On Revolutionary Road

There is not much to understand; it's more about feeling. It isn't really about the individual verses a merciless society, but rather, the divide that society juts between two partners as a punishment for their desire to disobey society. I'd like to think, or maybe we would all like to think, that when we find our "other half" we can overcome all the hurdles in life. The two of us together is infinitely stronger than the mere sum of our individual strengths.

From the beginning you can feel the tension in the couple's relationship. From the beginning you know they aren't happy. And the little time the film devotes on their happy beginning gives you the feeling that the romance is long over, and its brevity a reminder of how exaggerated romance is in our collective psyche. The reality of working for money, of children, of doing your share of a marriage, and other aspects of this cruel reality dominates the movie.

"Cruel"? Only so if you only think of marriage as love. There is no love. When that word is mentioned anytime in the movie, it is woven in tension and even absurdity. Love gets you to believe life is possible because it opens up the possibility of having another person in your life. Love could also mean letting someone else do the work of fixing your problems instead of working on it yourself. Throughout the movie you feel that the two are dying to reconnect but fails at every attempt, partly because one is dying to make the other person give something no one in the world can give so readily, such as constant attention or space and understanding. And the resemblance of a connection, or just harmony, simply emphasizes the useless effort in the pretense, the fairy tale.

When the couple actually implements the steps to realize their goal, you almost feel that maybe things might just be OK and you wonder where the movie will go from there. You only feel like this if you are one of the few who still hold out hope for love, for marriage, for two people becoming infinitely more powerful than the sum of their individual strength. But it soon becomes obvious that society has a strong arsenal of weapons to deal with those who believe they can flaunt its rules. And without these rules, and the hesitations and doubts they cast in the heart, you might actually see the truth of what you need to do in life. That psychiatric patient, however annoying he might be, you feel he is the only sane person in the whole movie because he is the only one who can see the truth, and we also see the truth because we aren't constrained inside the movie, inside the story.

We need to live with others, but we need also to be who we are. We grow up with the mixed message that we need to be who we are against peer pressure, and yet we cannot upset teachers and parents. The real deal is that we can be who we are within the limits of authority. We cannot bow to pressure for drugs because drug dealers are not society's authoritative figure, but we must do as the police requires, otherwise, society must actually be, different.

You can feel the strangulation of April, slowly, not directly by society, but by society through her husband. She hates him only because he is the periscope through which she sees and interacts with society. She is a brave woman, defiant, as the psychiatric patient notes, but she is not more powerful than society's immense pressures. In the romantic world, you wish that her husband would be more supportive and stand up with her. But why not wish that she be more understanding of his plight, of his temptations, of his weaknesses; without this understanding she can choose either to continue her strangulation or leave society, leave him. But she opts a third option.

Back in the fifties people got married young, when they thought that they knew enough about life and love was the only reason to form a union. Even then life was very complicated for those who refused to blindly do as society asked, even though all it asked was for you to be bored to death and do what you don't want to do. It did not ask you to sacrifice your life, to starve, to be homeless; it merely asked that you give up your dreams and be someone else in order to fit in. Pursuing your dreams is dangerous and if everyone did that, it would be a very unstable society we live in. April, having little success with her own acting career, wished for a better future for her husband. He, of course, works in an undesirable job in order to bring happiness to the family. Two people wanting to love each other, but it simply doesn't work out because love is not enough and the immense list of things missing makes love seem almost preposterously unnecessary.

You'd wonder if people would love their spouses more if they were allowed to be who they are. If they were allowed to pursue their dreams. The film doesn't discuss much about the other reason people disconnect and fall apart. That is their own individual baggage. But perhaps it is implied that Frank's inability or weakness to go beyond where society put him, which is where his father was, is part of his baggage. He may have dreams, but like most people, he is afraid of realizing them. What about the dream that you will love your wife forever? Isn't that even scarier to realize?

Salem's Harbor

The seagulls are squawking above us as if saying, "Enough! Enough!" The sea breeze is trying to wake us up from the stupor of the awkwardness. I take out my camera and take a picture of her. How awkward. We aren't even speaking. The surrounding silence is as quiet as our voices, but the tension is thick enough to be cut with a knife.

