Finance Guy

He is sort of my supervisor. My manager, the one I make request for human resources things like taking half a day off to see my friend's art critique, hardly talks to me, though when he does, he's smiling and asks me how I am doing. He doesn't really know what I am doing.

This man, on the other hand, explains everything to me, everything I need to know for projects.

(When he doesn't know, I go to another man, more of a "customer", who tells me more than what I need to know about projects. It is from that man, a younger man, that I am learning a lot about financial theories and practices. More about him another time.)

This is the British man I have mentioned in the beginning. Some days he seems very sad, and almost all mornings he seems sad. Discouraged. I never really know if his lack of smiles is due to my coming always later than the rest of the group or that he is simply tired of this job. Today he spoke multiple times in a joking fashion that he was quitting. After he got his famous "review" that determines the famous "bonus" of each employee of any finance company, he was sullen and put a rating box on his monitor, reminding himself what his worth was to this company on a given day. Today, he was on an all time high of 5+. (I think the highest you get is a 5 so that "plus" might be a sign of sarcasm.)

As I have mentioned before, I think he is in his late forties (as I am in my late thirties, in about a month). He has a wife that forms what seems to be a very functional relationship with him. She drives a Volkswagen Beetle while he drives some American SUV. She goes to the hairdresser only to find their son asking her afterward "Is the hairdresser closed today, Mummy?", while he thinks a lot and talks about about golf. (I realize that finance people love golfing, not sure why.)

I know all this because I sit next to him. I am the quiet Asian man and no one notices me when they let their personal life seep into work, especially when they are so disillusioned about it. Plus, I am the type of people who notice everything. My best friend often still think I work for the CIA.

In any case, there are times when he is genuinely happy, even in a sarcastic way. I much prefer when he's sarcastic and smiling than sullen and quiet. I feel sorry for him. I don't know how long he has been working in finance. He knows a lot, has built great programs for the firm. But I imagine this isn't where you want to be the last decade before retirement. (Or decade and a half.) He feels helpless a lot of times, including with his higher-paid higher-ranked wife who seems much more upbeat than he is (perhaps because I find female British voices sexy, except that of my former roommate, who was annoying). He comes early, and leaves after me, and often he works on weekends. I wonder if he cooks. He wants to lose weight, but the closest he got to the gym in our building was bringing his sneakers in to his cubical but never managed to put them on and march into the gym. His excuse is that he has too much to do. Supposedly that is my job: to relieve him of his work. Sometimes, I think, he is jealous of me.

He knows I code well. He jokes about how I was doing too good of a job. He knows unlike others in the group I am a professional programmer, as opposed to a finance person who spent much of his programming time hacking stuff together. What he is jealous about, or might be, isn't that I am better than him. I don't think I am better. But that I am not cynical.

I am a newcomer and I still leave slightly earlier than others because I have to catch my train. I can get stuff done very fast and in a clean way. I have an attitude that shines among so many jaded faces. It's true. I am happy at work. I don't really care if I really get fired tomorrow. It will hurt. I will cry. But unlike being in one of these many crazy quasi-relationships, I will know I have been happy, even for three months. I am learning a lot, and I am bent on learning even more about finance, no matter when I am leaving this company. Today I got excited when that younger man mentioned in the parenthesized paragraph above gave me a huge, black book on "Fixed Income". I didn't even know what "fixed income" was, except that it included bonds, which themselves I am unfamiliar with. But I have been writing a program for "cash" which was demo'ed today to an impressed crowd over there in London. So when I got the big fat "bible" on fixed income and was told to read four chapters, I was never so eager before, not in high school, not in college. I wanted to know everything about bonds, how they are traded, what kinds, why people trade them. Part of my excitement is also from reading this book (still reading it) that explains what happened a few years ago when the housing marking imploded and unscrupulous people made the economy even worse while putting billions of dollars in their own pockets. Mortgages in that story had everything to do with bonds.

So this digression is to illustrate how excited I am. I don't see half that excitement in the faces of other people. This company is probably the most laid-back investment bank I will ever encounter or learn about. People don't work sixty hours, unlike the animals over there at Goldman Sachs where working eighty hours a week was encouraged with a free cab ride home. Here most people are married, most people have a life outside, most people are older than me, most people take lunch breaks in the lunch room, not at their desks. (I remember when I was at Goldman I was nearly alone in the dining hall during what should have been rush hour. Here between noon and 1:30 the place is jam-packed.)

So that's where any jealousy would come from in that face that oscillated between sadness and sarcastic smiles. I think he's proud of having me help him, even if I made the company lose about ten thousand dollars yesterday for which he had to try to clean the mess. I think he wished life wasn't what it is now, whatever it is. He plays an important role in the company, which is probably why he still has a job after causing some bad ripple a month ago when some of his abuses of the IT system were exposed. He didn't abuse it for money; the bank's IT rules were too tight for him, and he had been going through backdoors for a while until now. That probably caused even deeper depression for him. Coincidentally, or not, it happened around his review.

