the subway. Then I left, turning around once to see that the police was talking to the gesticulating small white man. I was continuing my life after that. I was picking up some grocery for the pianist and going up her apartment. There she was preparing dinner for us. There life was back to the familiar picture. The familiar picture that I didn't know was familiar, the familiar picture that I thought was full of dramas, until I saw something inexplicable happen in front of me, something that made me wonder about my own cowardice, my own humanity. I realized all that two months of kung fu didn't give me the confidence to confront someone whom I could in theory defeat, but our kung fu was never put in practice. There was shame in me. I was in denial until it was obvious that a crime was happening. I didn't leave, at least, and I backed up the man that actually confronted the attacker. But still. The moment for heroism came and disappeared.
I tried to tell this to the pianist, but she had her own drama of the day, the drama with organizing for her concert, the drama of distance. I felt distant and alone when I was listening to her because, well, there wasn't anyone to listen to me. It was touching that she took the trouble to make dinner for us. It was important that I didn't go back to an empty home as I have done for most of my past nine years. But then I felt the shaken spirit didn't get to release itself because I had to listen to someone else's distress.
So today I told her just now that I felt a little disconnected and don't know what to do this evening, am not sure I would see her. And when she said perhaps it would be better that we took a short break from each other, until after her concert was over, I got upset. I hate "short breaks"; I hate when someone takes distance from me because they can't handle my loneliness. When I am feeling lonely the last thing I want is to be told I need to be alone more. It's one thing to say you aren't capable of taking care of me; it's something different to say I am the reason you're disconnected so I will leave you alone. A subtle difference, I guess.
There's a constant fear in me that despite all the beautiful things that have happened between us, drama is just around the corner because we are always carrying our past. I hate being alone, being left alone. I know that it's only a matter of time before we find areas that we will drive the other person crazy. It's normal when you spend so much time together, when you invest so much of your hope and energy to shake off that baggage. High expectations, tiring.
But tonight perhaps it is good I will be away from her. I didn't like to hear that I will be away from her until next Monday. But so be it.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
holding Hands
There's so much new stuff to say about finally being in a real romantic relationship. The one thing that hits me now is the sense of freedom. For all the years I have lived in New Haven, especially in the first half when I was occupied with my best friend, I had to always struggle with what I want and what I felt I was allowed to do. I couldn't just say what I wanted, couldn't express what my heart felt without turning it into an emotional kamikaze mission. I couldn't touch the other person's hand; the thought of it already bore down on my heavily. I couldn't look at in her eyes for more than a split second. And even when I wrote poems to them, I had to be more abstract, more cryptic, as if it were as much for her to know I was still interested as it was for me to remind myself. And this doesn't mention the intimacy, or the need to tolerate its absence. And along with it, the need to bear the absence of any reciprocation.
I remember when my best friend and I went to see a movie once, in that old movie theater that was shut down shortly before she left the country, I mustered the courage to put my hand over hers, maybe even tried to feel the spaces between her fingers with my fingers. But the vibration of awkwardness quickly turned into earthquakes, and I had to pull away in a shameful retreat.
On Friday, the pianist and I left the final stop of my 7 train in Times Square and walked through the dreadfully long tunnel to the A train. And I was just talking when I felt her hand taking mine. The euphoria is ineffable, but so was also a sense of extreme sadness. After all these years, I started to feel free. Not only could I tell this person how much I liked her, not only could I write her poems openly describing (in a poetic way, of course) how much she made me happy, not only could I touch her face and get a blushed smile back, I was also feeling the reciprocation. I wonder where I have been these eight and a half years. How was it that for nearly nine years I was living in a cage where my emotions, my expressions, my desire to love, was all strapped within this straitjacket of unknown origin. I wonder if it really does take so long, nearly nine years, nearly a decade, for this type of connection to be forged. If someone had told me nine years ago that that was how long I would have had to wait, I wonder if I would have gone crazy from the start. Nine years in a prison. (Actually, it has been nine years since I moved to New Haven on a cool September day.) A prison where an important part of human energy, that romantic love for another human being, is forced within the dam of life.