I don't know why I stopped talking since she arrived last night in Boston. And now we have to continue driving to Newport and then finally to New York. I don't know if I will see her again, but a part of me just refuses to see her, to recognize the inevitable future as much as the present I am stuck in. I guess the awkwardness started before she even boarded her plane from the other side of the ocean. She told me a month ago that she was going to cross not only the ocean but this mighty big country to see about a boy who had proposed to her. It's strange that I should be so affected by that. We had a connection I hadn't experienced for a long time. There was nothing we couldn't talk about and there was nothing that required lengthy explanation. We just connected. Nothing, except, when she raised the point of having found someone who was crazy about her, enough that he actually crossed this mighty big country and the even bigger ocean to see her, to propose to her.

There was guilt. Guilt that I was not able to hear the news without disappointment, no matter how little I understood the disappointment. I wasn't able to be show congratulation, exaltation, but rather, grumbling silence. She insisted stopping by to see me, to spend some time with me, since we had never seen each other in person, and back then, when putting a picture on the Internet was an enormous, nearly impossible, undertaking, we hadn't seen each other except on blurry photographs. We had the purest form of a platonic relationship, but suddenly, when the news broke out, things stopped seeming so platonic.

But I was confused. I was quiet when she said that on the phone. Or was it Internet relay chat? I can't remember now. I am just here, feeling sorry for myself in the most quiet and punishing way possible. I don't mean it to be punishing, but it always ends up being punishing. And that sulking silence also added to the guilt. The seagulls continue their reprimand of my action, my behavior, while she sits there quietly, not truly understanding what is happening but accepting it all the same. She is undoubtedly afraid already of this trip, of this engagement that is now settled, of this huge travel, of having to leave her mother behind in a country that is just starting to see some economic prosperity. And to add to all this, the fear of losing a connection with someone she connects deeper than with anyone else. Or so I think. This much I understand with great fury. The logic seems incredibly twisted. Connection does not build a partnership. At least not this kind of connection, regardless of depth. And the last bit of the twisted logic is that I never even hoped that we would somehow have something different from a platonic relationship.

It's the fear. Fear of losing her and returning to the old life of having no one in my life to connect to. Fear of loneliness. Fear that I am not good enough for anyone, including her. It's the fear that I don't belong anywhere or to anyone. So here she is at last, after so many electronic and paper correspondences. And yet I feel enormously lonely, disconnected from the world, from my own life. I've been out of college for nearly a year now. The last year was tormentingly lonesome, and this year just made it harder when I was living all alone, without at least the anonymous crowd of my dorm.

I take a picture of her because I want to remember who it is that has made this day so complicated, so difficult. Later when I might see the picture again, maybe I will regret even more my behavior. I am pretty sure. But for now I am just feeling sorry for myself and am determined not to know more about her business, especially her wedding, if it will happen at all. I almost don't want them to get married, however important it would be for her. I want to shoot down the gawking seagulls, kill the engines of boats around me, drown the shouting sailors, and quiet the wind so I can hear my self-pity in the loudest way possible. The self-pity of who I am and where I am and that nothing is good enough for me, nothing and no one, and that I will forever be stuck in this situation, in this lonely life inside a big, uncared for apartment always so dark. My apartment is always dark, and always has only one person inside: me. There is a TV but that can only be my company long enough before I start to feel worse about my loneliness. The cheap and ugly carpet, the peeling paint, the greasy stove, but worst of all, the emptiness in all the rooms, all make me feel lost in the sea in front of me. I don't notice that the sun is shining and the sky is blue and that the seagulls are not gawking at me but just doing their own stuff. I don't notice anymore that she is sitting in front of me, feeling helpless about what to do with this thickening silence.

She is leaving to be rescued by someone else. She comes from a life mostly fatherless and mostly lonely. We connected even though we are of a different continents, different cultures, different worlds. We just want to stop being alone. And she found someone who would be her partner, who would give her a new life in a country that is full of potentials. I already live in this country and yet I see no potentials, no possibilities of leaving this dark, empty apartment. My work is abominably easy and leave me with even more lonesome time. I have no one to call and my parents are still far enough away so I don't need to talk to them that much.

