Violin in the Darkness

I close the door behind me carefully, and not a sound is made, I am glad to say. And in the darkness I find the last row of seats, and with bent knees I slowly and quietly walk to the the corner seat, and feel my way to the cushion of the seat. I have never been here before. I don't know what color the seats are. I can feel the texture of the upholstery and the smoothness of the wooden support. I can even feel the cold metallic strip that must be indicating the seat number. By the sensory organ that is most stimulated now are my ears. I am in this huge music hall whose size is only reviewed by the faint dispersion of light from the spotlight and the distance of the spot light from me. I imagine the ceiling must be a fresco or at least carved in the most beautiful, classical way, judging from the overall architecture of the place seen from the outside.

The music is what drew me in. The music's tale is like the sirens that lure the innocent minds of the seaman from outside. I was just waiting for a friend. And the very moment I received a text message of an apology for standing me up, the violin cry started. I was standing impatiently in this rotunda where engravings and names of fallen heroes from the university are frozen on the marble walls. I was standing in the center of the rotunda, so perhaps the center of this university, and radiating from my feet are black marble strips in an otherwise very white hall. My mind was very boggled and nearly set on fire having waited for at least half an hour. After I shut off the phone in increased anger, my mind suddenly shifted gears. I suddenly realized I was in the center when the music started. The hall was empty. I thought the whole building was empty. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, and all the students and staff have left for their break, leaving behind perhaps a security guard that I hadn't yet seen.

So as if by magic, in this deafening silence I heard a sorrowful cry of the violin. My feet moved away from the center of the university and stepped quietly up the two steps to the outer ring of the rotunda, where the doors are that I had just opened quietly.

In this darkness there's a glow in the middle. But there's no one there. At least not in the spotlight. There's a sense of absence like that. The violin saddens more when I finally placed my body comfortably in the seat. And when I finally see where the violin might be coming from, a pizzicato playfully dances around me. The playful angels are emanating from the orchestra area, and I think I can make out some movement, but not even a figure, not a silhouette. Suddenly, a crescendo of anger rises from the horizon and a loud boom crashes onto my face. I have to move back a bit as the siren pulls her hand back and expresses regret for the violence. She then extends her soft hand slowly and caresses my face that was so harshly whipped by the brief storm. I can see the tearful and regretful eyes, and when she closes them I can also see the trail of tears and wash away the rest of her body.

Then a dance. The music is dancing now, playful and mourning at the same time. She is telling me a story of the past, a story of her ill-fated love, her lost innocence, and her desire for vengeance. I can see the occasional flames in her eyes, the same for love and vengeance. And her dance gets faster, the movements are almost impossible to follow, until they blend into one like the flapping of insect's wings. The music is extremely loud now, as if the bow is tearing apart the strings and even the bout, and finally she collapses and fades away.

Then silence re-engulfs me. I only hear the impression of the music that had just left my mind in the most inexplicable way. I hear a chair being moved, and then I see the silhouette of someone holding a how and a violin. Then the sound of a notebook closing. I can even hear the slide of the shoes on the dusty floor of the orchestra. And the silhouette fades, leaving me behind with my mind filled with a fantasy that resembles the color you see when you close your eyes after being exposed to all sorts of flashing lights. And I sit, enjoying my thoughts as they coagulate into formless creatures coming out of the scene I had just witnessed.

Diligence

She sat there listening to her son talking about destiny. Destiny. He said it was probably written in his destiny that he would never get married, that he would always meet a girl who's not ready for him and the he wouldn't be ready for the girl who's ready for him. She listened quietly and thought intensely.

Life wasn't about destiny and being a slave to such adamant inflexibility. There was a way. She has concluded that she couldn't bend her son's will. She sympathized with his weakness in the face of his so-called destiny. Life was full of roadblocks, and his belief in a prewritten destiny and its acceptance was just another roadblock, which she could help him overcome. She had helped him overcome what would have been major roadblocks in a destiny that at some point seemed so certain. It seemed certain when he was young that they would be stuck in a village and he would, at best being the son of a high school teacher and a peasant woman, be an educator too at a local school. It was hard to imagine otherwise back then when talent alone wasn't enough to get you ahead, and she didn't believe her son had so much talent, anyway, to get out of his circumstances, and hence, circumvent his destiny. And so she worked hard, and with some luck, got the whole family to leave not only the village, but the country where poverty had been the entire framework of most lives. And when they had come here, her job had only started. She worked hard, along with her husband, so he could get the best education. He would be foremost fed the best food with the measly income they had, and he would have time to study. She would push him to go to the library when not in school or cooking for the family (they were too busy to cook). She had a plan for him. He would go to the best neighborhood they could afford, he would get into the best high school in the magnet system, he would get a job as soon as possible to learn the leaning of a dollar. And finally, he would go to the best university in the world, and one way or another, he would be able to afford it.

Despite her reservations about the capabilities of her husband in assisting her in this plan to thwart the so-called "destiny" for his son, they managed to pull it off. It was incredibly hard. And especially with the arrival of a new child in the middle of this execution of the Plan, life became a constant misery. The most painful part about the implementation of the plan, the most miserable part, was her constant feeling of loneliness. She had her husband, but he always seemed like an imbecile, a coward. He was educated, more than she was, but that was the only thing she respected him for. He was never ambitious, never asked for anything more from life than what was given, and always avoided hassle. The first few months of his life in this country boggled her mind, to say the very least. He was always yearning to go back to that village of simple-minded people, petty, backwarded. He just wanted to be a teacher for a bunch of children who shared that same humble destiny like her son. She felt even lonelier those months than the previous months being alone without her family while she worked to get them the papers to emigrate. The feeling that she was alone in her fight to change the course of her son's destiny still persisted. And she felt often resentment that the children, especially the son, the centerpiece and focus of her Plan, showed much greater affection for incompetent father than her. And as they grew older, she saw the injustice of life when they became closer to him, connected better with him, while shunning her ever more. Her loneliness deepened. Life was full of ingrates who couldn't see love through the thickets of their own preoccupations, and instead they appreciated and get caught up with superficial silliness like spending time together and talking and spoiling. Her husband spoiled the children, risking their straying off their paths, but he got the prize for being the good parent. This was especially true for her son. The bitterness never really faded.

Nevertheless, he brought in income that was important to the implementation of this Plan. And the Plan worked beautifully. The fact that by the time her son had graduated from college he was more distant and cold to her than before didn't make her regret what she did. It was common to sacrifice for your children, and in this case, it was reciprocated love that she had lost in order to win him a path out of his miserable destiny. Sure, it hurt every time he refused to call her even with manipulation, or when he didn't bother to show up for Thanksgiving or Chinese holidays, or he in fact moved to another continent. After her Plan was fully realized, she didn't know what else to do except think of the next step. But because he never bothered to talk to her, even call her for all those years after college, she didn't know how to realize the next step: getting him to settle down.

Hope arrived when he began talking to her, little by little. And she eventually got him to buy a house as a good investment. His destiny, unbeknownst to her, was partially already written by her. He was open to investments; he liked numbers, he liked efficiency, and so she convinced him of the merit of investing in a house with tenants so he didn't have to pay a lot of rent. That wasn't so hard for her, just required patience and persistence, and after three years of constantly cajoling him, he finally bought a big house with her help. But it was obvious what the next step for her was.

And the opportunity came now. He was talking to her in a way she could never have dreamed of. He spoke frankly to her about his acceptance of a destiny without marriage, without meeting anyone. And everything suddenly became familiar to her: a challenge her son couldn't overcome, but she could do it; it couldn't be harder than all those years overcoming a challenge most people with their background failed to even hope to overcome, let alone succeeding. For her mind, the world wasn't that complicated; you just have to use your smarts, analyze the problem, and find the solution using your experience and some patience. She was now a grandmother, she felt she knew enough about love and marriage to understand that the first part was actually simple, much simpler than marriage, which was the long and scary part that came afterwards. She also carried with her an appreciation rooted in her knowledge of the past traditions. In the past people didn't even have a choice on whom they could marry; and marriage was a means to build a functional unit in a cruel environment so you could survive in it. There were so many tricks in the past to manipulate the whole marriage system in order to survive. It was almost like a business, and happiness would eventually come, at least not any less likely than in today's relationships of so-called free love.

So the next part of her grandiose Plan, which has now expended as she sought more things to do in her life, was to demolish this new written page in her son's destiny. She remained quiet. She didn't protest very much her son's silly ideas, though admittedly it wasn't going to be that easy of a task. They went home and he went to his room to rest. She sat there in her couch, watching TV broadcast directly from her old country, but she wasn't paying attention. She was just thinking, formulating, dissecting, synthesizing proposals. Her plan had to be flexible, ready to change with the winds but never stray off course and never lose fuel of patience. She got up at the sounds of her son's steps coming down. And by the time he got to the bottom steps, she was waiting for him. Without looking at him, and certainly without showing any emotions, as have been the case for her in her interactions with her son his whole life, she asked if he would be open to her finding some women for him. She knew that she couldn't push him, corner him; she had him in a haven when he opened up to her, and she would not miscalculate by blowing him out into the open seas again. He smiled, which she couldn't really understand, and he said it was fine but only if she gave them his contact, not trying to set anything up. It wasn't exactly what she wanted. She wanted to be the matchmaker, the one that steered her son's wandering, lost boat into the river of a better destiny, but she was patient. She at least got his permission to start something.