I see his face. I look at the many lines. I look at his small eyes that made Asian eyes look big. I see the different shades of red on different parts of that face. The lips that seemed so faded and weak. I wonder what makes him want to look forward to another day even if he doesn't always look forward to another day. I look forward always to another work day. I wish I could say the same about weekends when I dread waking up alone. (Less now, but still.) What strange differences we have in our desires. He has a wife, charming and even beautiful for her age, and a shy little son he calls a "wimp" but still adorable when he got him in once for unknown reasons. Me, I complain about not having any of that, not even a girlfriend, and yet, I look forward to everyday except the weekend while he looks forward to the opposite set.

I wanted to talk about this man because I wanted to put a human face in finance. I know I should be enough of a human face on finance. I am not an "outsider"; I am becoming a geek in finance. I am listening to a semester-worth of lectures from a Yale Open Course called Financial Markets. I want to read more and more about the finance industry. And I am not embarrassed to say I want to find a way to make a lot of money.

The trouble is, by saying that, especially the last bit, I am reinforcing this stereotype that, in particular among my circle of leftist/progressive friends, many people have against the financial industry. There's, I believe, a deep and unrecognized hypocrisy in those who chastise the financial industry as a whole as opposed to the specific elements that have committed at least moral wrong to the world. Those who are disgusted with the finance people forget that every human being wants to make money. Some wants it more than others, some, and you'd be surprised how many of us actually want more money than we really need. There is therefore nothing wrong with wanting money. Before castigating those who want to maximize their personal capitals, it's worthwhile to visit the demon of jealousy and look at the mirror first.

It's interesting that at the beginning of the third lecture from this course on the Financial Markets, the professor addressed specifically this point. Hollywood never showed financiers under any good light. People's attitudes are exactly that, financial people are these soulless creatures thirst for more capital, even at the expense of other human beings. I think that most of these people who carry this common misconception have never been exposed to any education in the financial market, let alone worked at a financial services institution. None would really be able to say in what ways financial markets are important and ideally important to the growth of the world. It's far easier to say it breeds greed and causes one depression after another. It would surprise many detractors of the financial market that this professor actually believes the goal of finance is to address the problem of economic inequality through "risk management." And to my own surprise, he declared that socialism, even Communism, is a form of risk management because the goal is for those who are at risk of not being rewarded financially from their less economically usable talents, for these people to minimize the risk of poverty by having others who are more fortunate provide them with the resources. I won't dwell into this further since it is undoubtedly a very debatable subject. But I do want to say that it shouldn't have to be as debatable if the other side actually gained some experience learning and even working in finance.

So in many ways I am accomplishing my main goals when I decided to work in this "evil" world. I wanted to learn finance, its seemingly foggy and obscure forests. I believed that there are few things in the world I would fail to learn (such as the violin). And finance was never going to be too complicated for me. I wanted to learn for the sake of learning, and if I get rich, it would be a bonus, but unnecessary. The other goal was to understand the stereotype of this industry. I remember when I found out my ex from college had been working for Credit Suisse for a while, I sort of insulted her and the rest of her gang by saying, "There's something naturally dangerous about exposing yourself to all this money; all this money surely would corrupt a person." I didn't say it such harsh terms, but close enough. I guess partly I was jealous like a lot of detractors of the finance industry, but also she was my ex and I still hated her to some extent.

Now I sound like an advocate for the finance world. But before you jump into that obvious and obviously wrong conclusion, I wanted to paint the face of a man who has worked in finance longer than any of you have worked in anything you're doing now. He is not an exception, but he is the one person I know the best. But he is human. The professor of that lecture said that people he had met in the finance industry are indeed human, and they work not only to maximize their own capital, which really is what most of us do in our jobs whether that's our principle goal or not, but that these people also believed in the ideals of the financial industry, which its detractors probably don't even know. Those ideals encompass in risk management that holds a very socialist ideal of redistribution of not so much wealth and capital but first and foremost risk. He added that those who do actually make a lot of money, have only one thing to do with all that excess money: philanthropy. Philanthropy is something detractors of finance do not talk about, or if they do, they brush it aside as some justification for the abuses of capitalism.

I think that wherever the truth is about finance, to truly talk about it one needs to go past the movies, the documentaries, and really understand what the human faces, all of them, not just the greedy and immoral ones, do in this sector so often vilified.