All this free time for brooding. All this free time to avoid thinking happy thoughts, enjoying life, and opening up to the goodness of life. But it's not time for guilt. I don't know what it is a good time for. Here she is sitting before me. And we will drive down I-95 to New York, and then I will say good bye in some simple or theatrical manner. After that? Maybe nothing. Just like the lightless and lifeless apartment I am going to return to this evening.

Snowy Night

The rickety red shuttle bus stops at the corner. It is completely dark outside but you can see the white snowflakes dotting the surroundings. The buildings are familiar; I have seen these for three years now, more than three years. They form the complex called Science Center, where most science lectures and class sections are held and computing resources are available to students. There is a cafe inside offering food for those who don't wish to venture outside to get their meals from the dining halls, if they are on a meal plan. There is also a library for scientists. In the basement level are the rows and rows of computers. It was among the rows and rows of computers that I revealed my love to her, this woman, silent and distant, sitting next to me. It was in the early days of email and we were still using text-based email programs, nothing with a window to drag, not even a mouse, all keyboards, all command-line based. It was with the command-line and key strokes that I sent her the missive saying I wanted her, that I wanted her body and soul.

It was also here in this science complex that I first met her. Ironically it was not for science. The lecture hall where I first laid my eyes on her was used for French exam for determining which level you were in. I saw her and her big smile and felt there was something incredibly attractive about everything she carried in her eyes, in her face, in her smiles. And her accent just added to the exotic nature of her demeanor. We would later joke again and again that I thought she was trying to copy my answers so I had to be extra careful with covering my answer sheet. Such was the attitude of someone very competitive. Little did I know that she was completely fluent in French and had read more French literature than I did English ones. And even more, she was even more competitive than I have ever been.

The shuttle opens the door to the outside. We are now seniors. I could have graduated a year earlier, but I wanted to be with her. Besides, what was I going to do? I was so lost. I've always been lost in many respects. I felt attached to her, or as the older of my younger sisters said, I was co-dependent. I need her presence to feel whole, or at least to feel more complete than when I am alone. We have had many fights and many tears and even some violent scuffles, but we have been too co-dependent on each other to let go. Actually, we did let go once. Last summer, just when the semester was ending. She finally found someone else to be co-dependent on. It was not an easy separation as she still had feelings for me. In fact, she even included me in the discussion of her desire to break away from me. It was a civilized discussion in front of my dorm. I believed it was for the best to give her space and let her go so that we could both see how strong our relationship really was. She would still come visit me. One time when we were getting ready to leave my room, she kissed me, then felt guilty and said, "I wish the world would let me have both people." Although I was ready to let her go as a test of the strength of our relationship, I soon started to miss her, and more so everyday. Strangely, we planned to meet in Paris that summer, despite the breakup. Such were the symptoms of two co-dependent people not ready to let each other go, however necessary it was. During the trip in Paris nothing confusing happened, but I was becoming more frustrated at the breakup. Nothing rational was admitted anymore, just frustration that I had lost someone. I was no longer afforded the intimacy we had, the openness, and all the while we still got on each other's nerves the same way we had when we were still dating.

She continued to stay in Paris for her internship there after I returned to New York for the remainder of the summer break. Then shortly before the fall semester started, she came to New York and we both drove to school. It was the first time I got my car to school. Not surprisingly, we got into fights, at least in the beginning of the roadtrip as I was trying to get out of the confusing streets of New York. (This was way before Google map existed, before even Internet Explorer showed its face on computers.) I can't remember if we were still in a bad mood when we arrived in Harvard Square. But there I had a strange feeling something dramatic would happen, and up to this day I am still not sure if it was a coincidence or planned. Since neither one of us had cell phones back then (which were only in the hands of business people), I can't imagine she had arranged things the way they were without a phone. When she got out of the car, I had this strange feeling that her boyfriend was around. I turned my head and there he was on his motorcycle. I could not have recognized him because he now had a big beard; I only knew it was him because she had a warm, big smile when talking to him. She thanked me for the ride, but I said nothing and just drove on.