Suddenly, life became meaningful again. As soon as he left, who knows where, she started coming up with names or ways to get names. It was simple, and she could make things simple because she was objective; she wasn't part of his confusing, wandering life. And this time she didn't need her useless husband to help her. It would be another lonely road for her; she already knew what people would say, that she was interfering, that she should just mind her own business. But her son's happiness impinged upon his finding someone to share his life with, to avoid loneliness that she felt was in most people's destiny, and a sure case for the unmarried. She stopped lamenting that she would die soon from whatever disease she felt was awaiting in her destiny. Suddenly, things became brighter. What decent, smart woman wouldn't want her son? He's well educated, well traveled, decent looking, and has a house! He's not a millionaire, but the list of eligible women still was large enough. She felt her heart racing just by thinking about this. His problem was simply that he was wandering, bumping into and preferring women who were equally unstable and strayed. But she would use his weakness in the face of his destiny as her strength to put him back on the right path.

A sense of purpose. She had always sought a sense of purpose. Whether it was making her house bigger and therefore more profitable to sell, one day, or getting the best investments with her limited English skills, she always needed a purpose to fulfill in life while waiting for her son to realize his purpose. Now she felt she could start taking over his role as the seeker of a right woman. Her hands started shaking, and she felt joy as never before. She walked into the spare bedroom where all her indoor plants were and started clipping and trimming. Taking care of plants gave her peace. And today she would celebrate her joy by giving away two of her precious plants to her son, as her way of forging a closer relationship that would help realize this next Plan.

Tree House Part III

...continued from part II

This morning bird starts to sing. This species isn't mentioned in any of the books in their library of saved books, and so they call it chawkerr, because that's the sound it makes. It starts with "chaaaaawwwwwww" and ends it with "kerrrrr". It's not clear how it makes the "ch" and "k" sound, but no one here has bothered to catch one and dissect it to see. He has seen many in the mornings when he went looking for fruits. It's a big bird with a huge beak, also a fruit eater like him. Black back, bluish white in the chest like the morning sky, and deep, leafy green streak on the sides that run to its beak. The male has a distinct red cap that flairs up during mating dance. He sometimes observe them from one of the top branches, and they have gotten used to him that they don't fly away all the time.

After the beautiful, foreign woman left, he sits on his improvised bench a little while more, listening to the morning calls of the chawkerr. He, for some reason, notices his toes sticking out of his pair of worn out homemade shoes. He notices his shoes too. Boy, they are worn-out! He then looks at his shins, full of dirt and scars, and his eyes proceeded to observe upwards until his palms. He remembers the feeling of her hand. So soft. Not like any hand he has ever touched. In fact, not like anything he has ever touched. He touches the back of his right hand with the finger tips of his left, and vice versa. Then he runs his finger tips up his rough and dirty lower arms, and then he embraces himself, sinks his head between his knees. It's a strange feeling, feeling to recognize yourself. Sometimes he sees himself in the reflection of the bucket of water but he never really recognizes himself in the poor reflection; whoever is in it is some transient shadow with ever changing features and no color. He read about mirrors, but wasn't too interested in it because it was used for things he didn't care about, like cosmetics, fashion, or whatever else that came after he decided to change the chapter of the encyclopedia. But now he felt himself, his own being, physically. His first acknowledgment of himself comes in the form of rough skins, dirty feet, all contrast to what he saw in that woman. His hair is cut regularly, but he can see the longer strands, and in this midmorning sun he could see nothing spectacular.

Then in between his knees he could smell his legs, his arms, his face as it rubs off his knees. It's not the smell of the forest, though originating from it. It smells a bit like stale fruit, stale moss, but not something unique and foreign, like her scent. He then pokes his head halfway out of his wrapping arms just enough for his eyes to look at the distance while his face is still hidden in his embrace. He see the canopy spreading out to the ocean that he has never seen from close. He was told by friends that it is awesome and loud. He read about it in the books, understands a little about what it's like, what lives in it, what it can do and have done, and that the ancestors were pushed from yonder into this green world. In this moment of self-reflection, he suddenly wonders where his place is in this world of oceans and the island. He wonders where this angel had fallen from. The sky? With a machine? From where? Is there land in the skies as mentioned in some books? Is there land in those waters over there? When it got cloudy he sometimes wondered if there were people living in the clouds. There were books about people living up there in palaces, but he wasn't sure if they were stories or real. There are many contradictions in the books in the library.

But there is never any mentioning of the darkness below. And like a racing car slamming into a wall, his thoughts come to a halt when he thinks about the dread below. The fantasy of his existence and possibilities beyond suddenly vanishes into irrelevance. And from the thought of the darkness comes the reminder that he needs to get the fruits. It is getting late. He has been sleeping in his thoughts for too long. The chawkerrs have stopped singing and now the cicadas are screaming in the late morning heat. He gets up and grabs his pole. And as he marches on his usual path he fights the resurgent thoughts about that woman, her face, her scent, the touch of his soft hand. It is going to be a hard day.

Chinese Breakfast

I walked inside and strangely I felt I belonged. I’ve never been here before. In fact, I don’t come to this neighborhood much; in the past the need to walk or take the subway, which involved waiting and spending $2 each way (it’s $2.25 now) discouraged me a lot. But I was in this restaurant for breakfast. I have never had Chinese breakfast outside. I didn’t know there was really a formalized set of food that comprised Chinese breakfast, like cereal and bagels and English muffins, among other things, that comprise the options for a Western breakfast, or at least American. So I wasn’t sure what people got, but I felt at place, and I just ordered what my parents usually made for me. The waiter was superfriendly, surely got up on the right side of the bed this morning. He was obviously balding, because he made an obvious attempt to brush his hair on one side over to cover the baldness. But he wasn’t shy; he seemed very energetic. He asked what kind of tea I wanted. I asked for “flower tea”, which I thought would be herbal, but he brought me jasmine instead. I didn’t complain; I learned something about how to order tea. I asked him, in the attitude of someone who must have come here a lot, what sort of congee he had today. He told me two kinds only, and I picked the one that I was familiar with: preserved eggs with pork. He asked if I wanted scallions, and I said, sure.

A lady walked by carrying a tray of freshly made dimsum, the kind I would be buying later to bring to my Grandmother. I didn’t want any, and she walked away without feeling insulted. She did her job and she did it the normal, non-chalant way that is the best you could hope for from Chinese restaurant staff that you didn’t come to know deeply. The women waiting at tables were all wearing red aprons. One, however, matched her red apron with a red Yankee’s hat. I don’t know if she knew that it was a Yankee’s hat, or even what Yankee meant. She just thought it matched what . Why not make something creative today when your job is to wait on people all morning for their dimsum orders.

The place is spotless but rather dreary, nothing interesting in the décor, and the room next door is even more depressing with the fluorescent lamps. Reminded me of Chinese eateries in China, with the only difference that here they bothered to close the door when it was cold outside.

When my congee came I saw how small a bowl it was. I was used to eating huge portions that I could hardly finish. This was more like a bowl, an appetizer. Although I might feel and want to look like I am a regular here, I obviously don’t know a lot. Not tea ordering, not the size of congee. So I asked another waitress to come, one of three or four milling around, and I ordered one of my favorite dimsums, ground beef wrapped in rice noodle then steamed. Finally it was enough. But one more strange misunderstanding: when the man asked if I wanted scallions, I expected scallions, but instead I got cilantro in my congee. It’s quite common to put cilantro in congee, and I wasn’t upset by it, but it was funny how I was surprised again.

I had my book with me, but I didn’t read it. I just decided to observe the people around me. This isn’t one of those fancy Chinese restaurants with swimming creatures on display (and to be eaten) or even with a window full of hanging ducks and chickens and sliced up pig bodies. It’s not small, but its food is more dimsum. The people who were sitting and coming in are all men. Except for the table in front of me. There were two women, one in her late eighties, probably, the other in her fifties. Daughter and mother? Not sure. She was serving her food, explaining things to her, so probably. I wasn’t paying attention to what they were saying, just that they stood out being the only table of women. The other tables are occupied by men taking a break from their work. Their faces were all worn out. Tired already. Tanned, like peasants, which is probably who they used to be before coming here. Their hair was not washed, no surprises there, but they seemed ready to work. If it were China, they would have been smoking already.

I went back to my congee, avoiding the huge amount of cilantro that had crossed the limit of how much I could tolerate. Then I heard the waiter started talking to some customer who had finished but for some reason didn’t want to leave yet. They were chatting. They were chatting about the Great Wall of China, how it was built. The waiter was talking most of the time. He started by saying that those workers must have gotten no pay. Imagine you could make someone do hard labor without paying them. His attitude was thus, as if we should be grateful that we live in an age where we get paid for what we do. His tone remained animate and excited. He said talked about the emperor who started the wall, how cruel he was, how easy it was to die back then under tyranny. “If you were sick, they would just throw you off the wall!” he declared. Then he started talking about some battle that happened around that time, how soldiers were forced to march to a certain point and if he failed, he would lose his head, literally.

I was amused by how this was the topic people talked about. It wasn’t the first time; whenever people, especially waiters, talked in the restaurant while business wasn’t so stressful, they talked mostly about history. They didn’t talk about love, rarely about current politics, but they loved talking about things that had happened hundreds of years ago, thousands. I looked at the waiter again. His face didn’t look like the ones on the faces of the men having breakfast now. His stature is a bit puny, face is lighter, hardly any lines. I wonder how he knew all these things about Chinese history, though I can’t say it was all true. I wondered if he was a professor, or teacher, a learned person plucked from China with the dream of a new, wealthier life in this country, still living the American dream? I don’t know.