Silent Departures

Before a quick story, I want to say that this weekend was quite interesting (which is better than "fun" or even "exciting"). I went to a thrift store and bought a bunch of plaid shirts, with the influence of my artsy friend. So funny, a thirty-something year old man working at an investment bank combing through second-hand clothes in search of gems. But that's really how people make money on Wall Street, combing through all the junk to find gems, except that they make billions out of that scavenger hunt while I got to spend invaluable time with one of my favorite people. But putting love aside, I was amazed how these shirts brought out so much color in me. I am happy to be going in that direction, direction of color as a means to reveal more of ME!

And, oh, today I did something bad at work, probably cost the company over ten thousand dollars. I mean, that's nothing compared to how much I am sure some traders lose on a day, but presumably, if they still have their jobs, they also make millions more. Anyway, let's see if I still have a job tomorrow!

Now, some private reflection through the eyes of an observer.

In his new shoes, his new clothes, in his new attitude, he walked in to the milonga. Wow, so many people, he thought. He didn't really want to come. He had just returned from a stressful meeting that made his transition out of his little town even more stressful. But he came because a friend of his was DJing, and he felt he had to come. But was it really for his friend, only? Or even for his friends? What does it mean, "friend"? Who was he counting? His usual dancers weren't there. But he sat down anyway, looked around, and saw a woman who used to be his friend. They were close. They went hiking together, he sang tango songs to her, told her what they meant. She did a lot for him, more than most women did. Somehow they were just friends, and even less explicable, they stopped being friends.

But when he saw her, he felt love. Love that was for the community in general. He was leaving them, leaving them all. In fact, he didn't know if he would see them again. But it didn't matter. What mattered was that he felt love, starting with this woman, who had been shy to look at him, the big snob who didn't dance with people from his own little town except with his closest friends, the snob that didn't do more than just say "hi". But that armor of snobbery was laid to rest tonight. He felt love. He asked her in the most enthusiastic way he had felt in a long time. Her face brightened up like the sun in this otherwise very dimly lit hall. He didn't question if she was any "good", didn't ask why she couldn't follow. He held her in his arms and moved to the music knowing how much for those fifteen minutes they were enjoying each other's company.

When the set was over, she asked, a little uneasy, "Are we done?"

Without thinking second thoughts he said, "I'd love another one." He was on drugs. He was in love with this community he had not really felt connected to for a while. He was sorry only that he had come so late because of that meeting, and now there wasn't much time left. There were all these people he wanted to dance with. Some were new, but those he had stuck around with, and abandoned a little recently, meant a lot to him. Compared to New York these people were decent, were simple, were loving. He knew that they didn't love him because he has improved immensely. He has been with them for over five years. Even if he weren't the treasurer of the club, an organizer, and just a frequent dancer, they would have still missed him.

However, what mattered now was that he would miss them. He didn't want to. He didn't really want to come tonight, not because he felt too important for them, but because he didn't really want to reconnect with a community that had left also bitter memories in his heart. Too many women have failed to see him for more than just a tango dancer trying to be better. And in his bitterness he wanted to avoid everyone altogether. But somehow, something else a little more powerful than cynicism reigned and brought this love to his battered heart. He felt close to this woman, and the women after her. He held them truly in the most loving way he could imagine tango was about.

He left the milonga feeling grateful for whatever impulse had let him go beyond his cynicism. While he has been looking forward to moving to New York, becoming a part of the tango community there and continuing to improve his tango even more rigorously than the past five years, he was tonight reminded of the simplicity of tango that transcended beyond practicing, beyond improving, beyond showing off and competing. This little town, this community, reminded him that it is always through simplicity in life that love rises most readily from the ashes of cynicism and hatred.

After he had already changed his shoes, a dancer he almost never danced with asked if he would be in the next practica. Instead of seeing a woman who never kept her balance and therefore made the dance very uncomfortable, he saw someone he would miss, someone whose personality he found peculiar at best now he thought he would miss. So in his rubbery new shoes he invited her to dance and in those same shoes they danced. If you don't know tango dancing, you should know that even for a man (and much worse for a woman), rubber-sole shoes are hard to dance with. But none of that mattered. He was again in love. She told him that the community will miss him, that it would be a loss. There was no sentimental "Oh, but I will come back!" or "Oh, you're just saying that." There was a sincere, "Thank you, that means a lot to me."

Simplicity also means about the present. Never about looking at the past, at the demons, especially, that have whipped the scars on your heart. And neither is it about the future, when he would come back, perhaps next week, perhaps not. For him, his ebullience of love was felt because he was present, because he appreciated with nearly a bottomless well of love the connection he made with this simple community. He thought about other people who used to dance here a lot but have moved to New York too. He hoped he would never feel "free" of this community, but rather, keep it, its people, forever in the rhythm of his heart.