I still don't understand where that dam comes from. I just know how sweet it tastes that now I can do what seems so natural, so simple. To put my arm around the woman I am crazy about without feeling guilty, without preparing myself before I even start to pull that arm away. I did something crazy on Saturday. She was teaching out on Long Island, while I was in Chinatown torturing my mind and body with kung fu practices. After that I went and got myself a haircut, and then I got some cannoli from Little Italy. Then I took the train all the way up to the northern end, the land of Castles, and bought three golden roses. The crazier part is that I went into her apartment without telling her, and left the goodies in her apartment. I told her in a note that she wouldn't have to worry I would sneak in in the future. I trusted that she understood. I left her a poem and went all the way back to Queens. I have always wanted to be creative in my expression of love for a woman. Here I took a chance and made a daring move that might upset her because she didn't entrust me with her spare key so I could sneak in without telling her.
But somehow, I believed she would understand, and hopefully, moreover, loved my action.
I did it also because I was afraid I wouldn't see her that evening. She's usually exhausted by the end of Saturday and just want to be home alone. And yet, she decided to take up my offer for dinner at my place, to see my place for the first time. And that's what we did. That was before she took my hands in that long stuffy corridor, the first woman since I returned to this country just before the Towers fell exactly ten years ago. We parted ways because I wanted to go practice tango and she wanted to go home and crash in her bed.
An hour later I got a text message from her.
Freedom comes with connection, this sort of freedom, at least. I wanted to be crazy like I think a boy crazy about a girl would do. I want to freely express myself without feeling that there are boundaries, there are rules, there are limits. For so long I have had to curtail my creativity, suffocate it often, because the other person simply wasn't interested.
But now, I have someone who sent me a text message, in response to my crazy act, saying how sweet I was, how happy I made her. She couldn't understand how little cannoli from Little Italy got all the way up to Washington Heights until she realized I traveled all that way. For her, the crazy part wasn't sneaking into her apartment, but that I made such effort to show her how much I appreciated her.
When I can do what I feel, I don't need to make efforts, actually. I don't have to scheme hard to avoid awkwardness. I just do it. I feel like a boy, not a 37 year old who needs to sell his house, who needs to respond to multi-million dollar questions everyday. I am just a boy, and she not only appreciates my boyish energy, but can't believe she deserved so much attention.
How she perceives love and relationship is interesting and also is the source of some difficulties we face, but I will leave that for another day. It is refreshing simply to write a blog entry celebrating the joy of freedom, joy of being crazy for someone. This is in great contrast to all the sad, angry, frustrated entries. I don't know how long this will last, but I am grateful that in life, sometimes a woman, a woman I am crazy about, wants to hold my hand, wants to know when I would be home, wants to know how much I still liked her.
I remember when my best friend and I went to see a movie once, in that old movie theater that was shut down shortly before she left the country, I mustered the courage to put my hand over hers, maybe even tried to feel the spaces between her fingers with my fingers. But the vibration of awkwardness quickly turned into earthquakes, and I had to pull away in a shameful retreat.
On Friday, the pianist and I left the final stop of my 7 train in Times Square and walked through the dreadfully long tunnel to the A train. And I was just talking when I felt her hand taking mine. The euphoria is ineffable, but so was also a sense of extreme sadness. After all these years, I started to feel free. Not only could I tell this person how much I liked her, not only could I write her poems openly describing (in a poetic way, of course) how much she made me happy, not only could I touch her face and get a blushed smile back, I was also feeling the reciprocation. I wonder where I have been these eight and a half years. How was it that for nearly nine years I was living in a cage where my emotions, my expressions, my desire to love, was all strapped within this straitjacket of unknown origin. I wonder if it really does take so long, nearly nine years, nearly a decade, for this type of connection to be forged. If someone had told me nine years ago that that was how long I would have had to wait, I wonder if I would have gone crazy from the start. Nine years in a prison. (Actually, it has been nine years since I moved to New Haven on a cool September day.) A prison where an important part of human energy, that romantic love for another human being, is forced within the dam of life.