But my congee was over and so was the other plate. So like a good regular, I gestured for that waiter to come, tapped on the bill so he could total it, and I thanked him before leaving four dollars on the table. It’s true that I don’t really speak the language so well, that I have only been to this neighborhood maybe four times in my life, that I wouldn’t remember any of the names of the people here no matter how many times they told me just because it was too foreign a sound for my memorization brain cells, that when I was looking for this place recommended by my aunt I wasn’t sure if I found it because its Chinese characters were unfamiliar to me. But somehow I felt I belonged. No one looked at me any differently, just assumed I was from around here, that no matter how complex my history was, it couldn’t be so different from theirs, the immigrants’. After I parked my car and started looking for this place, the first shop I saw had Arabic scripts written on its awning, and almost instantly I realized it wasn’t Arabic, but Urdu, and that I could read enough to know that it was a clothing shop. I wondered how many people here in this breakfast place populated by your average first generation immigrants had any notion of what Urdu was. Even that possible scholar of Chinese history, the waiter, I wondered too. I am so different from them, from even their children, and yet, as I paid for the dimsum to take to my Grandmother who helped us all immigrate here, I felt we had something in common that was deeper than I thought, deeper than our separate set of knowledge about the world.

Listening

The sun was set, so it was sometime between 4:30 and 5PM already. The woman in front of me was still talking. The woman whose story I've come with the pittance of a turkey as a way to connect to her on this Thanksgiving Day. The woman who made the greatest contribution on where I am now. I am in this country because of her, I could afford to go to one of the best universities because of her. And now, in my most humble gesture, I drove here with a turkey I baked this morning for her. And she has been talking, about her life, the life I was never part of or, until now, cared to find out more of.

Her eyes still shone a lot of energy, even though I just learned that she had recently gotten eye surgery. Her voice still clear, though I don't understand all the words and some of them I needed my Mother, her only daughter now sitting between us, to translate for me. Her hair is mostly gone, her back is slightly but noticeably arched, her fingers are tiny and shriveled up, but they still managed to produce some food for me from her sparse fridge. She's short. When I later hugged her to say goodbye, I felt almost like hugging my two-year old nephew. There and then I felt a sudden surge of pity and sadness. Eventually she would shrink into nothing.

For now she's still lively. Her only problems are itchy skins and a mild diabetes. But otherwise, she has been enjoying her alone time. Why not? She's been alone for a while. She left when she was in her early twenties. But before that, her husband, whom she had seen in total just seven months, left her many years before that. But hardship would ensue. Hardship that I have never experienced and, unless the world falls apart in some apocalypse, probably never will. And I thought about her being alone, especially in that boat crammed with all these people, in that airplane to the UK wondering what she was drinking that was called "coffee", and walking the streets of a country where people spoke another language. I wondered.

Because I wondered about my own inability to stand tall in a foreign land because I would wonder why I was alone, I would wonder who was with me. While this woman thought only about her family, finding ways to feed these people she hasn't really seen much. Her daughter she had left when she was only five, and her son, two years younger. Everyday she was missing their growth, being part of their upbringing, and all she could do was make enough money to send cash or food back for them. I wonder how she behaved when she was lonely. Or what about her being a woman, being alone, how she maintained the conviction that her sacrifice for her family was worth it, that she couldn't allow herself to fall for a man and start a new life at the expense of the people starving over there.

I wondered how she felt when I was born. Whom did she share her joy with? She was in London then. She had friends from her philanthropic act of free reading and writing service.

The sun has set and Mom turned on the light, and coincidentally the strongest was shining above me. But she was still talking, even if she wasn't in the spotlight. She never was, for me. I can't remember any mention of her munificence while I was growing up in China, and when I came here I was always driven to her place every year to hang out, but never with her. I wondered what she thought now that the core of the people for whom she had toiled and made personal sacrifices for were all here, swimming in front of her.

There are many questions whose answers aren't just a retelling of facts and events. When words come from the heart, even if they describe memories and feelings from a distant, forgotten past, they come out in long or dangled or just awkward ways. But I think she has the words to utter. She isn't shy about saying whatever. She has nothing to lose and if she could fill out her time with words, why not.

People like me who have all the resources I need somehow get the luxury to think too much, to get too stuck in their own feelings, to get hung up on the most minor details while people who have all the loneliness in the world, like my Granny, have no time to get bogged down on this and just move on. Now she is alone, my Granny. Alone in this house she had lived and served in for over 35 years. I wanted to stay but her excuse for me to have to leave was that she liked being alone, she wouldn't know what to do with a guest. There was probably some truth to that. At that kitchen counter we stood in front of each other as opposites. She was short, frail, and old. Yet, she somehow stopped feeling lonely and enjoyed being in this peaceful state of being alone. Me, taller, could physically exert much more, and much younger, but still, I wake up every morning dreading the absence of another human being propping my emotional spine up. While my Granny gets up every morning for a walk, I struggle to avoid rotting in my own bed.

The way she started her story was recounting how she left China with just two Hong Kong dollars in her pocket. Now she is considered a millionaire because she saved so much over the years as a housekeeper. And what was the point of all this? Not the money. She didn't go to the US when the first opportunity came because there was no diplomatic relationship between the US and China then, so, as she said, what would be the point of making money if you couldn't even send a letter home, let alone money?

There were lessons to learn from the little I learned today. One was that you don't forget the people who've helped you. Gratitude is important for a human being to be a human being. But more importantly and more encompassing is that integrity implies sticking to what you believe in. She believed that she did all this for her family, and she wouldn't waver, wouldn't give up on them. It was never about the money, it was about doing your best to give the greatest chance for your children to be happy. And the energy she is radiating now is a reminder that happiness has something to do with sticking to what you believe in without worrying about the details of how your goals will pan out.

Following Dreams

I was standing in line at one of my banks. (I have several bank accounts, each with its benefit, and this one has the benefit of letting me count my 2,000 quarters for free.) There's is only one line now, and the bank is still open, and it will remain open until 8PM on this evening before Thanksgiving. I look around me and I see faces with stories.

But this isn't a fiction about my imagining stories based on the faces I saw tonight. It's a non-fiction night. I saw these faces, tired ones on the two employees behind the counter, frustrated one on the customer being served, and tired and frustrated one on the one behind her and right in front of me. Then at that point two men entered. I didn't know until they started speaking, or at least one of them.

No, this isn't a story about a bank robbery; it would no longer be a non-fiction night. The man speaking drew my attention. I looked and saw two men standing in front of the third employee of the bank, sitting at the far end of the large hall that is this bank, a hall that used to be an outdoors shop that had moved down a few blocks. The man speaking had a very friendly tone. He shook hands with the lady who didn't get up but expressed her joy of seeing what appeared to be a well-known customer. The man explained to his friend that the smiling lady also spoke "Español". The "friend" was a young man, as opposed to the older man speaking fluent English, who seemed to be in his late forties. The younger man was wearing just a sweatshirt and jeans, jeans that had dirt on it, as if he had been painting a house recently. He looked obviously Hispanic. I am not going into details on what they were doing there, even though I was half-eaves dropping while waiting in the very slow line. The point is that the young man's immigration background is questionable but his friend obviously wanted to work something out for his financial background. Maybe open up a bank account for him? Not sure. I couldn't really see the young man's face, but he seemed very humble and yet his overall attire implied a very hard working man. He very well might fall into the category of a very hard working young man trying to start a life, or persevere in a life, during these hard economic times. I heard the word "Kentucky" and wondered if he had started his life there and moved up North. I wondered about his dreams.

The first woman was now writing something. Her frustration remained. She was trying to work something out with her money. She finished and waited for the woman who was behind her to finish her transaction. She looked at me and smiled a courteous smile and then looked away. I looked away too. But I wondered if she was trying to scrape by. Her hat, her cheap-looking clothes, the way she didn't care to take care of it, her lack of any makeup, her aging face, all made me wonder, how is she doing? Where are her dreams?

My dreams? Certainly not the reason I have come. I came with nearly 2,000 quarters and I am standing here the night before Thanksgiving waiting to deposit the slip that the counting machine spat out. This isn't a non-fiction about my dreams. Those will take a bit of imagination just to describe. While I was standing there in this hall of personal finances where an obvious attempt is made to bring some warmth to the brutishness of money and numbers, I thought about other people with dreams. Since tango songs are nearly constantly beating my head, I thought about tango people, and one of the most intriguing thing I have experienced is tango teachers. Why are they teaching tango?

There's some glamor to what they do, I suppose, but not the popular kind, just within the tango community, and most of these teachers are only known by a small fraction, whether that fraction is important or not is a different story but it's a fraction. And it's not for the money. Even the best tango teachers from Argentina at best stay in decent hotels but most teachers just crash someone's house, usually apartment of an adoring fan. Last Saturday I took my first private lesson from a tango teacher. She's an example of some of the sacrifices teachers make to be teachers, though she would tell you that it's not a sacrifice. She was an architect until just under a year ago. She studied a lot, obviously, and had worked a while as an architect, and eventually winding up in New York City. That's no minor accomplishment. But then a few years ago the tango bug bit her and she started dancing, then started teaching part time. And then less than a year ago, she abandoned architecture completely.

I wonder what she told the architecture firm.

"I want to follow my dreams"?

