Waiting for Spring

I hate the rain in New York.

Fall in New York really is bleak. Never would I have imagined that no amount of rain in New Haven could have prepared me for even more rain that punctually shrouded the weekends. With a gray haze that never quite becomes day. I thought days would stretch with boredom; my unemployment proved otherwise. I would like to absolve my 1 p.m. wake ups; how could I live if not for the constant self-indulgence. But a part of the blame has to be placed on the shortening days and, yes, the rain.

My story with 1989 took place in Fall. For that thirteen year-old, the songs painted a dream life. Move to a big city, leave country music behind, experience a breakup or two. But no matter, you still end up clean — a fairytale. I probably did believe in love back then, because love, as penned by Swift, was so perfect and calamitous, treacherous and free. I cannot say that the prospect of being a Swiftian protagonist never crossed my mind.

But as I sit streaming the reissue, it hits me that 1989 was not even Taylor Swift’s own life, let alone for it to be mine. Her real life is a lot less polished, a lot less bulletproof, much more unhinged. My real life, as it turns out, would be a lot more alone, a lot more loveless, and never as exciting as I imagined.

It was Fall in New York when I won the lottery to go to a musical paid for by my college. The show was nothing spectacular, but strolling the metropolitan streets to find boba was the first dose of adulthood for that freshman me. The city carried unlimited stories waiting to be told. Magic to be witnessed, tricks to be uncovered, fiction to be held as truth.

Now, the window of my sublease stares directly into the United Nations headquarters. If it’s not raining, I can see the brightly-lit Manhattan skyline at night. Thousands of windows, each a square of light in a sea of squares of light. I’m sure, in fact, I know magic is happening. Politics is happening. Sex and the City is happening, in real life, behind one of those windows. Someone is falling in love. Someone lost a shoe on the MTA. Someone is having the best night of their life. But I am not witnessing, uncovering, or holding. None of those belong to me.

Or perhaps I don’t belong in this world. I should be in a monastery in the mountains north of Kathmandu. Because I don’t mind the spatial and temporal isolation from the city’s pulsing dynamics. I don’t want my edges to sound intentional — after all, I am beyond the age to claim them without embarrassment — but I am ready to be alone.

I remember a meticulous schedule governed my elementary school in China. Wake up, exercise, breakfast. Class, lunch, nap. Class, field time, dinner. Wash up. Class, lights out. Time dragged on when days were regimented. Snow on the bamboo bushes took forever to melt, white collecting in the joints of the stalks. I lay thinking, in bed, as the sun and moon took turns to shine in my eyes. I never minded the confines of a dormitory then.

I don’t mind the confines of a window now.

If being boring is a sin, I’ll gladly take hell. Routine is another kind of freedom; I only had to show up. To enjoy repetition is to enjoy a greater percentage of life. Because habituation limits excitement to few and far between. The majority will be a constant baseline, and I’d rather it be calm.

I’ll never share the fate of a Swiftian protagonist. I accept that. As tribute to be freed from the exhausting performance of chasing magic and riding the city’s chaos. Until someone disproves solipsism, I will remain convinced that confinement becomes freedom when you are no longer distracted by the outside.

I thought I would hate the noise of New York. Turns out I just hate the rain.

But everything that brings me to tears are the things I cannot be. I still enjoy 1989 (Taylor’s Version) despite knowing my life can’t be a fairytale. I still believe in them for others. Because after Winter there’ll be Spring. It is all very interesting, what is happening. It might never come, but I’ll be waiting.