I still don't understand where that dam comes from. I just know how sweet it tastes that now I can do what seems so natural, so simple. To put my arm around the woman I am crazy about without feeling guilty, without preparing myself before I even start to pull that arm away. I did something crazy on Saturday. She was teaching out on Long Island, while I was in Chinatown torturing my mind and body with kung fu practices. After that I went and got myself a haircut, and then I got some cannoli from Little Italy. Then I took the train all the way up to the northern end, the land of Castles, and bought three golden roses. The crazier part is that I went into her apartment without telling her, and left the goodies in her apartment. I told her in a note that she wouldn't have to worry I would sneak in in the future. I trusted that she understood. I left her a poem and went all the way back to Queens. I have always wanted to be creative in my expression of love for a woman. Here I took a chance and made a daring move that might upset her because she didn't entrust me with her spare key so I could sneak in without telling her.
But somehow, I believed she would understand, and hopefully, moreover, loved my action.
I did it also because I was afraid I wouldn't see her that evening. She's usually exhausted by the end of Saturday and just want to be home alone. And yet, she decided to take up my offer for dinner at my place, to see my place for the first time. And that's what we did. That was before she took my hands in that long stuffy corridor, the first woman since I returned to this country just before the Towers fell exactly ten years ago. We parted ways because I wanted to go practice tango and she wanted to go home and crash in her bed.
An hour later I got a text message from her.
Freedom comes with connection, this sort of freedom, at least. I wanted to be crazy like I think a boy crazy about a girl would do. I want to freely express myself without feeling that there are boundaries, there are rules, there are limits. For so long I have had to curtail my creativity, suffocate it often, because the other person simply wasn't interested.
But now, I have someone who sent me a text message, in response to my crazy act, saying how sweet I was, how happy I made her. She couldn't understand how little cannoli from Little Italy got all the way up to Washington Heights until she realized I traveled all that way. For her, the crazy part wasn't sneaking into her apartment, but that I made such effort to show her how much I appreciated her.
When I can do what I feel, I don't need to make efforts, actually. I don't have to scheme hard to avoid awkwardness. I just do it. I feel like a boy, not a 37 year old who needs to sell his house, who needs to respond to multi-million dollar questions everyday. I am just a boy, and she not only appreciates my boyish energy, but can't believe she deserved so much attention.
How she perceives love and relationship is interesting and also is the source of some difficulties we face, but I will leave that for another day. It is refreshing simply to write a blog entry celebrating the joy of freedom, joy of being crazy for someone. This is in great contrast to all the sad, angry, frustrated entries. I don't know how long this will last, but I am grateful that in life, sometimes a woman, a woman I am crazy about, wants to hold my hand, wants to know when I would be home, wants to know how much I still liked her.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Opening from Photo
I am on the New York Times. Unbelievable. I didn't even have to do anything. My name isn't mentioned. It's a picture of sunset just before Hurricane Irene arrived the next day. I was standing there, watching over the Hudson River, watching the great George Washington Bridge span over that gray torrent contrasting the light blue clouds of dusk.
Next to me in that picture was the Princess of the Castle, who took me in as a refugee from the impending wrathful storm even though I didn't need to be evacuated. That was all in the last blog, or the one before, at least.
Washington Heights is hilly. At 7 in the morning there's a huge crowd of people waiting on the Uptown platform for the A train to shuttle them to their work in the "City". I squeeze myself in and get off in Harlem to catch the crosstown bus, one of the two, to the Metro North station in East Harlem. I have done this twice. The first time was different from the second time.
