A Random Walk on a Rainy Day

I was walking on 9th street toward 2nd avenue, when it started to rain. I went into the Starbucks around the corner and waited in line to get my favorite mango banana Viviano. The woman in front of me ordered 2 packs of coffee that would probably feed a zoo, and the guy behind the counter had a smirk that reminded me of an old friend.

It was another Sunday late morning, and I was walking in the rain in East Village, without an umbrella. I was in my white dress with black roses and I was not in a hurry. The raindrops caressed my hair and crept down my face, I was too lazy to raise my arm to my eyebrow so I let the water blur my green color contact.

It was not blurred however, it was crystal clear.

I wandered under the sidewalk shed and I remembered how she posed against one of the bars while another Indian/Middle Eastern looking guy, in suit and sports shoes, was sitting right next to her talking loudly on phone, how they completely ignored each other’s existence, how the photographers worked so hard to capture the asymmetry from different angles, and how random people on the street took out their cell phones to shoot this bizarre assembly of a Gothic dressed vampire looking model with an innocent looking stranger on phone.

I was looking at them from across the street, and I was smiling. It was one of the moments that you would feel so close and so remote from the city, like you are in a complete crowd and suddenly you yearn for solitude.

It was probably the first time I began to appreciate a rainy day, just like I began to appreciate the mindset of being alone. Alone but not lonely, it’s the state of mind I was trying to pursue. But every so often we confuse the two, and the other night at the club I suddenly felt so lonely and almost desperate. It was not healthy I know but it was so hard to control. I had to leave that place crowded with happy faces and drunken music. I had to find a place to hide, somewhere safe, somewhere I could call home.

I have been away for so long. I saw the picture of my dad the other day. I haven’t seen him for 2 years and he got so slim that really scared me. I called home immediately and it was busy tone again and again. I was devastated and water started to come out from my eyes. I remembered when I was little how I used to sit on my dad’s hand and he twisted my little butts around; I remembered when he came back as a visiting scholar from the US (after 3 years and then I was a first year in middle school) and I was stunned by how short he became and how tall I had grown…

And now I was so scared and I almost felt I was losing him. Luckily it was just he has been doing a lot of walking, like several hours of intensive walking every day. He didn’t lose any weight but just got fit. Maybe it’s good for him. It was a relief to me.

I talked to my parents, for the first time, calmly, about this guy I have been kind of seeing, and I was surprised that they took it amazingly well. It was almost incredible that my parents didn’t vote negatively immediately and they were even patient enough to hear all the details that I couldn’t even recall. My dad said, it was a positive that your mom was not yelling at you. But I think it’s because she hasn’t heard from you about anyone for so long so she didn’t want to disappoint you, or herself.

I took a long breath in the rain, and I hear people talking, about irrelevant things. New York is amazing as in it’s so big, so nobody even notices you; and as in it’s so small, so you can totally run into someone you know almost every day, at randomly corners, random times. Last Halloween I was intimidated I had to take the subway dressing up as a pirate. My roommate told me, don’t you worry, you’ll only see worse.

And she’s absolutely right. Sometimes I wonder if I would even find a place for someone as tiny as myself; but one day you will know that New York has the power to accommodate every character and uniqueness.

You remain alone though, in this world that can be a little bit crazy. The first step to appreciate everything and everyone else, is to enjoy the very moment and be absolutely comfortable, when you are with yourself.

And my parents, I love them too much, they don’t even know.