I don't know how I survived that day, or the days afterwards. To have seen the woman you want in your life, in however irrational a way, go off to someone else (especially on a motorcycle), must have been dreadful. I had no other friends to console with, and that very summer I had lost my best friend from high school after a fight over what would be called "snail mail" now. What a way to start a semester!

And now here she is again, next to me. She has been "back" since a few weeks after I sent her off to the motorcycle, bearded Sikh. She was unhappy with him, but for reasons I still don't know, escept that he was not understanding, arrogant, and mistreated her. He wasn't the person she thought he was. So instead of being alone away from the complications of the world, she came back to me. On this ride to the corner where we are stopped now, we were just arguing who took whom "back". Since we are such proud people, we both said we took the other person back.

The last few months have been worst in all the three years I had known her. There have been even more arguments, some violent, humiliating, and less and less, of course, the intimacy I so missed when we broke up that summer. It's strange why two people insist on sticking together in a relationship where they abuse each other almost as if they enjoy it. We can vent our anger about the world on the other person while testing to see how lonely we will end up. This little mechanism works until either someone decides to leave or finds a different outlet. It is the same case as the previous time, before the summer breakup.

And again, she decided to leave. And tonight, here in this rickety Crimson shuttle, our relationship, part II, ends. It is a strange feeling. A feeling that I should be relieved that it's over, especially now that I see there is nothing good at all about being together, not the connection, not the sex, not any future to look forward to; this second try served that simple purpose of showing that there is no future and the present is extremely nonsensical. The feeling that despite the obvious I am unable to say good bye. At least I don't want to. She gets up, we are both in a rather bad mood, and I see her descend from the dimly lit interior of the shuttle into the dark, gray exterior blanketed with snowflakes. She's going back to that same man, who is now clean-shaven, I've heard, and who has sworn to change his ways for her.

The door of the shuttle bus closes with a creak, and the rocking starts again as it sputters its engine and puts itself in motion. Suddenly, I feel an acute desperation. I don't care that being with her is poisonous, that like my Mother she has done nothing to make me feel good about myself but everything to make me feel worth far less than I am. It also doesn't matter that I have likely hurt her immensely, just in different ways from her means of torment. I saw her silhouette disappear towards this complex where I first laid my eyes on her and where I confessed my love to her and where we spent so much time together dawn because being together was far better than alone in this dreadful world of competitiveness, lovelessness, and cruel acts by strangers. It's somehow better to take all this evil and nurture it inside this relationship.

I don't pay attention to the buildings that flash before my eyes in the darkness. I wonder what others in this contraption of a moving vehicle are thinking. What are their preoccupations? When was the last time their hearts have been broken over and over again for the most ridiculous reasons? I can't mourn. There is no one to mourn with. But I don't want to be alone tonight, even though the inevitable awaits me like death for everyone. I will be back in my dorm, in my room next to the pot-smoking, sex-crazed, and rancorous "sink-mate". And whatever level is my anger, my pain, my disgust with life will go unheard. Again I am left alone and have no evil relationship to hang on to. I wonder how I will get through the night, and I wonder how I will get through the next, and the next. Life suddenly becomes an immensely long road, one I am not looking forward to making accomplishments like we here within these ivy towers are told to feel, but one where the rest of the road is even more dreadful than the previous 21 years.

Inseparable from the Disliked

No, I didn't like her. She was irritating, and everything she said and did with me reminded me of my parents, especially my mother. I remember that she made me clean the handle of the toilet because I thought I was supposed to use my foot. It was humiliating to have to undo a mistake you hadn't known was one. I guess there was a better way of asking me to undo my mistake, but her way was dry and humiliating, lack of compassion, again, like the way my mother would always do. I guess neither one of these women knew a better way.

But I guess she was different from her in that she smiled, even laughed. She admired me for my academic excellence, my intelligence when it came to math. But then, strangely, that seemed to much like her Dad, who was a mathematician. According to her, her dad wouldn't let her use the calculator until she knew how to add and subtract numbers of any size and complexity. Rules she had inherited from him. Her mother was like a nebulous being; you know she's around but not quite put your finger on it.