Singing Along

Friday we went to this milonga organized by a local tanguero (who wasn't there, but that's a different story) in some middle-of-nowhere place. The dances were, as expected, sad sad sad. And to make it worse, I had to dance with these old ladies who talked up to me just to get a dance. One might think me arrogant, or at least be grateful for the attention. Well, I am arrogant and not grateful.

But I got to dance with my art buddy. Moreover, I was happy to just not really be doing tango in the usual tango scene. Whether here or in New York, at least for this past week, and more, it was one depressing thought after another that tango has offered me a lot of women who didn't want anything from me besides dances (and in the beginning, not even that!). One goal I have in reaching New York is to get to know some people better, outside the tango context. And hopefully, I will meet people who aren't even tango dancers. I went to the movies last night (bad movie, don't go see "The Adjustment Bureau", very lame) with a tango dancer, and she told me that it would nice to have a partner who doesn't share the same obsession as you; yes, even if, or especially if, it is an unshared obsession. There are close to 5 million women in New York, perhaps a third within my connectible age, making that, hmm, about 1.3 million, and only maybe 300 dance tango; so I have a pretty good chance connecting with someone with no tango background besides having perhaps watched movies with tango dancers kicking around with a rose in their mouths.

Anyway, the evening started out in a very cute way. I hopped into this tanguero's car (the only male friend I really have here), and he and my art buddy were singing to "Dejame Ser Así", one of the songs I gave him a month ago that was now arguably his favorite. So much so that he learned the words even though he doesn't even speak Spanish. I felt a great sense of camaraderie. I didn't really know the words, but I hummed along, participating in their merriment. There's something to be said about this little community where I started dancing. However many rejecting-women it has supplied me with in the past five and a half years of tango dancing, I am still grateful to it. I sometimes claim that I made the greatest progress after I started dancing more in New York and going to Buenos Aires, the people who were most encouraging came still from this community. It was here I took the most classes, it was here I became serious with practicing with my art buddy, who I still think is better than just about all the non-professional New York dancers. So sitting there listening to these two buddies sing that cute song made me very happy, even though the start of weekend has for more than a month now always put me in a very upset and hurt mood. It would be yet another weekend away from that tango-adventure that recently ended, and the feeling of camaraderie helped me feel safe.

What was the song they were singing about? This time it isn't about some self-pitying man complaining about unfulfilled or lost love. It's still about love. But it's about a man who wants to be free to be who he is, to be understood for his past and not be judged for his present. The title means "Let me be like this". It has very poetic lines, like "I am like the thistles in the paddock [which is a new English word I had to look up to mean a field], which are scorched by the wind, the drought, and the sun, but are also capable of giving flowers." It reminds me of what friends are like in my life, how we treat each other without judgment, letting each other just be the way he or she is. That's one of the compelling reasons people often have to stay being friends.

It's the weekend, I will take a break from writing a story. I am tired. I didn't sleep well. My new friend, Jealousy, visited me this morning before the sun rose. I was angry. I fell back asleep eventually, but woke up just after the sun rose in the same state. So I did what was least destructive and still doable: wrote my frustrations to a friend. I can sense that the end is near. I can sense that the jealousy is waning, the rational me is becoming more powerful. It's like the turning tide in the civil war in Libya now; the tyrant of the past and its minions of demons are starting to lose, and the rebels of love and reason are advancing.

I spent quite a bit of quality time with my art buddy yesterday. We discussed philosophy, and I loved it. I love discussing philosophy with someone smart and aren't afraid to be wrong. But toward the end we decided on something unrelated to philosophy. It was time for both of us to stop letting romance and its fairytales to govern our lives. It was time to seek out the beauty in life that the hopes for the fairytales have pushed behind their curtains of empty promises. It was funny that I thought of the same thing the previous day. Now I heard someone verbalize it in a clear manner. The world has so much more to offer than the unfulfillable promises, the jealousies within me, the stubbornness of those who can't see me. To focus on these petty things is to look only at some dying flower and forget the green field, the rivers, the mountains, the sea all around. I don't see God the same way my sister sees, but she's right, I should feel lucky to be alive, to be given the gift of life, and more importantly, the gift of what is around me. Focusing on episodes, broken relationships, and past demons that poison this view, is spurning a unique gift that encompasses everything I love about life.

Fortune Cookies

What does yours say?

Close your eyes first as I read it to you.

He walked by the fortune cookies "factory" in the heart of San Francisco's Chinatown. He had been there twice before. Supposedly this is where the country's fortune cookies come from. An invention of the Chinese immigrants that most Chinese back "home" had never heard of.

