Take time off to be happy

On my way back from the Bronx (don't ask), I sit next to a girl reading a book in her native language. "That's Russian, right?" I asked her. "Yeah, how you know?" I choke, "It's hard to miss." She laughs, and this is something you just read and may not have found funny. It's the way that the short sentence is delivered: you use your face, your hands, your tone of voice to convey humor. Your body may say more by how fit you look than by whatever posture you assume. 

Throughout the day and everywhere, I interact with people, the subway being rather an exception: I like to keep quiet when I'm riding. Actually, I mostly keep to myself; my roommate likes to say next to nothing, but it's warm enough, the do-not-speak- unless-spoken-to kind. She's even quieter than the other girl.
Don't get me wrong, they're great. I mean, beauty has to be part of the deal and when there is beauty in abundance, certain traits in personality, other than fine aesthetics, go awry. You can't have it all, but you can have plenty. And I've been very fortunate with women. Ashley had more than looks, she was generous and graceful. Too bad she nagged most of the time, and always said shit that was hurtful; she was violent, too. She once broke a broom on my forearm; it hurt for weeks. And the scars from scratching are fading, but they were bad. She was also very vain.  

From time to time, you go the chase, but only after you finish your work. You will need time off to go somewhere, in the desert or the jungle, be one with nature, run naked in a rainstorm. Sure, we speak little of the voices in our head. These talk more and more about the recent past and how I've taken over the present, how the ego evolved into a more constructive self-esteem, how we chop day in and out to carve out this body and mind. In the physical spectrum, it's different: the harder you try, the farther you get. In the spiritual/mind realm, it is the undoing and the not-doing, just being, you aim for. And it isn't as if you go searching, no. It comes when you least expect it and doesn't make any promises but it delivers. Mindfulness makes us clear, peaceful, and kindness isn't rare. Often we run into old friends, and yet it happens because I am on the move, everywhere, and so chances are I will bump into someone I know. It's called synchronicity.

It's happened to me with everyone I know, the ones I care. Alan, my cousin, I used to see him on my way back from work many times on the same crossroad. Ashley I met several times around, once when we had fought and we had just come back from the city, she was with her then roommates and I hadn't seen her in a week or so. Then there was the time she was coming from the city and I was coming back from work, and we took the same bus. Up until that night, she had gone a couple of months aloof, shoving off my advances, leaving me in limbo. I told her that night that if she wanted just a friend, well then no, sorry. That was it, and I meant it. Then we got to fight it off and there was this ritual where I rid her of her clothes, barely take mines off, and just ravished her over and over. It was so good we ended up having sex every night for the next five days in a row and ever since then, we spend most time with each other. Ah, what times.

Of course, if there's meditation for good, its bad counterpart is Vodka. Just as you sit comfy and watch TV, no one fights over what to watch. You may not realize it but relationships are hard work and sometimes it doesn't even pay off. You put yourself through so much rejection, sometimes you just want to just get the fuck out of there for good. And so, when you do, you forget just how bad you had it, whatever you do it works only if it finds you happy and for that, whether you are in a relationship or not, it doesn't really affect the outcome. 

Being happy begins with you. And you kind of lose yourself when you're in love. It feels like you can't take enough, it's almost like a high you can't contain. And once you come off it, then you experience withdrawal. It's normal. I call it quarantine.

It's a period of forty days and its nights without making contact with the infected. In this case, the one you love. Once things are done, of course, and no less than forty days. No emails, no texts, no contact. It's sobering, I know. But once you know how to denounce to that which you hold dearest then you know more than most. You chose to be alone, your actions and your behavior clearly point to that fact. You may have chosen poorly by acting out in anger, but it made you realize anger is no longer our way of doing things.

We've come a long way from those angry days. 

Of course, emotions do not rule our lives. But anger should be like salt for cooking, use in small amounts. It gives zest, flavor, character to your foods. But destroying her trademark sunglasses, that was not cool. Throwing down the window a VCR from a forth floor long ago, as I reminisced having done with Glenda. We now laugh at those things and really wonder just how madly in love you really were. Not that you no longer aren't, but once you make space, time apart, you begin to see shapes and forms, and kind of find the whole thing funny. Look, I chase around my friends, can't say I stalk them. But girls I've been involved with? Rarely. Of those that started as friends and then turned into something else, some reverted back to friendship. Since you already know what you're like when you've been friends, then it isn't as evil. But relationships that started off without friendship rarely turn into friendships. You'd like to hang out with girls who you were involved, and I have at one point or another, but girls tend to only have friends and keep their exes at a distance. I think that's the price of getting the girl, you gotta let her go when the time comes. Show your face around every few weeks, whatever you do take time off to be happy.