I didn't like her. She was my first girlfriend and the physical interaction was exciting for a teenage boy. But I didn't know that that wasn't enough to justify being with someone I didn't respect or like. For most of the relationship I just wanted to end it, but then there was always that spark of physical touch that kept me in a leash. Even though when we were physical she was even more authoritarian. I think she didn't like that part either, but she was quite confused by it. She told me stories of her previous relationships where things were just really strange. Why does a woman go down on a guy just because that is what she thinks a man wants? For her there was an element of self-pity, and another of obligation, and these elements added to her despising the man, ultimately.

Being teenagers just means a lot of confusion. Being teenagers with unsympathetic and out-of-touch parents adds to the confusion and frustration. And in my case, being a teenager who had had to take care of himself and of others for so long also meant a deep sense of loneliness. And never being thanked for his role in the family, but rather more likely being reprimanded for not having done enough, this also became a weight in self-esteem. And so here we have a teenage boy with his first girlfriend whom he did not like at all, did not find any connection, but wanted to be with for reasons only apparent decades later. Here a teenage boy finally feeling accepted even if accepted by a mean-spirited woman who has her own baggage as a single, female child in a Chinese family that rushed her through the best high school in the city so she would be the youngest to graduate. And so the dynamites are set and the dam is waiting to be blown up.

When the explosion happened, I simply couldn't take it. However much I might have wanted to get rid of her, in the end I couldn't because she was the only one who accepted me, even if it was on a superficial level of the skin. She was the only one who wanted to do things with me, the only one who wanted to call me first, the only one who wore the dress of "girlfriend" beside me among our friends to make me feel like a man, the only one who trusted me, again on a superficial level, enough to let me touch her. So however unhealthy the relationship was, however mean and harmful she actually was to my life, and most important of all, however little I cared about her, she was a trophy that I couldn't just let go. But she was headstrong and in the spirit of her world of unbreakable rules she would apply one simple one: once broken never again mended. So despite my pathetic ways of imploring her for a second chance, she had to adhere to her rule. It had nothing to do with how wise or unwise continuing the relationship was, or that my behavior to her, one characterized by so little love, was much less than what she deserved from a relationship, none of this was the reason. She just had to hang on to the rule that once broken, never again mended.

I suffered, probably not as long as I thought I would, but I did suffer. Then I hated her. Then I didn't talk to her. She came to visit me a few times during college when her ballroom team came to compete with ours. She was still the same mean-spirited woman who believed that she was really smarter than everyone else because her rules would always take her one step ahead of everyone else. After that we never talked again. Now she found me on Facebook and wanted to connect with me, in this new and even more superficial manner. I hardly remember her smiles, the only feature that would save her from an absolute judgment as an unhappy bag of rules. Other than that, she represents to me a world I cannot stand, a world of rules and no human sympathy.

I see from her Facebook picture that she has a son and these two, along with the father, presumably, were photographed on the Great Wall of China. It's amazing that the bitterness I still harbor against her keeps me from having any more sympathy for her now that she's a mother than I had for her when she broke up with me. We are all just a little messed up, I guess.

Languor at the Threshold

I hear the keys rattle timidly behind me, and I turn around. I see my wife getting ready to go to work. It's strange that all these years she must have done the getting-ready-for-work routine I have never really noticed it. It's as if I were watching a movie for the first time and yet, somehow, the plot is familiar. She checks the keys to make sure that the correct ones were there, the ones for the apartment and building, and the ones for her work, and of course, the one for the car. She drops them carefully in her purse; her purse is a dark green, not my favorite color, but I remember her picking it out one time with me but did not ask me what I thought and I did not offer any opinion. I was probably wondering about something else at the moment. She pauses a little, then walks to the fridge right next to where I am sitting, opens it with a confused look, and inspects the interior of this machine, one of many we share but never really thought of it as something we share but something that exists in our shared space. She pauses again while inspecting or scanning the inner contents of the fridge. The humming of the fridge starts just a few seconds later, as if to complain that she is leaving the door open for too long, or is it a voice in my mind humming this complaint? She touches something, but I can't see since the opened door is between her and me. I do see her fingers of the hand holding the opened door.