The first time he went was before they were charging visitors a dollar to take pictures of the women making the cookies before sending them off to the oven. He remembered being cynical about Chinese being so business-oriented. What was the point of charging that dollar? It was more to challenge the tourists to sneak pictures rather than really making extra income.

Before that annoyance was that first time when he was there. It was crowded, with tourists taking pictures without having to pay yet. It was novelty. Looking at the few women generating billions of fortune cookies to Chinese restaurants around the universe. Or so went the propaganda. The room was small and dark, just like any sweatshop. Why didn't sweatshops invite visitors to come and take pictures (after being charged a fee) of the decrepit working conditions of immigrants? They do that in the slums around the world. He wasn't thinking about that. He was enjoying not the view of the source of the universe's luck, but the woman next to him. He was close to her enough to feel her warmth, feel her smile, feel her excitement that didn't need a camera to reinforce.

This fortune cookie came directly down the block, I guess!

What he loved about her above all was her enthusiasm. She was never cynical, never bitter, never sarcastic. She was full of life. She radiated light.

There are coals and there are diamonds. You are a diamond, while the coals, being made of the same thing as you, suck out energy.

He said to her once. He didn't care whether he himself was a diamond or a piece of coal. He loved being with her.

But did she see him?

Close your eyes.

Why?

I want you to see me. Without your eyes.

That's ridiculous. I see you. You have beautiful brown eyes, your smiles are sincere and free.

He asked her again but she refused to close her eyes. There was something risky about closing one's eyes in front of someone who asks for it.

You don't trust me.

No.

You close your eyes when you dance with me.
You close your eyes even when we were dancing by the river, outdoors. Remember? Even after we had a fight, you danced with me, you closed your eyes. You joked that if I threw you off into the water you would be mighty upset.

I wasn't joking.

You don't trust me.

He realizes now that when someone doesn't see you, she can't trust you much.

What do you want me to see?

He was saddened by that question. Not only because it was tinged with frustration from someone he wanted to be able to see him, but also it obviously meant she didn't see him. She didn't want to try. He wanted to tell her that she needed to close her eyes and open her heart to see him. He had imagined her closing her eyes and touch his face with her hands. No one has ever done that before, touching his face (besides trying to wipe off something dirty). The touch of the fingers would be the first electric connection to the heart. But she just smiled and shook her head.

You're being silly. Just read that fortune slip to me.

He cracked open the fortune cookie without opening the plastic wrapper. She looked amused.

Why do you not open it like normal people?

He didn't look at her. He wasn't normal. He wanted to tell her that he believed it was possible to see the words of fortune without opening the obvious. But it sounded too cheesy, or at least she would find it cheesy. He just shook and smiled, admitting partially that she was right, that he was weird.

What does it say? And add "in bed" at the end, remember!

When was that? Five years ago. The first trip to the fortune cookie source of the universe. The place where the cracked open fortune cookie he beheld in his hand must have be born. They were in a dingy little Chinese restaurant around the corner. It was a very cheap place. She didn't have much money and they had established long ago that he would never pay for her. That meant they had to go where she could afford. Just dumplings. Hot, big, fat dumplings. Her hands. He remembered her hands. They were gorgeous. But the ivory fingers would never know the texture of his virgin face. He knew how her wrist felt. He knew what her scent was. He knew the feel of her hair. And of course, the glow from her eyes. He knew what her existence felt like in his arms.

What are you doing?

In the darkness, total darkness, in the silence punctured only slightly by the sporadic cab nine floors down on the vacant streets of the Mission District of San Francisco, in that darkness he saw her, as if they were on the beach in full sun. He could see her eyes were closed when she asked that question. He knew where her face was and gently touched it. He could see she smiled a little upon that touch. He could see how they could not be together much longer. In that darkness she didn't see him. In that darkness, the world simply went to sleep.

It says, "May your journeys, however long, be traveled always with an open heart."

It's worse than mine, listen....

He can't remember what hers said. The sweet egg smell from the fortune cookie factory was nearly gone as the distance between him and the center of the universe's fortune grew. He had only been to the factory twice. He had been to San Francisco five times, each time with a different girl. But this first visit to the city, when he first visited the factory, made him open his heart a little more to a lesson in the journey of life: the most amazing person in the world has little to do with qualities to admire, but simply has the heart to see him. This thought precipitated in him again as he sat before the Oakland Bridge, watching the clouds move in great hurry through the San Francisco Bay.

The Empire Strikes Back!

So sleet and snow have returned. Odd. But really not unexpected.

I am still eating salad for dinner. My weight is not decreasing but I look at myself sometimes in the big mirrors at work and feel a little sad at how gaunt my wrists are. Or thought, at least, how unmanly. But why care about unmanly?