That's what she told me. By being a tango teacher she is pursuing her dream. It's like falling in love, she said; there's no reason, and probably it's unwise, but she said she's the type of person who would rather regret having done something than regret not having tried. And when you can't make a decision between these two regrets, you follow your heart, I guess. That Saturday when I showed up she seemed tired. Or maybe she was a little nervous with me, the first time we had a lesson together. She's usually very joyful, smiling, a genuine smile that you can't fake. And she's extremely friendly. All her joy can't be around all the time. Or maybe I was nervous. I don't think she makes a lot of money giving private lessons; it's more from giving classes in various studios in New York. She also sells tango shoes for a friend who gives her a commission for the shoes. She lugs her suitcase full of beautiful lady's tango shoes around town. I doubt she makes tremendous amount of money from that. Tango teachers have to fly to a lot of places, it's a very stressful job especially when you become famous and everyone wants you to teach.

I know a teacher who, from rumors and her own biography online, was given a tenure track position at MIT only to reject it in order to become a full time tango teacher. Sure, she gets to travel around with her husband teaching tango and meeting a lot of different people. But is that what drives them? I know another case of a woman who went through very tough experience as a graduate student and then a postdoc, and when that was over, she just decided to dance tango and then teach it.

The lady told me that I have saved up a lot of quarters. I nodded and smiled. She didn't know that I didn't save any up. They were accumulating from my washers and dryers that my tenants use. I finally got my butt up and deposited the quarters. Nothing motivated me, certainly not some dream.

It's so scary to follow your dreams. But then often when you actually do it, it's not as scary as it seems. Except when you are alone, when you feel you're by yourself at this junction in your path to realizing your dream, that's when doubt and fear hover like vultures over your dying believes.

I walked across the empty street to my car, many pounds lighter now. And I thought about the last words that ex-architect told me. "While I still love to design, I guess I am in love with something else now. Maybe I am betraying my first love. But I don't think that life is about one single love that you pursue." So we are allowed more than one dream. But many of us don't even follow our first dream.

Over Drinks

She excuses herself from the group and goes to the bar to order another margarita. Before she gets to the only free stool she notices the two men flanking the empty seat. One is busy talking to a woman and the other is just nursing his beer. She makes a mental note. She leans over the stool, without sitting on it, and tries to get the bartender's attention. She can tell from her peripheral vision, or just woman's instinct, that the man nursing the beer is looking at her.

"Hey, Duke, the lady needs your help!" says the man, looking at the direction of the busy bartender. She looks at him and finds him looking at her, smiling. She smiles and thanks him. He shrugs with a carefree smile that makes her feel better about sitting down. He extends his right hand and says, "My name's Tom." She shakes it, firm, and replies, "Julie. Nice to meet you."

The bartender comes over and gets her order. She had half expected the man to order it for her, "my treat", as they sometimes say. But he doesn't. He takes a gulp of the dark beer and says, "New here?"

"New in the bar? Yes. And new in the city too. I am visiting my friends," she replies.

"You know that most people here are single? You can tell, especially when they start talking, they are often talking to a stranger," he says, and leaning over a bit to whisper to her, "Like the couple behind you." She gets a better look at him. His cologne is nice. His clean shaven, and the features on his face are all perfectly put together. His fit, not bulky, but slim and fit. He's wearing a shirt of the kind of blue she likes, royal blue. She suddenly imagines being with him. Going home with him. Taking his clothes off and touching him. She's embarrassed by the thought. The man is looking at her, not taking his gaze off her but not staring either. He says, "People come here because there's nowhere else to go. I mean, this is Harvard Square, where else do you go to forget about your work, which, for this adult crowd, is research or professorship or both. All the kids just go to their parties and get drunk or, worse, talk about their research if they are grad students." He says this as a matter of fact, but he says it in such a way that she believes him absolutely. He's not talking to himself. He's not afraid of sharing this wild conclusion with her. He's talking to her, as if his words grab her like strong arms and put her where she needs to be to understand his point.

He continues, "But it's such a mess. I tell you from experience. It's a mess. There's so much colliding energy here you can measure it, I am sure, with some instrument someone's brain here can invent. Are you an academic?"

She shakes her head, feeling an urge to tell him all. She says, "I work for a software company in New York. I live in a tiny apartment in Astoria. Just visiting my old college friends here for Thanksgiving."

That's a lot of load to unload, she feels. Those few sentences say a lot, and by the look of his face, that he's thinking now, though not in any confused way, she knew that he read between every word and line. He asks, "You get asked for your number a lot?" That's when he actually looks at her up and down, very subtly. She feels a little nervous but still she feels she has to tell him. "No.... Not really. I guess I don't project any energy of wanting to give away anything. I am too shy."

"Guys love asking shy girls for their phone numbers. But you're right, you're not projecting the right energy. But I wouldn't know," he says.

She was almost expecting him to ask her for her number. She was almost devising a clever response. But then his last sentence throws her off.

"Why not? You seem like a very charming man, you must have measured and studied energy from different women?" she says, almost flirting, not at all embarrassed now.

He looks at her, his eyes betraying a different kind of emotion she can't immediately understand. He says, "Oh, I don't look at women a lot. If anything, I think they are interesting subjects to study. I am, well, to be honest, exclusively interested in energy given off by men."

It takes her a few seconds to process that, a few more still until she realizes what he is saying. There's a sense of relief that nothing will come out of this, but that is nothing compared to her disappointment. No one at a bar, actually, has ever asked her for her number, and this man comes close. He's actually quite normal and his charm is effortless. But then he's not available, not ever.

They talked a bit more and she just feels more and more want to go back to her friends. But she can't. She doesn't really want to. Only finally when he decides to leave did they part ways. She takes a big gulp of her margarita, tasting the fire that burns in her throat as she returns to her group, al the more despondent than before.

Free Food

It's late afternoon and feels even later in this early winter time when the sun is going to set in less than an hour and most people are still working in their offices. Still, there are lots of people not working in offices. Some of them can be found packing into the parking lot of this Costco in Southern Connecticut. They are mostly older people, getting huge packs of goodies that would last them the rest of their lives, it appears. There are hardly any young people. In fact, the only young people you fill find are lifting and pushing heavy crates of the massively big items in this converted warehouse. When you enter, the first thing you notice before the high ceilings of the ex-warehouse is a huge fence. That, and the horde of people rifling through piles of volume discounted items make this place feel a bit like a zoo. And at this time of the day the animals are always treated to a lot of free food, samples to entice a few to actually buy what they hadn't intended on getting when entering the cage. There's often so much free food that you can just come here for lunch.

The kind of people who come here are not usually your elegant type. They are here to find decent brands and quality items for a bargain, as long as you have room for the giant boxes of cereal or packs of flour heavier than you, well, for many people who are overweight here that might not be the case. There's something exhilarating about finding your favorite pasta for a fraction of the unit cost you'd find at your local super market. You don't even need to do the math; every price has a unit price on it and even if you can't possibly remember how much a normal size pound of sugar costs at your local supermarket, this 25-pound pack must be cheaper. Hence the mentality of most of the people here are also quite uniform.

But every now and then you find some outlier individuals who show up for some reason you can't quite fathom. Look at the lady pushing the huge cart out of the cereal isle. Her cart is jam packed with huge boxes and bags, like everyone else. But there's something different about her. Her hair seems like it was done by a specialist and not just brushed haphazardly this afternoon when she finally woke up, like a lot of hairdos you find covering the heads of price comparers here. She's wearing a black coat that fit her body rather nicely, not pretentious but certainly not from the here or the coat outlet down the street. Her makeup, like her hair, reveals that some thought process had been put into it, and like her coat, shows no gaudiness and hunger for attention. But her face, even without makeup, already stands out. There's something slightly foreign about her. She's in her late thirties, judging from the slight lines around the corners of her eyes. But it's her eyes that suggest she isn't from the same suburban neighborhoods where most of the animals have come from. There are thoughts in her eyes, not troubled ones, just thoughts originating from what you can instantly tell an active mind, as opposed to the lazy ones behind the eyes of the creatures that are shuffling around her and not noticing her the way you, also one with discerning eyes, could see.

The lady in the black coat and thoughtful eyes stops next to one of the free food sample stands that is manned, as always, by some middle age or older lady repeating some mantra either indicating how easy the food is to make or what a bargain you are getting. She looks at the food, then at the people grabbing it, then at their faces as they scoff down the unhealthy item. She doesn't smile but her eyes show some amusement. You walk towards her, but not betraying any clue that you are doing so to take a closer look at her. The interesting subject can't know that she's actually being observed by one in hundreds of bargain hunters milling around her.

You can see that the number of people standing in front of the free sample station is increasing rapidly. You walk over and you realize that it's chocolate truffles. They had just opened up a new box to make samples from and the flies gather almost instantly around the rotten fruit. The lady, a dark skin woman speaking with an African accent, explained that it's part of the gourmet selection of Costco, and it's less than half the price of what you would pay in the big shopping mall at the end of this shopping strip. It doesn't matter that these people mostly likely can't tell the difference between this and their Snickers bar, it only mattered that it was so cheap: free! You don't see anyone actually grabbing that gigantic box of chocolate; you only see people grabbing the free samples, some actually grab more than one. You notice too that your lady is watching the process very intently. You are close enough now to see that her eyebrows are thin and dark. Her eyes are piercing ambers as if she were a cat, watching mice munching off a piece of cheese on the table. You can smell her perfume, and it definitely isn't one of the huge liter bottles from near the checkout. She is wearing a silk scarf, seems very European, the scarf and how it makes her look. Her hair is as dark as her pupils. It must be dyed, but it makes her look ever more mysterious.