There are three fushia (can't spell) color roses in her practice room, next to a baby grand. It has been inflating from the size of a goose egg to my fist. And unlike the cheap stuff from Mom-and-Pop stores all over New York, these actually smelled of roses. She wants me to smell them every time she noticed them. The petals slowly get relaxed as the each flower opens up. Sort of like her heart. Though not as quickly as the roses, her heart opened up over the past month, and finally let me in this weekend.
And she did, little by little, one by one, my own walls start to erode away. And talking to her, who was first a friend to me than anything else, a friend I could connect to, I realized what some of those walls were. In the past few years, the women I was involved wanted to hide what we had, and definitely didn't want to call it any name. There was the insane game of words to dodge more clean-cut names like boyfriend or dating. In retrospect I realized how foolish it was for me to tolerate their uncertainty. Not just foolish, but sad, that I would put up with their uncertainty in return for sustaining something they didn't truly want. To walk down the street, or the hills of Washington Heights, with her arm around me, or her hand in mine, something so simple, without any sense of commitment, any drama, any fear, my own rose started to relax and open up. She has no qualms about telling her family, her friends what crazy boy was after her, what crazy boy was staying at her apartment this weekend.
I felt comfortable enough to fall asleep for four hours on Monday while she practiced away with the drama in her music. When was the last time I felt comfortable, relaxed, with a woman who wasn't a friend? It wasn't my fault that they were unable to make the situation relaxing, but it was my fault to have stayed in such a situation.
I am wearing her pants. I didn't expect to be coming to work straight from her place. On Sunday I was dressed for the Sunday milonga, where I like dressing in the craziest way I felt comfortable in, and this time it was white linen with super red pants. I realized late Monday night that I couldn't wear those pants into an investment bank. Wearing those pants I wonder what had happened. Why things suddenly went so quickly. And I wonder if I was living in a box, the box of preconceptions, preconceptions of how relationships are supposed to start. There's some rule somewhere that you start everything slow. I never really understood the rationality behind that. I simply assumed it was right because it was one of the rules to protect me from getting hurt. Of course, in the end, I got hurt anyway by all those women. Rules or no rules.
She already is hinting she wants to see me. I am far from being sick of her, but I am hesitant. I am afraid I must be breaking some rule. Like the rule that you're not supposed to see someone so much in the beginning. Sooner or later she would say, in an awkward manner, "I think we should cool down a bit." So many rules. I am supposed to be playing the game of hard to get. If I let her have me whenever she wants, then she wouldn't get too excited. That's another rule. She wanted me to come to her place right after work. I told her I had my New Haven best friend had just moved to the City and was meeting up with me. I was afraid it would upset her, but then, it fit in the rule very well. That rule about being independent; women respect men who are independent even though they hate when men get tired of them.
All these rules have one immediate effect, regardless of what they are trying to protect in the future, what unknown risks they are hedging, and that is they make me nervous. I can't believe I am dating again. To be more precise, I can't believe someone actually wants to date me, someone I am crazy about. It's so new and unfamiliar that only a dream can be the explanation. I look at that photo from the New York Times, us standing there, me looking at her, not at the river or the bridge, and there was about two feet of distance between us. It's not a dream, is it? Now there isn't any physical distance between us when we meet. But the rules form a clear gulf between us. One thing is clear: an adventure has started, regardless of its length, a new adventure has begun.
Next to me in that picture was the Princess of the Castle, who took me in as a refugee from the impending wrathful storm even though I didn't need to be evacuated. That was all in the last blog, or the one before, at least.
Washington Heights is hilly. At 7 in the morning there's a huge crowd of people waiting on the Uptown platform for the A train to shuttle them to their work in the "City". I squeeze myself in and get off in Harlem to catch the crosstown bus, one of the two, to the Metro North station in East Harlem. I have done this twice. The first time was different from the second time.