There's this man who almost always gets off the train with me at the small station near my house. He is often carrying his little PC laptop, still open, as if he could still do one more second of work on it while he walks up the stairs and through the passage way before exposing his laptop to the unfriendly open-air. He did the same today. He is so odd. When he is not holding his laptop open, he is running in a hurry. I have never seen what he is in a hurry for. No bus. No one waiting for him. He is a middle-age man with a salt-and-pepper ponytail. His eyes gaunt, sunken. He seems even thinner than me, if you can believe it. He smiles at me when he actually makes the time to make eye contact with me, during that split second before running up the stairs or returning to his computer being carried. I wonder about him. What does he do? Why does he run? Whom does he live with? Or alone? Does he have friends?

People who are always running around find it more difficult to notice things, such as other people running around.

Today my buddy told me again she loved me. I realized what she says means something new, too. It helps me stop feeling guilty. When an unhealthy relationship ends in my life, it often ends in a nasty way, prolonged, dragged out in a torturous manner hurtful to both people. I always feel guilty playing a role making the other person feel miserable. I feel guilty that I am petty, demanding, needy, manipulative, etc, etc. And to hear a friend tell me how lucky she is to have me in her life repositions my guilt a little better. Maybe I am not such a cynical, manipulative, pessimist if someone I respect greatly repeatedly tells me I am a great person.

So enough about me. For the rest of Lent I will do my best to stop talking about me. It's a blog about my new life, but not necessarily about the old hurts, the old wounds manifesting themselves in new situations.

He is a little startled by the sound of broken glass under his feet. He hates broken glass. He remembers the many cuts he had when he was a child because no one told him to be careful. Or when his dad told him, it was always in a mean way that made him feel guilty about not already knowing the dangers of life since birth. The sound of broken glass always startles him. He is careful not to do anything to make the broken glass on the broken windows fall down, maybe cutting him, but just the sound of broken glass would make him uncomfortable.

This used to be a bakery. Now abandoned. There are many windows, all with half-broken glass now. There is no light, though the fixture above him remains familiar. He steps away from the windows and sinks a bit into the darkness, away from the reaches of the sunlight.

A gust of wind blows through the broken windows. He remembers sitting here ten years ago. Where was that couch? It's not here anymore. Now everything is in a mess, and the darkness with its accomplice the blanket of dust, makes it difficult to orient oneself. He used to come here a lot. But the one evening he remembers was when he came, as always, after the bakery was closed and he sat in the couch that was somewhere in front of him now, and there he watched the second of the old Star Wars movies with the baker's daughter.

It was a winter evening because the sun had already gone to its rest even though it was not so late. The baker, an old Polish Jew whose only sign of Jewishness was his nose, always welcomed him and left him and his daughter some unsold baked goodies while he went off somewhere he never asked about, that his daughter didn't know either. He can't remember her name. Just that her last name was impossible to pronounce. It's only been ten years since that evening, since he had last seen her.

He walks over to the a pile of broken furniture, after his eyes got adjusted to the dimness of the the area near the door to the bathroom. It must have been not too long since he had last seen her that the bakery closed down, abandoned, and that no one else came to make it something else. He gathers this from identifying a lamp that used to be next to them when they were watching their movies, that second Star Wars movie being their last one. It was a lamp from some garage sale, its signature is the big chip on the base that hasn't grown since being tossed to this corner many years ago.

He doesn't know what happened to them. He never cared until now. Maybe he should have cared. Maybe things mattered even if they take a pause for a short while. Unless that isn't a short while. Sometimes he would look her up on the Internet, but he couldn't remember her name. He had so successfully erased it. He did it by giving her a different name that night after he left. He called her Persia. He thought he was clever. Playing with the word "persa", "Lost" in Italian. Was she lost or did he lose her, or something. In his bitterness he wanted something funny to remember her by. That night of Star Wars Episode V, was a week into Lent. Every morning, very early, for the rest of those forty days, he walked by the bakery, before she would be awake though the smell of Eastern European baking would be evident from miles away, he would walk past by, mutter her new name, and picture the interior of the baking room with the couch and TV without looking through the big windows. He wasn't Catholic; like her and her father, he wasn't religious. But the austerity of abstinence during Lent inspired him to rebel against all his feelings for her, rebel against her treachery, against all the disappointments. It helped too that she never called him. Now he thinks perhaps it was because she understood. They were young, she was even younger, but she seemed, from the present retrospect, more mature than most women he had met since then. She gave him the distance. Or perhaps she simply was too preoccupied to care anymore. The pain, somehow, is still felt, to him, as if all the glass cuts from more than twenty years ago still feel fresh.