Yet, you can't help but notice that she has her hands on the cart, the cart that reminds the world that she's shopping at this zoo of volume discount, wholesale lovers. You want to convince yourself that she isn't one of them. You want to understand why she is here, pushing her huge load of 24-pack paper towels, 20-pack napkins, 30-pack bathroom tissues, two gigantic boxes of Cheerios, a dual-pack of dish washing liquid. There's also a huge box of grapes and a bag of twenty lemons. If God gave you twenty lemons, you really will make lemonade? You wonder.

She notices that you are looking at her cart, and she asks, "That's a small turkey you have there." You look up in surprise. The voyeur is being watched and now being talked to. "Just for two people," you say, almost apologetically, though she probably doesn't know what you might be apologizing. You look at her eyes and feel the awe of her dissection of your existence in front of her. You mutter nervously, "You got a lot to clean or something?" She inspects her huge boxes and smiles, "Yes, but you don't?"

"No, but...." "But" nothing. There's not much to say.

"You are only getting this turkey, it seems."

Her accent is unfathomable. Which country is she from? You are racking your brain but you can't ask her. You are still recovering from being interrogated first when all this time, this whole hour, you have wanted to ask her questions.

"Well.... I don't see anything else I want."

"Maybe some chocolate?"

"Oh no...."

She starts to push her cart past you and you get nervous. It's your last chance to ask her why in the world a lady like her is waltzing around this madness. She is now right in front of you, about to continue her day. You can see the lines on her face. You can see the lines on her hands, her fingers. She's older than you thought, just a little older. And she opens her mouth slightly, her lips parting just enough for sound to be released.

"You've been following me since you saw me walk when you got the turkey," she says, almost playfully, but the accusation is very sobering, nothing funny.

"I...." Your heart is racing. You're caught. The zoo is being sucked into a hurricane as it spins faster and faster around you. She is so close to you that you can see how white her teeth are, but obviously not done by those year-supply of tooth whitening strips on the last aisle along with the gallons of mouthwash. Her amber eyes are swallowing you in like the engines of a Boeing 747. She is reading the lines, the bumps, the details of your face, noticing even the sweat pores on your nose that are oozing out nervousness. But her smile tells a part of you, behind all your layers of defensiveness and fear, that she is no one to be afraid of. While the crowd thins out as quickly as it gathered the moment the last free truffle got gobbled up, you feel a bit more relaxed. You are invited to read her lines, her face, her stories on her skin. You see the details you couldn't catch or even thought about reading when you were following her, inspecting her, wondering who she could be, what sort of undersea fish she could be flapping among the pedestrian sardines that are crammed in here.

"Don't you see, I am not that different from you, and if you look at these people carefully, young or old, if you can see the details that mark their uniqueness, you will see how much we are all the same."

You want to know if she's a specialist in some field with a big Latin name. Maybe she's a psychologist, a sociologist? Her skin is full of details, full of stories, but then suddenly, she is so familiar, so much the same.

She smiles one more time and says, "Happy Thanksgiving." And she walks away. You don't notice which aisle she is going to now, or maybe she is heading to the checkout. You are just standing there, like some people are near you, except that you aren't waiting for the next batch of chocolate truffles. You are trying to get a grip on yourself.

Treehouse Part II

...Continued from previous day

"Where are your parents?" she asks. He looks away. No one asked that before. Everyone here knows what happened.

"They've disappeared. They fell off one day when lightening struck the tree they were harvesting fruits from," he murmured.

"I am sorry," she says, a little guilty to have asked. Then she asks, "If you don't mind me asking, where do you have your cemeteries?"

He answers, still a little despondently, "Up on that red cliff is where we carry the dead to and bury them there. But my parents, and others who have fallen off the canopy, would be left in the darkness below."

"'Darkness below'?" she asks, quizzically.

He looks at her with some apprehension but also curiosity, "That is what we called the world below, where the trees extend from. It's dark down there and no one has ever returned from having gone down, either accidentally or willingly." Then he wonders what she would say next.

She thinks for a little bit and says, "It's strange. Maybe there are strange creatures below, or acid or something. We've never explored down there."

He opens his eyes wider and asks, "Who is 'we'?"

She explains that she's a researcher. They discovered this island by accident. It's not clear why it isn't registered on any map. She and two other researchers, in botany, have come to the island.

"How did you get here?" he asks, ever more curious.

"Hot air balloon, actually. We didn't want to make a lot of noise using helicopter," she said, "Our ship is on the other side of the island. You haven't seen us?"

He shakes his head. So they came from the sky. This beautiful woman came from the sky, so to speak. Before he can start asking lots of questions, she continues, "We are interested in how your people survive on the canopy. Our anthropologist colleagues have studied you for a while, without disturbing you. But we are here because of the plants, especially the ones below. We were told that you all are afraid of descending. And we intend on finding out what can possibly be so bad down there. If it's true that no one comes back up, we want to know why. My colleagues will join me soon, but I wanted to come take a look first. I am curious, not only about the plants, but about the people who live among them."

He's quite stunned by the mere fact that there are people beyond this island, and furthermore, that they have come without letting his people know. He asks, a little surprising for himself, "Will you stay here for a long time?" She smiles and shakes her head, "No, just until we can get some specimens from below for studying."

"It's dangerous! I don't want anything bad to happen to you," he says, trying to control his alarm."

"Richard will descend with a camera that relays images back to us up here. If there is danger he will see it first and we will just haul him back. We can't see to get to the bottom of the canopy from the shores. The trees are too thick and tough for us to get through without using heavy machinery that would destroy a lot."

"It's too dangerous." Then he says suddenly, "Send me down. If anything bad happens, at least I can see what took my parents away."

She doesn't want to risk his life for their project, but he became livid and excited. But then she said that they needed a professional botanist down there so the right samples can be collected. His heroism wouldn't be allowed to happen. He was disappointed.

She smiles at him one more time and tells him that she would be back later with the crew. "It's really nice meeting you. I hope we will see each other later. We will not make a lot of noise. Our anthropologist colleagues suggest that we make as little disturbance as possible because you have never seen other kinds of people before. So I hope I haven't shocked you too much by greeting you. You, at least, don't look so different, just got different clothes." She shakes his callous hand again and walked off to where she came from.

Treehouse

From this height he could always see impending storms, and at some times of the year there are plenty of storms. He would be prepared, always. He has learned a lot from his parents, whom he still misses and the only photos in his possession are of them. Before their simultaneous accident they had always warned him not to descend to the darkness below, that often, as was their ultimate fate, the darkness would suck you in, anyway. He is not so afraid of storms that would conspire with the darkness below to bring him down. He has learned a lot to know how to prepare for the storms.

He sells fruits that he gathers from all over the canopy. His schedule is very rigorously followed in order to survive. In the morning, he checks the horizon. This time of the year there are hardly any storms, but it also means the area is very dry, and the heat can become unbearable by noon. And so he has to start early. Nevertheless, a rare storm does come; when he was a little child, a toddler on the branches, so to speak, he witnessed an unexpected summer storm that nearly blew him off into the darkness below. His parents saved them and thanked God for it. So he checks the horizon where the ocean unveils the sun every morning. There are clouds, but not the kinds that would herald a violent storm, especially not the type of clouds that would appear in a rare summer storm. he checks his watch. He will spend the next two to three hours looking for fruits and also building materials to reinforce his treehouse. Summer is a good time to mend the houses. He could have hired someone to do it, but he isn't wealthy enough. He has only saved a few silver coins, not even a gold one yet. Besides, his savings isn't for repairs or other work that he can do himself. He does a lot on his own. He even repairs the blender he needs to make smoothies he makes from coconut base. He also has to upkeep his cistern, especially now when water is so scarce. The trouble with summer is that it is easy for things to grow where there's water, such as germs and algae, nasty things you can drink. He has his own filtering system, a bunch of rocks in a tube that he installs in the pipes leading from the cistern, but those rocks he has to replace every month or two, and they are hard to find on the cliffs in the center of the island. He usually goes with his neighbor and they help each other out.

Today is not for the rocks, just the fruits and building material. His business is getting better, though it usually is pretty good in the summers when people are thirsty and want something more than just water to cool themselves down. He goes out with his pole and machete. There are hanging bridges that connect the major boughs of the canopy. They haven't needed repairs as there haven't been any storms lately, but he still has to be careful. A bad bridge can be a one-way ticket to the darkness below.

He passes by other treehouses. There aren't many; in fact this close community doesn't have a lot of people. The experts think the low number of children produced each year owes less to people's desire to make them and more to whatever nutrients are lacking. Then again, by "experts" we mean a family of scientists whose background is in physics. But still, at least they understand some stuff in those science textbooks in the school. People aren't really complaining. Why make so many people in a close community that can barely support all the current mouths? He passes through a dark canopy of silence. The birds have just started chirping, quietly, by the time he reaches his first grove of mangoes. People like mangoes but they are hesitant to eat a lot. It makes their stomachs feel funny. Still, they make for good shakes. In this dim light, he can see very well which mangoes are ripe and which aren't.

Then he hears a sound. He is on alert. His biggest fear here is snakes, though the greater threat in a different grove is leopards, but they aren't a threat unless they are very hungry. But snakes are very easily freaked out and will strike at whatever warmth they feel represents threat. He holds very still and surveys the surrounding. He locates the sound and sees a shape emerging. They are near the edge of the grove where a big rock sticks out, and the other person apparently descended from the rock. The shadow sees him and slowly approaches him. It's obviously not some animal, but another human being. She smiles at him and he is puzzled. He recognizes that they are of the same kind of people, but she dresses differently. She looks down at his left hand and sees his watch and asks, "You have a watch? Battery powered?"