There are three fushia (can't spell) color roses in her practice room, next to a baby grand. It has been inflating from the size of a goose egg to my fist. And unlike the cheap stuff from Mom-and-Pop stores all over New York, these actually smelled of roses. She wants me to smell them every time she noticed them. The petals slowly get relaxed as the each flower opens up. Sort of like her heart. Though not as quickly as the roses, her heart opened up over the past month, and finally let me in this weekend.
And she did, little by little, one by one, my own walls start to erode away. And talking to her, who was first a friend to me than anything else, a friend I could connect to, I realized what some of those walls were. In the past few years, the women I was involved wanted to hide what we had, and definitely didn't want to call it any name. There was the insane game of words to dodge more clean-cut names like boyfriend or dating. In retrospect I realized how foolish it was for me to tolerate their uncertainty. Not just foolish, but sad, that I would put up with their uncertainty in return for sustaining something they didn't truly want. To walk down the street, or the hills of Washington Heights, with her arm around me, or her hand in mine, something so simple, without any sense of commitment, any drama, any fear, my own rose started to relax and open up. She has no qualms about telling her family, her friends what crazy boy was after her, what crazy boy was staying at her apartment this weekend.
I felt comfortable enough to fall asleep for four hours on Monday while she practiced away with the drama in her music. When was the last time I felt comfortable, relaxed, with a woman who wasn't a friend? It wasn't my fault that they were unable to make the situation relaxing, but it was my fault to have stayed in such a situation.
I am wearing her pants. I didn't expect to be coming to work straight from her place. On Sunday I was dressed for the Sunday milonga, where I like dressing in the craziest way I felt comfortable in, and this time it was white linen with super red pants. I realized late Monday night that I couldn't wear those pants into an investment bank. Wearing those pants I wonder what had happened. Why things suddenly went so quickly. And I wonder if I was living in a box, the box of preconceptions, preconceptions of how relationships are supposed to start. There's some rule somewhere that you start everything slow. I never really understood the rationality behind that. I simply assumed it was right because it was one of the rules to protect me from getting hurt. Of course, in the end, I got hurt anyway by all those women. Rules or no rules.
She already is hinting she wants to see me. I am far from being sick of her, but I am hesitant. I am afraid I must be breaking some rule. Like the rule that you're not supposed to see someone so much in the beginning. Sooner or later she would say, in an awkward manner, "I think we should cool down a bit." So many rules. I am supposed to be playing the game of hard to get. If I let her have me whenever she wants, then she wouldn't get too excited. That's another rule. She wanted me to come to her place right after work. I told her I had my New Haven best friend had just moved to the City and was meeting up with me. I was afraid it would upset her, but then, it fit in the rule very well. That rule about being independent; women respect men who are independent even though they hate when men get tired of them.
All these rules have one immediate effect, regardless of what they are trying to protect in the future, what unknown risks they are hedging, and that is they make me nervous. I can't believe I am dating again. To be more precise, I can't believe someone actually wants to date me, someone I am crazy about. It's so new and unfamiliar that only a dream can be the explanation. I look at that photo from the New York Times, us standing there, me looking at her, not at the river or the bridge, and there was about two feet of distance between us. It's not a dream, is it? Now there isn't any physical distance between us when we meet. But the rules form a clear gulf between us. One thing is clear: an adventure has started, regardless of its length, a new adventure has begun.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Train of Thought
The 7 train goes about 30 mph maximum speed in the Steinway Street Tunnel that connects its Vernon Blvd Jackson Avenue station and the Grand Central station. I am guessing it can go a little faster because it didn't feel fast. The tunnel is unlit except by the lights of the subway train. And it isn't on flat grounds. You can see the tracks rise and dip, and the train makes a final ascent to the hallo of the Grand Central train stop some two minutes after it leaves the last station in Queens.