He turns around and sees the pouring of sunlight into the dusty baking room. The machines have been removed or stolen. The emptiness, or the chaos in it, makes this portrait of a past seem mournful. He takes out his smartphone, places it between his eyes and the past before him, whose dust helps the sun's illumination, and he clicks on the camera button. Her name is still lost. Her face is a blur. The glass cuts are actually not so acute, probably just made up in his mind, artifice like the dust here that comes from the unknown exterior. And his regrets, betrayed by the sunlight, but still, the dust will settle one day, and probably soon the whole building won't be left abandoned much longer before the bulldozers come. He steps toward the hole through which he had come in, stepping on broken glass every step or two, not heeding to the memories of glass cuts.

Beating Yourself about It

I took half a day off today. First vacation day I took off in just three months. Well, half a day, not the whole thing. It was strange coming back with so much sunlight out and so few people on the train. I wondered who these people were. Were they all going to a friend's critique?

I have never been to an art critique before. Most of what was said was very interesting. The experience helps me continue my admiration for art people. True, they don't seem to have very much else to talk about when they are together, at least, besides art and philosophy. But what they do talk about within this narrow spectrum interests me greatly. I don't know why. I think they are so perceptive. They see things with such minute details that mean a lot, and this appeals to me as an amateur photographer, amateur writer, and an amateur poet. What brings me, personally, peace and joy is noticing the small things in life, and making sense of life from observing these small details. I notice when someone steps on a half-eaten bagel when no one else notices. What's the big deal? For me, it reminds us the peculiar human nature of finding the obvious and grabbing it, like children who must touch everything new they see. For most people that still is no compelling reason to care. But it isn't only because I find something deep about the simplest details in life, but also it brings me, and I think it brings us, a lot of peace if we just stop and smell the roses, as the expression goes.

Peace is what I crave, I guess. Another weekend went by. It was again difficult, but I got through it. I didn't spend any of the evenings alone, but I spent all the nights alone. There's undiminished frustration surrounding that repeated theme every weekend. And every morning I wake up feeling still bitter. I shouldn't. But it's worse feeling bad about feeling bitter. That's what a friend of my art friend noticed, that bitterness, when we met up briefly after the critique. I was telling her about my new job, and when I told her it was between this little town and New York City, I remembered suddenly the reason I picked that job. One of the reasons, and was a main reason before I started enjoying the job when I realized it was the perfect place to start a new path in finance (not too stressful, very knowledgeable people). I told her the reason was that I wanted to work half way between New York and here so I could spend some nights in New York and some nights back here. "Some nights" obviously not with my friends. In looking back I felt a pang of deep regret. What a strange fantasy I lived in, to think I would have a girlfriend here who would let me stay over some nights and come visit me some other nights.

"Don't ever do anything for anyone else's sake, make decisions for yourself only," I told her in Spanish. (This Mexican friend prefers speaking in Spanish.) She tried to say that sometimes when you could make your decision based on yourself and the other person. I wanted to rebut, but simply gave up and said, "I have become cynical." My art friend agreed, and told me, "Don't beat yourself about it." True, worse than having made a mistake is feeling guilty about it. It's true. We all have fantasies, as the conversation continued on to the private lives of the two ladies. We have wishes, "sueños", as I said, hopes that are very far from the reality we are faced with. It's OK to have these wishes; it's even OK to be heartbroken when we fall from these "sueños" onto the concrete floors of reality. There's no point beating yourself about it.

I've wanted to just write stories, even stories about real events in my life. But I guess peace hasn't offered me much room for that, and it's late. Perhaps tomorrow I will have more time. Tomorrow I will meet the broker, the broker here, to start the next mammoth project: selling the house. I have made some calculations, some minor soul-searching, and decided that for the price I want to sell, the past five years of being a worrying landlord was worth it. I doubt I can sell it for the price I want, but if I do, I will have money to buy an apartment in New York with cash, not to settle down, but at least I will have the freedom not to work and still have a place to live. I very much enjoy my work, learning a lot. But I know, that road to peace is still dark and full of snow and ice from yesteryears. Sometimes selling a house seems less difficult than melting away the past, soothing the bitterness, and forgetting those who have refused to be part of my ideals.

Junior High

There was a girl named Neslahan. I think my sister might even remember that name, though never seen the girl. My sister and I used to play role-playing games, and in my foggy memory I probably used "Neslahan" as a character to play out my fantasies. None of this is known to my sister at the time (guess you know it now, Sis'!).

I finally found out the name of this young woman I danced with last night and also last Sunday. She had a very unique face, her smiles very American, but her features very foreign. She was Turkish, half Turkish? Or at least, her name was Turkish. Her name was "Nesle" ("Like the chocolate minus the 't'"), but when I finally found her on Facebook, it was that name, Neslahan.