Her accent sounds very strange, and he could hardly understand her. He shakes his head and says, "Not really. It recharges itself by the movement."

She comes closer and he realizes she smells like a special kind of flower, which he knows is called perfume because that's what the books have taught him that people, especially women, used to wear and for what purpose. Her face looks nothing strange, and if she were to wear her hair like women here do, and clothes made from the tree-born materials, she wouldn't stand out, except that, something about her, maybe exactly her difference, or her perfume, or something about the way she's looking at him with so much wonder, that makes her such an amazing human being to look at.

She examines his pole and machete with her eyes and smiles more. She comes a little closer, and her perfume becomes more complicated for his nose. And as the entire sun rises above with a big yawn of light, he could see her features more. She is in her late twenties, at least according to what he's used to seeing in the women around here. She has blue eyes and red hair, which is a combination he has never seen before. He said, feeling rather bold, "You have red hair, but your skin is not pale white." She bursts into laughter, which confounds him a little and causes him to blush. "Sorry. I never had that comment about me before. It's cute," she says, "I dyed my hair red. It's normally dirty blond." He has read about dying hair, and he knows that older women here dye their hair completely black to make themselves look younger, using a dye from this flower that one of his distant neighbors slave every week to extract, lost a son to the darkness below a few years ago for that. He thought it is odd but somehow sensible to dye your hair any way you want.

"You're not from here. I know everyone on the island, but you are from somewhere else," he says it with some dismay. People don't fall off the sky so she might be from below. His grip on the pole tightens a little. And when she takes a step closer, he moves his body a bit back, gripping the handle of the machete a little too. She notices it, and respects his space by desisting her approach. "It's all right. I am not from below." The radiant reflection of the sun in her eyes disarms him a little. At the same time, there is something he's feeling that is wrapped in fear. His heart is racing out of this feeling as well as the fear of this feeling. His grip is relaxed without his knowing hit. Her eyes have ensnared him.

"My name is Sandra," she says, seeing his change of gesture, and extends her hand. He takes it, and that feeling suddenly explodes to nearly uncontainable level when he feels how soft her right hand is. He doesn't let it go, but she doesn't find it strange. They are just there, holding hands while the bodies are at a distance, like a photograph of dignitaries from reconciling nations.

He finally lets her hand go, at which point she smiles more. "Your name?"

"David," he says.

"Nice to meet you," she says.

"You are beautiful, Sandra," he says, with a mouth that is no longer guided by his mind or his fears, but that feeling he only felt once.

"Thank you, you ain't so shabby yourself, David," she says, giggling. He doesn't know what "shabby" means, but he is more relaxed now, giggling a little himself.

He puts his pole down, keeps his machete on, and from nowhere it seems he produces a bench made from a nearby log and some dry leaves that she hadn't noticed before. The leaves weren't just some random leaf, but it's obvious that they are picked to produce maximum cushioning. He lets her sit first and then sits down, with a respective distance.

To be continued....

Closing Time

It's closing time for work. Not really. It doesn't close here. The door is locked at 5PM, or so, but most of us have keys. But around 5PM is also when the cleaning crew comes in. They roll their little cart full of cleaning supplies, and they walk around with chiming sounds from their huge ring of keys, opening all the offices to do basic cleaning. It's the same people every night that I am here. They are either a Spanish speaking couple or from the same family of Spanish speakers. They are quiet, except a few mumbles that betray their language. But otherwise, they are quiet. Whenever I hear their cart moving, or their key chain chiming, I know that work is winding down.

But I am still here. There's not much around me. The cubical is empty, save a few pieces of garbage I need to discard but never remember to. They should be in the trash bin, should be taken out by these five-o'clock people, should be gone. But then, I feel, my desk would be even emptier. The light above doesn't work because the electric cable can't reach the wall outlet. The desk seems so big, like a desert and my laptop is just a small oasis of work and intelligence. Behind me is a window to the outside, where cars are gathering on the roads as other people get off work, going back to their families, or no family, just their friends, or no friends, just their own little apartment, proceeding to their next items of the evening, whether planned or not.

I am sitting in my relatively comfortable chair. It's quiet. I can hear the sound of car wheels rolling on the wet asphalt outside. I can hear the air conditioning humming even though it's neither hot nor cold today. I hear the occasional opening and closing of the main door. People are leaving. I doubt anyone is coming in, except the cleaning crew. Then there's nothing else. No wind, no voices, just machines moving past one another.

The fluorescent light feels like a blanket to further shield me from the noises, to isolate me. It's here, just my fingers and the laptop that sits on the desk, not my lap. A phone sits quietly beside me; it has never rung since the time I've been here, and it has never been used since then. I feel I am in a museum, seeing things plucked out of their environment, just for viewing. I wouldn't know what the phone sounds like. I wouldn't know what this desk was destined for except to hold undiscarded garbage. I wouldn't know what the fluorescent light above me is most used for. I am just here, sitting with my feet touching the carpeted floor and my hands typing on this laptop that is the sole object of purposefulness. And each letter I type brings a little bit more silence to the world as people, wherever they are, whoever they are, leave and close things down.

My eyes have gone tired from looking at the screen. Tired from all the stimuli of the day. But they have only seen the outside, looking for the outside. They haven't had a chance to look inside. It's only when I can close them, close them gently, that they begin to peer inside me, see the memories, recorded feelings, images of the day. But then, what happens outside? I don't know. Things just stop outside, just stop. My memories of the people, I try to stop them from coming inside, making noise, painting images. When I close my eyes, I want to be like in my office at closing time, just hearing meaningless and gentle sounds. Nothing to draw my attention, nothing to make me believe I am needed for something. And in the darkness inside me, where no light can reach from the outside, finally, my eyes get adjusted to the peacefulness, and only then, I start to search for the light.

But now, it's also time for me to close things up, if I want to find some peace. And so I will close the only humming machine that thinks for me and asks me for attention. And I will subtract it from this bleak desert of museum objects. And I will go home.

Live Plays in the City

It's a big city. It's big in your eyes, and that's what matters. There are other cities that are big for your feet. You have drive to get to the nearest useful place in those cities. Here, everything is compact. You have to look no farther than your where you can leap to to see something that stays with you. Even in empty streets, something draws your attention, if you care to look. But most often, it's the people, their faces, their expressions, their gestures, that draw your attention.

And that's why our actor is here. He is standing in the middle of some sidewalk in some neighborhood. He sees a man standing behind another customer of the hot dog stand he is waiting on. He knows what he wants; he's a regular. Grabbing something quick before his next meeting. Or so what our actor sees in his mind. This man doesn't even notice that he's being observed. No one does unless you catch their eyes. People in the city are aware of the eyes; they don't seem to be aware of each others' physical presence, but they are always watching out for a gaze even if they might be too shy to return the gaze until it's gone. The man in front of the busy man takes the pretzel, not a hotdog, from the fast moving vendor whose livelihood depends a lot on this hour of the day when people start lining up to get his cheap eats. He is also a character, another character in the play that's unraveling before our actor. The vendor is in his late forties, of some mixed origin, Caribbean, a bit Indian, a bit African, but why Caribbean? It's in our actor's imagination. You might see something else, but for now, we think the vendor is some immigrant from the Caribbeans whose parents emigrated there at some point from various poor places in the world, maybe one did so by coercion.

The first man gets his hotdog and he leaves, and the busy man, taking a break from his reviewing his iPhone, tells the immigrant of many origins, without looking at him, that he wanted a jumbo hotdog with everything on it and a can of rootbeer.

The actor's attention moves away from the man. That was just a prelude he saw. The main act has just started when a woman wearing a purple business shirt and designer jeans joins the line. She does so very casually, not seemingly busy at all. She is very stylish in her haircut, makeup, and of course, her shoes, but all very simple, nothing gaudy, nothing screaming out so that everything complements the beauty of her natural existence: her face, her hair, her skin, the shape of her body.

Our actor notices all this and tells his client what he sees. Then they walk up to her in the most casual manner, as if they hadn't noticed her, and join the line. His client keeps quiet, holding a newspaper but not reading it. Nowadays, people don't read the newspaper while standing. So nothing out of the ordinary. The woman looks at the actor, who is standing closest to her, but with enough space to not cause alarm, and smiles at him. He reads a slight bit of timidity and evaluates his next move accordingly. He smiles too, a smile so natural you can never guess that it was calculated, not by the workings of the brain but by experience, which he is sharing with his client who pays him a fortune for the service.

"You work down there for American Airlines?" the actor asks. His client listens attentively without looking like he's eavesdropping. They are standing in front of a huge window, and although it's not a mirror, the client can see enough from the reflection to see how his consultant behaves.

She blushes, but not too much because, in a way, and he knew this, she was expecting him to say something. The way he casually looked at her as they walked over. She didn't know that the two were together or had been waiting there before. She caught his eyes just as they joined the line. She shakes her head and says, "No, I don't. What makes you say that?"

Her tone isn't defensive, a sign that the door remains open for conversation. "Oh, because you remind me of these ladies that work at the airline counter who manage to remain so calm and friendly even when a hundred customers are screaming after learning their flight's been delayed for hours." He says this with so much warmth and confidence that it always made his client feel strange.

