Doodles

Jackson Browne, in a song to his son, wrote that of all those thoughts thought crowd your head only a few will really matter. I would maybe add, that for all those thoughts that crowd your head, you’ll only remember a few, and they won’t really matter. I feel this way a lot; that my memory is bad to awful but the things I can remember are really insignificant. Some days, insignificant and inaccurate. I remember that the CCTV sports highlight show comes on at noon but it is in Chinese and I can’t make sense of it. They show NBA game highlights and the highlights don’t really have anything to do with the result, kind of like those still pictures HBO puts out for heavyweight title fights. And after the series of random highlights comes the part I’m waiting for, who won. For this is one thing I remember from childhood. Winning is important. They flash the score, the numbers readable but the team names are in Chinese, so I’m am left with useless highlights and a score I cant understand. More crowded useless thoughts for my overworked one cylinder brain. Then there are those thoughts that fly into my brain from nowhere and without meaning. The distracters. I’ll be on the phone and people will ask me if Im still there. “Why, yes” I want to say “I’m here, I was just thinking if I have five kuai for the subway or if I will need to break a 100.” Some such nonsense like this. These flying thoughts know not prejudice, they will interrupt me whether I am having the most important conversation of my career or squatting to pee. Then there are those thoughts that wake me up at night. Or is it that I wake up first and then the thoughts come. I’ll have to think about it. But either way, the nighttime thoughts are the worst. They have no focus and circle around and around. When I try to focus on another thought such as my son’s running or my daughter’s laugh or the ones who left too soon I find myself more awake so I turn the TV on to distract me. Thank goodness for CNN, always boring enough to put me to sleep. Until the next thought. ...

She sits on her knees in front of the stereo, headphones on, and her body rocks to Guns N Rosess Paradise _ City_. She play it loud, very loud, she knows sound is escaping from the headphones. She hopes it doesn’t wake him up. He’s sleeping on the sofa right next to her. It’s 7:30am. The pressure has been building these days and it grows through the day like a sun that only rises. Only in sleep and in the covers the pressure abates. But today is worse than the day before. And yesterday, worse than the day before yesterday. She knows this will end up with scratched knuckles that she will blame on dry skin. But for today, with this loud music, and in this corner of this small run down apartment, the music is powerful enough. If he doesnt wake. God, don’t let him wake up now. ...

Its 3pm and Im feeling down so I bail on work and head for the cafe. I buy myself a Beijing latte and some snack. I see her just then and I think, why not. I sit down across from her and say hi. Just having a conversation, I tell myself. Whats the harm? And it goes well, my stumbling over basic Chinese like “my name is…” and her stumbling over basic English like “are you married”. But the conversation goes well, she laughs and smiles easily and this is all I’m really looking for. She tells me shes 33. I ask her how old she thinks I am. Something like “wo ji suela ma?” in my awful Chinese. She says wu shi wu. Excuse me, guess again, maybe I misunderstood. wu shi wu is 55. She guesses again. wu shi qi. 57. This is getting bad. I say guess lower. She says 54. I leave, now feeling down and depressed. I get to the subway, which in Beijing is considered for the common people. I take it everyday. It is crowded as I step onboard. It looks like I will have to stand all the way home. Then someone says yeye and offers me his seat. Yeye means grandpa. This is not making me feel any better. I get home feeling about an inch tall with shit on my shoes. As I enter my wife is changing a stinky, smelly diaper. She asks how my day was. I ignore her and ask her how old I look. She says, you know, you look your age. She sees I’m not finding a lot of comfort in this. She then adds but you know, for you whities we normally subtract 15 from how old we really think you look. She then moves toward the trash bin, stinky diaper in hand when the look of insight flashes across her face. And meimeis don’t do math, she says. ...