That was from junior high. So long ago. Why did I like her. I think because she was pretty, and she had really dark eyebrows. What is up with me and dark eyebrows? Anyway, I remember little about what our relationship was like, how often she even bothered to talk to me, even how I felt. I just remember that moment when a Turkish boy insulted her and she started crying. At that moment I wanted to be closer to her.

I wonder if there's this chivalrism in me still. Wanting to be close to a woman in distress, a dame in distress, as they used to say. Maybe.

Today is the middle of the weekend. I stayed at another hotel last night. (Don't tell our parents!) It was just seven-dollar cab ride from the milonga. It was a traditional one, not like the ultra-modern iPod-setup one a month ago. And this time, I was alone. I don't know if I should keep allowing myself to be alone; I end up forgiving even less those who have abandoned me. Before going to the milonga I went to a tango friend's piano recital. She was dancing, as it seemed, with the piano. It was amazing. I have never really had a musician for a friend (my roommate, unfortunately, isn't my friend). This woman is, like many musicians who can actually afford to live alone in New York City, extremely talented, based on her bio and also on the solo and the duet pieces she did last night. It would be nice to have her as a real friend, upgrading from tango friend status.

I bumped into two tango friends at the same event, and we went out for dinner together. Nothing to complain about. Bonding, getting to know people that might become real friends. But then, when I returned to the hotel at 3 in the morning, the feeling of "unforgiving" returned. I need to get out of this rut. I need to really start fresh, forget all the troubles.

And here's the story. Quick one because I have a guest coming. Someone to celebrate with me because today I signed my first lease to my first apartment in New York City. No one is around to celebrate with me except, ironically, someone who is too depressed to celebrate. But in the end, it doesn't matter how depressed, how unprepared, how inept you are in life; what counts is a connection. This woman always makes me laugh, even when both of us are depressed.

He played that song again as he watched the old factories of Bridgeport go by on a two-dimensional canvass called life. He wanted the previous day to send her a text message with just the title of this song. She would understand. A few months ago he translated the lyrics from Spanish to English to her, for her to understand. They were talking then. Talking a lot even though an ocean divided them, an ocean full of high waves, unpredictable sentiments, and the saltiness of each soul's past. He wanted to text her the title, for her to know that deep down, somewhere, he was looking for her. "Buscándote", "looking for you."

"It's so you. You are looking for that girl." That was what she told him a few months ago, on the phone, still talking, still divided by their own oceans, internal, real, figurative, insurmountable.

But now he was a viewer of the landscape turning from the wealthy west to the the poverty-stricken east, divided by this depressing looking industrial city.

"You are such a romantic. You still believe in finding the one." That was a different voice. The saline smells different from that ocean. That woman has disappeared from his life. Not because he wanted to, because time had revealed to them both the false bridges that had bound them before. That was a woman from college, so many years ago. And who is this now? He felt a surge of anger after the train past the river that opened to the polluted estuary swallowed up by the Long Island Sound.

No, there was no looking for anyone. Except yourself. Find yourself.

That was why he didn't send her that text today. He could still be a romantic, still wanting "The One" to find him (not the other way around), still believe in happiness. He was going home now. He watched the transformation of the landscape from the safety of this rickety train that felt as if it would derail any moment and fall, along with all these useless souls, into the gray waters below.

"I am afraid of bridges," he confessed to a girl. Was it the same girl? Same as now? Then? Which number?

Whoever she was, she said, "That's weird!"

Was she being mean spirited or did he take everything too personally?

He wondered if it mattered if he did fall into that chemical-filled water below.

He closed his eyes and rested his burdened head against the window pane; the movie was over, he had to stop it. His potential for joy and laughter and light-heartedness was also taking a slight break. Today was the first time since he started his tango that he was actually going home instead of going to the monthly tango event. He opened his eyes, but only internally. He remarked this peculiarity. Why was he going home? What a strange thing to do, to be leaving New York when every month this day he was going to New York. Every month he was in the country for most of the past five years he was driving with friends, sharing memories, building new connections, on their way to the biggest monthly milonga of the continent. Today, he was "reverse-commuting", back to his little village.

The City today was too much for him. He had gone and paid for his connection for a future he can't really control.

"The thing I love about going to tango in New York has nothing to do with the milonga there. I love it because of the car ride and the listening to tango and the talks we have."

That was what his tango buddy, the art buddy, had told him a few times.

With his internal eyes still open, he watched the joyful moments unfold in his heart. Happiness is from those connections, deep, ones you actually have to analyze to understand but at the same time easy to feel if you open your heart to them.

The train was still shaking, on the verge of rolling over on the side and crashing into one of these less expensive houses and factories by the railroad. The landscape was still changing quickly. His eyes still closed to all this. In the vastness of his inner world, he saw again that same choice of being happy or being angry. He closed his internal eyes once more.