I remember those fingers. I haven't looked at them with such attention for, I am not sure, for how long ago. They are both familiar and alien. Like an old friend I would recognize them anywhere, even though the wedding band isn't on this hand. I remember a long time ago I cherished them; I thought they were the most beautiful fingers in the world, in the universe. I would caresse them, tell their owner that they, along with her smiles and the rest of her beauty, composed the princess before this humble peasant. She would giggle every time, and blush too, even when I said this after we got married. They were soft, they were warm, and most importantly, they were in my hands, and I remember writing many times that they were in my heart.

I don't remember how long ago the last time I saw them, let alone touched them. She closes the door gently. Now she has a slight frown on her face as she stared at some invisible space on the fridge door she had just closed. In her other hand she is now holding an avocado. I am a little amused by why she seems so concerned about the avocado. It doesn't belong to me, and so I assume it is hers. I don't know how ripe it is, and I don't remember seeing it in the fridge at any moment, and I don't ever eat avocados. She is standing there, pausing again. I wonder if she notices that I am looking at her. At any moment she would look at me and ask me what I am looking at. It would startle me because I don't remember the last time she talked to me while looking at me. She turns away from me while putting the avocado on the top of the kitchen island. Then she puts her dark green leather bag carelessly on the top too while walking towards the sink. She quietly rinses a paring knife and the cutting-board. Suddenly, I realize that she is using something I washed earlier. I am used to getting my own utensils, eating with them, washing them, drying them, and putting them away all by myself. Now she is actually using two things that are still drying after I washed them yesterday.

I quietly turn a little more to see her better and also to relieve the twisting of my torso. The slight sound of my movement made no effect on her, I notice. She cuts around the avocado, sets the knife down gently, twists the avocado around the pit and releases the two halves. She then strikes the pit with the paring knife, twists it gently, and pulls the put out. The sound of striking the pit and dumping the pit in the waste bin next to the island are the loudest and only sounds made in the entire process, and they are both very quiet.

I want to clear my throat, but something prevents me from making any noise, as if I am a thief at night, as if I am transgressing some law I've just discovered and the realization of this invisible law itself adds turmoil to my discomfort. Suddenly my mind is spinning. Suddenly everything seems out of the ordinary. And I don't really understand the reasons, the causes. I can only observe with the utmost silence.

She manages to squeeze the green flesh of the avocado from the two halves into a plate that I also washed yesterday and let dry. Then with the same paring knife she dices them up roughly and puts them into a Ziplock bag. Is this what she does every morning behind my back while I work on my laptop in the kitchen? I have heard noises happening behind me but I never saw what was happening. She seals the bag and puts it in her dark green leather bag. Then she puts the knife, the plate, and the cutting-board in the sink. And in the next forty seconds or so she washes them quickly. And in these forty seconds or so I could see my wife, at least her back. I see the curley brown hair mostly invaded by silver strands that I have until now not noticed. I remember kissing her hair, teasing its different looks every morning I stroked them. I remember feeling the softness of the wavy strands and wanting to never be far from them, from the person of whom they are a part. These memories, and so many more now, flooding out like the water I am hearing from the sink, gyrates in my head ever more.

Then there is her face. Like the rest of her, familiar and foreign. Familiar to the heart that now only has room for memories, but to my eyes, it looks older than I remember. I can only see the right side of her face; it's lit by the morning sun that has just risen and is shining directly into her now, this very moment, as if someone wants me to take a really good look. There are many wrinkles, and she's become even more gaunt then before. The orange dawn sunlight makes her blue eyes look pale and green and, very sad. Is my wife sad? I don't know. She never says much or I never pay much attention. I am sad; I am always sad, but she and the rest of the world has not noticed or I haven't shown any signs. I don't know what I look like, and I wonder if I am supposed to know what my wife looks like.

Her shoulders are pointy, even under that blazer she is wearing. Has she lost weight? Why ask all these questions; I don't know anything about this stranger of whom I had at some point known everything. Even if she hasn't changed a bit since we got married I would still not be able to claim I know anything about her now. Strange.