"What would you like?" asks the Caribbean-American. Her attention is diverted, but our actor isn't fazed. He accesses the situation, and after she orders, he says, "So not American Airlines down the street."

"No. Good guess. Really? I look calm?" she asks, curious and a little bit on guard.

He shrugs with a smile that relaxes her a little. Enough that she asks him, "What about you?"

"Take a guess."

"Well. I have no idea."

"Take one guess. The worst that can happen is you're a little off," he says, full of enthusiasm, his eyes very attentive. This is a play. This is a play whose reflection can be seen in the huge, dark window before them. There's no drama in this play. It's only a play where people's emotions are portrayed in a fake situation for the sake of the amusement of an observer. Have you ever done this? Just sit there or stand there and look at what people are doing. Some places better than others. Some places' people are more dramatic than others. In Europe people love doing the so-called "People Watching." Here, no one is watching; everyone is busy. But the client is watching. He is not watching a play, but a demonstration on how to pick up girls. His consultant, so far, is doing well, and with a lot of luck, as the client has been told as a major factor besides what he could teach him.

"I will take a hotdog with sauerkraut and mustard," says the actor, when his turn comes up. He notices that the lady hasn't walked away. He has been quite successful. His smile, ever slightly dynamic, is disarming. He is wearing a tight, long sleeve shirt, cream color, fits his body well, but also describes the personality he has very well too: very modern, sociable but not talkative, attentive but not creepy. He isn't always looking at her, but when he does, he looks with a smile. Everything that comes to him so naturally now but are things meticulously analyzed and placed in his curriculum for men who want to be as successful as he is. He wasn't always this successful, but one day, as he had related to this client, "One day I just decided that for the next three weeks I will ask five girls for their phone numbers. The point isn't to get the numbers, though I am sure if I did, I would call. Or not. But the point is to train my ego, to tell it to stop being so big and macho, because the ego gets in the way of a lot of things, makes us cowards, makes us have unrealistic expectations, makes us angry and childish."

"And what happened? Did you go on dates?"

"Sure, very few. I remember more the angry looks of 'Get the fuck away from me, creep!' But that was in the beginning and I learned how to be more confident and that's how you stop being a creep."

"So? What's your guess?" he asks while his client makes his order behind them.

"All right," she finally gives him a big smile as radiant as the sun above them, "You're not an executive, that's for sure, unless today is casual Wednesday for you. So you're.... Cashier for the Korean grocery around the corner?"

They both laughed. The act is over. The curtain is closing and the next act will start soon. It wasn't always so successful, but the clients learn at least as much from the actor's failures as the comparatively fewer successes. And the next day, on a different corner, this client will try something. He won't do exactly what the actor has done, but he will try to bring out the natural manliness in him that the actor is trying to get out there, the kind of manliness that attracts women. The client is impressed. He is hopeful and also ashamed at the same time. One day he would be able to get girls like that. He will line them up in his memory like trophies in some over achiever's living room. His ego is dying for that collection.

Listening the Minds

What are you listening to?

Your heartbeat.

What is it saying?

It's singing. Singing a song I should know, because it seems so familiar.

How does it go?

Listen to my heart, because it is like the body of a violin and your heart is the strings.

Come closer. Hold me closer. Hold me tighter.

Do you hear it now? Do you hear the song in your own heart? Listen to mine, listen to its throbbing. It is repeating in near unison with yours.

Shhh, quiet a bit, your lips. Quiet your lips. Close your eyes because they are speaking to me even when your lips are closed. Let me kiss your nose so it doesn't hum a tune that I love. Quiet everything except your heart. So I can hear what I am singing to you. I know what I am singing, but I want to know, if your heart really knows.

Then come closer. I am bringing you closer, but you have to come closer yourself.

I am playing a violin. And now, now the piano comes up, very playful against the sorrowful violin. That's how I am feeling now. Sorrow and playfulness.

Because you don't want to leave but you have to.

Yes.... And when I am angry that I can't choose what I want....

You.... There, the bandoneón. Are you so upset?

No, just want to show you, exaggerating a little, that I am upset. It's closing, you hear that. But still I feel so far from you, as if the bando is still pulled apart.

Wrap your arms around yourself, make yourself smaller, so I can wrap all of you within me.

What do you hear now?

Just the violin now, your sorrow is reverberating in my heart. Slow a bit. I want to taste this sorrow. I want to see if ....

If?

If you're crying. With the bow sliding ever so slowly yet depressed so deep, I want to hear every bit of sound, every bit of your sorrow of having to go.

I am not sorry to go!

Then?

I am sorry I can't make the choice. I am sad that I can't have what I want.

Do you want me?

Why ask?

Don't play games.

We are not. We are listening. Can you really still your heart so it only vibrates to the beat of mine?

I don't know. What about me? You don't want to hear my piano? My violin? The anger of my bandoneón? And don't forget the bass.

You aren't making music. I already know.

What do you mean?

You can't. Your heart can't make its own music when its so close to mine.

Of course it can.

I will stop mine, then. I will stop singing this song for us. So you can sing one for us, or one of us. Go ahead. My attention is on you now. My musicians are resting, looking at yours.

I just want to kiss you. I miss your lips. The song you were singing was about lips. About a pair of wise lips, lips of knowledge, lips of experience, lips of honey, you said.

No, I said your lips were of honey, trying to kiss my wise ones. Now that's exactly what you're doing, repeating my song, still.

But I really want to kiss you. I can't even see you, but my lips will find their way to yours.

That sounds almost like a song, but I don't hear more, and definitely no music. And don't use your fingers to look for them. Leave your arms wrapping me, holding me. And don't kiss me with your lips, but first kiss me with the song of your heart.

Why so complicated? I am not in the mood to make songs.

Then you don't love me?

That's ridiculous. Of course I do. I am not a musician.

I am not, but we all are, our hearts all are. And we sing with love, our hearts.

So you doubt my love?

I think you do.

Fine.

Why are you not holding me tightly? Why are you loosening your love? Your warmth?

You are being mean.

I am not. I want you to look at me in this darkness with your heart. Look at me in your heart and let your heart speak in music.

I am sorry. Come back. I miss your warmth. I miss your scent. I miss the feel of your existence....

I think I hear your song. Faintly. But oh, now it's gone.

I am sorry.

It's all right. I want you to keep hearing mine, until you understand that you have that song too in your heart. And that song will be for the person you love.

That's you!

I hope so. But for now, listen to my heart. Do you hear the words?

Yes, your love for me is crying for me. But the music is joyful, giddy. And now you say....

I can hear it in your heart, repeating it, that my emotions are flying towards you. I hope you will receive it one day.

Come closer. Let's be quiet, our lips, our noses, our voices, everything. Listen to what I am hearing.

Submersed

It's all yellow. The light piercing into the water is yellow. The water is yellow with the mucked up yellow sand from the bottom, the skin of the bodies is yellow. I am submersed. My head, including my nose, the opening of the viaduct of air, is completely underwater. I see and feel, nothing more. There is no thinking. The brain only wants to send out panic signals to the body to do something. I don't feel the bottom of the river. My arms are flinging against the resistance of the water, reaching for something to grab hold of.

A few minutes ago it was a different set of feelings. Feeling of dread. Dread of going in the water. But also feeling of excitement. Excitement of doing something bad, something dangerous, something my father doesn't know.

Before that was feeling of belonging, that these boys included me, invited me, to go to the river. I don't even know how to swim, but I wanted to be part of their group. I didn't even know who they were, really, just kids from school. I didn't even know there was a group of them, but any group welcoming me made me feel special, whether I knew anything about them or not. It was a hot hot day. People wanted to cool off. The smell of the huge river, one of the biggest in the country, was apparent before I even saw the river. The sun wasn't stingy with its rays of heat. After passing a cluster of bamboo trees, there laid the beach and a quieter part of this huge river. We are downstream from the hydroelectric dam that gives us less than reliable power. I didn't see it or cared to look for it. I was part of a group, at least today. People knew me by my name. I was a special kid, in the end, because their parents respected my father, a teacher, not a peasant like them. So I had this aura that worked against me in ways of integrating. I had my own friends, but many also had educated parents.

The feel of water caressing my toes felt inviting. I was wearing a shirt and a pair of shorts. I took off my sandals, which was what everyone wore back then. I took off my red scarf and put it inside my green canvas bag. Then they started laughing at me. They were all very brown, being peasant boys who spent a lot of days outside. I was much lighter, spending most of my time in school, home, or the road in between that I take everyday between those two abodes. So I didn't tell them I couldn't swim. The laughter would have been even more difficult to take.

I tried looking cool as I walked in the water. The water was moving, and every little movement was scary. The other kids started playing and seemed so at ease in the water, as if they were fish. Some of them started punching water at my way and asked laughingly if I knew how to swim or not, and I didn't answer, just played the game and punched the water back.

The silt beneath my feet started to feel colder and mushier. It was no longer sand, but very fine mud too. The water, as it got higher on my body, felt stronger. The heat of the sun no longer was an issue. Neither was their laughter, their playing in the water, their taunts. My feeling suddenly became focused on the water. On a different part of this river my father and I would go swimming too. But there the water didn't move, hardly. And there was the shade. And there was my father. And I always had a lifesaver. I am not sure why I never learned to swim. Maybe it was because of the lifesaver. Here, the water felt very different. There was no shade, no father, no lifesaver, no still water. It was all abstracted out and reality was flowing around me, tempting me, taunting me, telling me to go further.

And further I went.

Until everything became yellow.