I was watching all this unimportant drama through the 5x5 in plexiglass window of the door to the engineer's compartment at the front of the train. Unless I am late getting on the train, I am always at the very beginning of the train, the first door to the left of the first car. But it was the first time I watched my life move through the 7 train track on my way to work. I felt like a kid watching with fascination the evolution of the tracks and their surroundings. I saw the lights change from red to green. I saw in the beginning the express train that got in front of us and made us wait a bit before Queensboro Plaza. I saw us submerge into the dark tunnel that started with the Hunters Point station. I didn't see the rats that are as busy on the tracks as are the human beings on the platforms, and those I didn't notice either. Just the tracks and the mechanical parts that make up the tunnel. The drama that they quietly weave when I stop believing that it is I who is moving.
I got a text message during this watching of the mechanical drama. Well, two. Both were late. Both were in response to messages I got. One was sent last night right before I went to bed, before 11PM. It was from a friend, the friend who was leaving, the girl I was walking all over town about a month ago before she went to visit her family and boyfriend overseas. I wonder when she's leaving. It's imminent. She's the person who reminded me to be more open minded, to look through all the superficial expectations and see the human being a woman is. There is actually something sexy and attractive about kindness, something beautiful about generosity and smiles. She was the person who without hesitation welcomed to take my guests so I could make room for my parents' evacuation, which didn't happen in my apartment, as you read in the last post.
The other message that was sent while I was sleeping was from the pianist. That made me happy.
But I wasn't so happy this morning before I got those text messages. It was another moment of some internal crisis. I remember that time, before I moved to my house that I am trying to sell now, when I told my best friend, whom I had known only a year or two ("only"!) that I missed her. She didn't say anything in response. And I got upset. I even confronted her about it. And she said of course she missed me, but didn't think she had to say it just because I said I missed her. It's childish on my end, and such situations remind me of some deeper problems. Before I continue, I must say that I am not trying to be harsh on myself. I am aware that many people have these problems; here I am articulating them and perhaps can find some perspective that would allow me to deal with them. The biggest problem is needing approval. Needing to hear the other person say she misses me to feel it's not a one-way street. And what's disturbing is that the motive for saying I miss someone might not purely be expressing a sentiment, but to check to see what the feelings are on the other side.
The pianist started a brief chat with me on gmail, and at some point I told her I missed her smiles, but she said nothing back, and I was a little miffed. But this morning I felt foolish. And that feeling of foolishness grew into fear. I look back into all the troubles I had with different women, and while it's true they had their own baggage, their own problems, their own walls, the scariest thing about all those experiences is my own walls. While I can quit any twisted relationship, that I can leave them, I can never quit myself, I can never walk away from my own walls. Every hard cold stone that builds the wall is an integral part of some corresponding cell in my body. From as early on as high school when I had all that trouble with the girl with the longest and most complicated best-friendship with me, I can remember the struggle with my own walls, and watching almost helplessly how the walls prevented me from being happy, from developing the kind of relationship I want. And when I meet someone that makes me very happy, someone without all the complicated walls that others before her had, my smile slowly fades in the storm of fear that things would fail only because I can't deal with my own insecurity.
I need her to say "I miss your smiles too" in response. I need her to write to me something more than two sentences so I have something to look forward to in the morning. I need her to dance all night with me so I feel special. Just among many "needs". And in the beginning I can handle it pretty well, but that's only because I am more in control in the beginning, not because the walls are thinner or shorter.
Some personalities of the women in the past would serve to provoke some of my shortcomings more likely that other personalities, but there are indeed some problems I have internally that would surface regardless of who it is. This morning I wonder how I would deal with these problems. I wonder if I would meet someone who would deal with them with me instead of running away from me altogether. My best friend tried to reassure me that they aren't really such big problems, that everyone has their own insecurities. Perhaps that's my first step: come to terms with them instead of antagonize them. I won't overcome them tomorrow, not before anything serious happens between this pianist and I would develop. I can only keep trying, and if I am lucky, she'd be patient enough with me to deal with my problems with me. We will see….