Her blazer's true color is not clear in this intense and sad orange sun light. It also hides the true form of her body. It suddenly becomes painful for me. Pain? Pain that's not about me, not the pain that has dogged me, not the pain that has made me "sad" all these years. A different kind of pain, familiar and alien. I remember this pain. It's the pain I felt when I saw sadness in my wife, especially before she became my wife. It was pain that bridged me to her, a bridge that let her come to me without the impedance of her pride, of her fears, a bridge to my embrace, to my soul, to the safety of my love. Funny word, "love."

Now that ancient pain scratches at the door, gently, like she is gently putting away the last of the items she has been washing. She grabs a towel and dries her hand. Does she usually wash dishes in her blazer? I ask this while I am in my pajamas next to my laptop that links me to a different world that provides more than just income. I can see her neck now as she faces the sun and reaches her dark green leather bag. Her neck is beautiful. I remember telling her a long time ago that she would always be beautiful to me, no matter what her age would be. I haven't noticed her neck in a while, but something in me says her neck, like her face that I can see in the brightening sunlight, remains beautiful, familiar and alien.

She is ready to go, I think, bag toting on her shoulder, but she pauses. I realize now that she is standing very close to me. I am sure that even in the recent past we've physically be closer, in terms of two coordinates on this planet. Maybe when I was trying to reach for a cup for my tea and she happened to be washing something by the sink and our clothing could even have touched each other and we wouldn't know it. But at least I never noticed it. Now I notice that my wife is standing within arms length from me. Her face still has that same frown I saw after she closed the fridge door. Her blue eyes staring in the direction of the rising sun and I can see the tiny pupils, so small and yet the irises seem so tense, as if something is held back with immense effort inside her head. She looks down for a second and then she turns to me. All this is happening much more quickly than I am describing, but I, for some reason, is noticing every detail as if the movie before me is in slow motion.

She smiles, though a little forced, and says to me, "Have a nice day, Sweetie. I will see you tonight." And she does this while putting her left hand on my shoulder shoulder, touching or half-caressing, I am not sure. She always says this to me just about every morning, and I usually have my back to her when I respond with a "You too, Hon'." That was the rule of engagement. She would say that as she walks out the door, crossing the threshold between this strange world we share and the one out there that she owns. But now she has defied this rule and said the same thing but looking at me, and I feel I am standing between a past I have tucked away in a treasure box and a present I am not a part of. And the touch her her hand, so timid and brief, feels like a jolt and for a moment I become angry. I frown too, and that probably is the reason she pulls her hand away and turns her gaze elsewhere. The weight of the awkwardness quickly pushes her to turn around slowly, and she starts towards the door.

"Let's go on a date tonight, if you have time, Hon'," I would like to say. I would also like to say, "You are such a beautiful woman, just like I told you let's-see-how-long-ago." I would even like to say, "I love you so much I can't say a word."

But she walked out quietly without getting a word out of me.

Letting Go of Control

Everyone knows the serendipities of life. When you lower your expectations, when you decide to take a deep breath and let life run its course, surprises are waiting around the corner, ready to strike at you with a blow to your heart, but, in a nice way, in a way that opens up a path your controls and plans would never have opened up. This is especially true with people, those closest to you, whether you like them or not. When you lower your expectations about what they do in your life, how they behave in your life, something amazing could happen. If you just take a deep breath and enjoy your own life, your ownself, you'd be surprised who does what in your life, in a dreamy, unexpected, beautiful way.

Sitting with my book I find it impossible to read. There's a young woman in front of me, slouching on the sofa and speaking very loud. She is of a heavy-set, her left hand wraps around her massive chest to hold her cell phone sealed to her right ear while her right hand, and I think she's right handed, is busy typing on laptop rested on her tree-trunk sized lap. It's amazing how she is able to carry a deep conversation about this boy she's confused about while clicking and typing on the laptop. She is talking about chatting online with this boy, and I wonder if she is chatting with that very boy right now! And she's the one talking about 90% of the time. She is the type of whiner who suffers from dearth of attention and as soon as she feels the remotest safety in obtaining someone's attention she just explodes in monotonous soliloquies that bother no one in the world except those in a nearly empty coffee shop. It's difficult to avoid drawing conclusions about this human mass in front of me. She has no attention to give to anyone, and even when attention is being given to her she is still fishing for more from the Internet while she's indulging in the generosity of whichever victim is on the other end of the line. She is too shy to really interact with people directly, hence the excitement over semi-daily "g-chats" with some boy, each of which lasts for hours.