And the sound is different. No more laughter, taunting, just as no more sun, and no more hot skin. It is cold, it is confusing, it is quiet except the sound of muffles, muffled voices, muffled water sound. And there is the feeling of water finally making its way into my nose and further.

I feel suddenly something different. Flesh. Skin. I don't see it. Everything is still all yellow. A yellow mess. But my fingers feel the soft skin. And then they find the limbs, and they clench onto the limbs for dear life. And for a second, my head is for above water. For a second, the familiar returns. There's the blue sky, the unforgiving sun, the sound of the river, of human shouts, of air. And before I am resubmersed, I hear a boy's voice screaming, "Don't pull me down with you!". I can't help it. I am back in the water, still holding to the fleshy anchor no matter what.

Finally, another body lifts me up above water and at some point my feet feel the bottom again. Then I can stand up. Coughing. The taste of the river, of any water, in my breathing ducts, it's horrific. It tastes like death, like the some ooze from the doorway to death. I will never forget that taste. Or the feeling of water, any water, in my nose. That taste, that feeling, always associated with fear. Death. I struggle to walk back onto land, and then I sit down. Two boys come over and ask how I am doing. Obviously fine. Just a few gulp of water. The sun dries my skin just as soon as I get to take a look around. The boys are smiling, starting to laugh too. One seem especially exhausted. I guess he was my anchor that I tried to drown.

It's all blue now. All green. Air, breathable. They return to the water, and I, now dried, stand up and put my clothes back on, shielding my skin from the punishing sun. And I watch them with a heavy heart, but relieved.

Gap in the Road

I got off the phone just now with my son. He said a lot of things, but now the thing that stays in my head as I try to go to sleep is his scraping his hand while bicycling. He didn't fall down, he said. He just lost control of the bike a little and instinctively used his hand to stop the bike by reaching out to the wall on the sidewalk. The wall is made of bricks so he scraped his palm. He said it hurt but it was much better than slamming into something.

As a father, I was a little worried, even though he is over thirty years old. I've always worried. But then suddenly I remembered that day. I didn't tell him, but it's not a secret, just that the memories slowly came back starting when he told me about his recent episode. Somehow I still see him as that little boy. We were on my old rickety bike. It had just stopped raining, and the road was muddy and wet. There's a little bridge over an irrigation ditch. The bridge was made of a few slabs of stones and since the stones aren't perfectly cut and there's nothing sealing them, there are gaps between the stones. All these years I've biked, whenever I had my children with me, I always watched for those gaps. Funny that I never even paid attention to where I was riding when I was by myself. But with my children, one in the front, one in the back, I always were many folds more careful, and I always dreaded those gaps. The chance that the bike would get in those gaps was small, but I always dreaded the gaps.

Then that day, the image of that day that resurrected when he, the grownup now, the same age I was that day, was telling me about his scraped hand from losing control of the bike. As if my own accumulated fears turned into a demon and directed my bike into one of the gaps. And when it did, my heart stopped, and all of us stopped, for a split second, before all of us, one adult flanked by two children, fell into the water. Was I screaming? I can't remember. I can't remember if anyone was screaming. My daughter was in front of me and I saw her fall into the irritation ditch while I felt my body plunge into the muddy water. I grabbed her immediately. The water was shallow, but I was worried. She was crying, and I held her while I turned to look for my son. Then there he was, standing there, water only waist deep, looking confused, but not crying. He was only about six. He was just standing there.

He was always standing after he fell. This wasn't the only time. He always stood since he could stand on his own. He fell down one time from the podium of the auditorium, a big crash, but by the time I got to the incident, I found him standing there, confused, but quiet, and standing. There were other times too. The panic of worries would instantly be overwhelmed not really by relief but more like wonderment. He was always standing.

That's the image I still have of him. I've seen him grow up into a man and then disappear into his world after moving out for college. But I never gave up the image of him as a little boy that always stood up after a fall. Just as I've never given up the image of him as the boy that got terribly sick from an acute case of hepatitis. That night I couldn't sleep. His fever was high and his face all jaundiced. Then there were the subsequent nights when I sat by him and fed him medicine and soup and waited. I just waited until he was asleep, and then I waited longer. That was a different picture of him, lying there, peaceful, with a cool damp towel on his burning head. I wondered if the fever would damage his nerves and cause him to be an invalid. I don't know. I fed him some nice, roasted meat that I shouldn't have for such a young child. It was my fault. Funny how guilt makes memories more permanent. I don't know where I read it, but once you get an acute case of hepatitis, you will always have the risk of getting it again. Really? It doesn't matter, I feel bad enough that I gave him that piece of meat. It didn't matter that I did so because I cared, that I always gave him the first piece of meat we get, before me, before my daughter. Now he was sick, lying there. He would recover three weeks later, a miracle. But the doctor warned me that he might get another episode of it. Since then, I had felt terrible, constantly waiting for that day when he gets another attack.

The same with the bike incident. I was the one riding the bike, I was the one pushing them into the irrigation ditch. It could have been worse, infinitely worse. But I was saved from my own stupidity. But now, I can't help him. I can't save him. He had to scrape his own palm to help himself. And I didn't see the adult version sliding his palm against the rough brick surface, but rather, the little six year old boy doing that in that city he is living in now that I don't know much about. I only imagined that he was riding my, broken old bike, through that old village between our apartment and the school. That's the image. He never tells me when he's sick, not even saying he doesn't feel all right, but every now and then, I imagine him, lying there, with a cool, damp towel on his forehead.

Driving down the Med School

The car is new, bought by their grandson just two weeks ago. It smells expensive, feels expensive, and the touch is expensive too. She is sitting behind the wheels, about to pull out of the parking space. Like him, she is wearing big glasses, but unlike him, she is actually looking through her glasses while his are hanging just below his direct field of vision. He is wearing an old people's cap, wearing old men's jacket, way out of style unless you believe it is part of the new old people's style. His tie is by now very loose, not like when they first stepped into the hospital. The lenses of the glasses exaggerate both their wrinkles, magnifying them, almost in a ridiculing manner, especially those bags underneath their eyes. He seems helpless, sitting in the passenger seat, his arms folded. His body is small, has been shrinking for decades now. He has forgotten about it. But he resembles a small child, embracing himself as if he wants to look even smaller. He has the look of someone who always has something to say but, for the past twenty years, he has been a pretty quiet person, nothing much comes out of his mouth. But he seems otherwise. She is watching the side mirror, making sure that there is no a single car in view before she dares to pull out. They are in front of the main entrance to the Medical School, which isn't exactly next to the hospital, but when he spoke, the few times today, he insisted on parking in front of the school, not only is there a handicap area for their handicap-plated car, but he wanted to walk to the hospital. Many many years ago, many, he would repeat, many years ago, he used to sit in that cafeteria with the few friends he had. It was the beginning of his stint in this city that seems insignificant to the outside world besides its world class university. He was working for the Medical School, and hence her friends were from there. He hasn't been back since then, since many, many, many, many years ago. Today they went to see their first great grand son. It's ironic that his grand son be working in this city, but then again, it's not that ironic given the reputation of the university and the line of education-loving people in his family. He recognizes the main entrance, whose façade hasn't changed since the school was built, but everything else is changed, people have changed, their expressions have changed. He remembers, in his rotting and thinning brain, all the faces during those years, especially the pretty girls, especially the ones he fell in love with, especially even those he had connected with. None of the people he saw on the sidewalk looked like them. On the other hand, like a few decades ago, most people looked foreign, he heard foreign languages, some sounded even familiar.

The walk took very, very, very long because he was at a stage in his life where a cane was his third leg. She was in a slightly better shape than he was, slightly more fit. She has never been here before, but despite her annoyance that he had to park there, she understood that it was important for him, so that she didn't just drop him off and park inside the hospital, but instead, she walked with him. It was, as usual, a quiet walk. He pointed to a little park across the street and said, nothing, he wanted to say something, but he didn't end up uttering a word. The park used to be smaller, and there used to be lots of cheap ethnic food carts around. He never thought they would disappear; they were so popular with the doctors and researchers and everyone else in this medical area. He wanted to say this, but the throbbing sound of his fragile heart beating on the rhythm of the past memories warned him to remain quiet. He is constantly walking on a thin wire, he feels. Every step needs to be taken carefully.

The journey to the hospital had a length of about half a block, but it took them a good twenty minutes to get to the hospital door. He also remembers the small dining area behind the reception, which was now gone as this part of the building has been completely redone since many, many, many, and many years ago. But in his mind, he remembers one of the girls he had lunch with, how eager he was to have lunch with her, how readily he dropped all his work and appointments just to have lunch with her. It's strange that she is not the driver of their new car and their current life now. But he says nothing. She asks for the directions to the maternity ward, and they proceeded.

Seeing their first great grand child is a joyous occasion, but it was somehow overshadowed by the memories that are filling up his old, tired heart and his nearly blind eyes shielded by layers and layers of old man's years. He could hardly see the details of the little child, or even his own grand daughter-in-law, or hardly could hear people screaming at him in joy and amazement that they actually came. His heart was and still is in this new car distracted by that time in his life when everything changed so much and yet seems so short, and to tell someone how it fundamentally changed him to become the person he claims to be the past decades, well, that would take too long, take too many words, more words than he has uttered in the past twenty years since retirement.

Finally, the coast is clear and she pulls out gently, as if she was afraid she would hit someone dashing in front of them without warning. These young people, especially the busy ones, never look before crossing. And in silence they proceeded out of the medical area and back on the highway home.