I was watching all this unimportant drama through the 5x5 in plexiglass window of the door to the engineer's compartment at the front of the train. Unless I am late getting on the train, I am always at the very beginning of the train, the first door to the left of the first car. But it was the first time I watched my life move through the 7 train track on my way to work. I felt like a kid watching with fascination the evolution of the tracks and their surroundings. I saw the lights change from red to green. I saw in the beginning the express train that got in front of us and made us wait a bit before Queensboro Plaza. I saw us submerge into the dark tunnel that started with the Hunters Point station. I didn't see the rats that are as busy on the tracks as are the human beings on the platforms, and those I didn't notice either. Just the tracks and the mechanical parts that make up the tunnel. The drama that they quietly weave when I stop believing that it is I who is moving.
I got a text message during this watching of the mechanical drama. Well, two. Both were late. Both were in response to messages I got. One was sent last night right before I went to bed, before 11PM. It was from a friend, the friend who was leaving, the girl I was walking all over town about a month ago before she went to visit her family and boyfriend overseas. I wonder when she's leaving. It's imminent. She's the person who reminded me to be more open minded, to look through all the superficial expectations and see the human being a woman is. There is actually something sexy and attractive about kindness, something beautiful about generosity and smiles. She was the person who without hesitation welcomed to take my guests so I could make room for my parents' evacuation, which didn't happen in my apartment, as you read in the last post.
The other message that was sent while I was sleeping was from the pianist. That made me happy.
But I wasn't so happy this morning before I got those text messages. It was another moment of some internal crisis. I remember that time, before I moved to my house that I am trying to sell now, when I told my best friend, whom I had known only a year or two ("only"!) that I missed her. She didn't say anything in response. And I got upset. I even confronted her about it. And she said of course she missed me, but didn't think she had to say it just because I said I missed her. It's childish on my end, and such situations remind me of some deeper problems. Before I continue, I must say that I am not trying to be harsh on myself. I am aware that many people have these problems; here I am articulating them and perhaps can find some perspective that would allow me to deal with them. The biggest problem is needing approval. Needing to hear the other person say she misses me to feel it's not a one-way street. And what's disturbing is that the motive for saying I miss someone might not purely be expressing a sentiment, but to check to see what the feelings are on the other side.
The pianist started a brief chat with me on gmail, and at some point I told her I missed her smiles, but she said nothing back, and I was a little miffed. But this morning I felt foolish. And that feeling of foolishness grew into fear. I look back into all the troubles I had with different women, and while it's true they had their own baggage, their own problems, their own walls, the scariest thing about all those experiences is my own walls. While I can quit any twisted relationship, that I can leave them, I can never quit myself, I can never walk away from my own walls. Every hard cold stone that builds the wall is an integral part of some corresponding cell in my body. From as early on as high school when I had all that trouble with the girl with the longest and most complicated best-friendship with me, I can remember the struggle with my own walls, and watching almost helplessly how the walls prevented me from being happy, from developing the kind of relationship I want. And when I meet someone that makes me very happy, someone without all the complicated walls that others before her had, my smile slowly fades in the storm of fear that things would fail only because I can't deal with my own insecurity.
I need her to say "I miss your smiles too" in response. I need her to write to me something more than two sentences so I have something to look forward to in the morning. I need her to dance all night with me so I feel special. Just among many "needs". And in the beginning I can handle it pretty well, but that's only because I am more in control in the beginning, not because the walls are thinner or shorter.
Some personalities of the women in the past would serve to provoke some of my shortcomings more likely that other personalities, but there are indeed some problems I have internally that would surface regardless of who it is. This morning I wonder how I would deal with these problems. I wonder if I would meet someone who would deal with them with me instead of running away from me altogether. My best friend tried to reassure me that they aren't really such big problems, that everyone has their own insecurities. Perhaps that's my first step: come to terms with them instead of antagonize them. I won't overcome them tomorrow, not before anything serious happens between this pianist and I would develop. I can only keep trying, and if I am lucky, she'd be patient enough with me to deal with my problems with me. We will see….
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