It is time for her to go and she doesn't bother to ask her friend how she is. She started this whole phone call by stating that she had coffee just now with a friend she hadn't seen for a while and that, just to be clear, it wasn't a date, because, according to her, she doesn't date.

Loud people who have no concept of how their conversations affect their fellow coffee and tea imbibers is a reason not to be in this coffee shop. Another one is that they insist on playing ludicrously loud and distracting music that is conducive to neither work nor conversation. I guess it caters to a different crowd then me. I do like the couches here; they are soft and comfortable-looking. And so if I had an iPod I could enjoy some other audio environ while still relaxing in the reality wherein I have placed myself.

As the Washing Ends

The dishwasher is reaching its final stage, creaking and making other little noises as the heat dries up the dishes. I smell something strange, and hope that nothing is melting inside that black box I am forbidden to open until the noises end.

So I am sitting here on a computer chair that has a widening tear on it, and around me are books of the most unrelated topics. A Spanish review book between my laptop and a Japanese cooking book, and that Japanese cooking book is supporting the negligible weight of a Hindi dictionary for beginners, which in turn is supporting an even lighter object that we all have: the cell phone. Those inhabitants are on my right while on my left is an Econometrics book that I have never opened and does not belong to me, but fate has it that on top of its cover rests the book I am reading now, a novel that became a Man Booker Prize finalist some time ago, according to its cover.

All around me are other items of insignificance, at least by themselves. But they together paint a dreary picture, which I captured in a photograph, of where I am now. I am alone. I am trying to read but whatever I read, whatever sentence, like the lyrics of the songs I listen to and the lines of actors in the movies I've been watching, they all sharpen this blade called loneliness even more and the slow piercing of my nerves, my memories, my dashed hopes never manages to numb my heart. I can almost count the seconds and I don't know where those seconds lead me. I thought they would take me to the next station in life when the person I miss so much returns. But then, that's a station I don't own. She marked that station, she decided on that station, while I am just riding a bus I didn't choose.

And if I decide to just walk away from the bus station and into my own car? What if I just take the keys, turn on the ignition, and drive somewhere instead? Where would I go? The road? There is no road. Around me are books and other random articles. Inside my head is a vodka bottle of only empty loneliness and expired laughters. So happiness isn't in a bottle. I don't mean the bottle that has the cheap joy called water of life, but the bottle with a message from some foreign and unexpected soul also seeking mine. No, such bottle doesn't exist, and if such fantom comes to my shore, it only spells trouble.

There is no car whose keys I hold and feel there's nowhere to go. There is no bottle. There is no music or movie or book to give me a soft landing on an ocean of tears. I should just accept that being thrown off so high up from the helicopter that I loved into the blue tragedy at such high speed would mean only that I be torn into pieces by the surface tension that wraps around my thirty-four-year old body. And only as I pick up the pieces and break all the rules about how to put them back together can I ever hope to enjoy the next helicopter ride, or some other ride so lofty that made me think it would be the rest of my life.

So crash! Everything into pieces.

And the tears of the ocean glues one piece at a time, with no rules to remember, no rules to make.

And while that happens the dishwasher still is clicking, though surely not indefinitely. And I am surrounded by inspirations and distractions about the work of piecing myself together. And all the while, my broken heart still yearns for her, not simply to return, but interfere with the this reconstitution step and simply appear with a bottle wherein a message says my destiny is not inside me but in that station she has named, and however temporary is the happiness I will find (or not even find) there, I so yearn for this shortcut to that station instead of piecing my billions of cells back together, each its own rules, collectively one destiny yet to be revealed.