Doodles

She woke up the sounds of him grinding coffee beans. She resented that sound. Hated it. And she was instantly awake with anger. A nice way to start a Sunday. She didn’t know how it came to this but came to this it had. Do all couples reach this stage? She wanted to blame him. To find fault with him. And for sure there were plenty of faults. From keeping the bathroom a mess to dry butt crack. But none of these faults were really that bad. Certainly not worthy of the hate she felt for him. ...

He can smell the heavy, cold moisture in the air and knows that snow isn’t far off. He pulls on his long underwear, jeans, winter coat, gloves, hat and scarf. He heads to the nearby park, Side Park, and enters unnoticed. No one is out tonight. He walks away from the light towards the deepest and darkest part of the park. He lies out his plastic mat on the frozen grass and sits. ...

My mom is frail and dying from cancer. I am thinking about the boxes under the house. The two boxes that I left there when I moved to Beijing seven years ago. I am thinking about how I need to clean up those boxes and not leave them for anyone to take care of when my parents are gone. I make my way up under the house and open the boxes which are not really boxes but covered plastic crates. One box is full of Mimi’s journals and after a quick inspection I shut the lid. Not sure what to do with those. I open the other box and it is also mostly journals. I pull it into the basement and go through this second box. A few personal things from my past life, but mostly nothing. Gone, baby, gone. ...

We woke up side by side at her cousins place in Issaquah WA, got up, put on our best interview clothes and drove to downtown Bellevue. Someone once said there is “no there there” about Oakland CA, but in 1992 there was really, really “no there there” for Bellevue. We made sure to get there early and stopped at had plenty of time to stop at a strip mall for lunch. After lunch, we walked into a 30 story office building, up on a slight hill, brown the color of 80’s office building brown. We went up to a middle floor, briefcases in hand. Me, with my self bought $40 case, one I bought because I didn’t get one as a graduation gift. (You see, my older brother got such a gift, and when it was my turn the next year, with no equivalent gift, I felt a bit left out in the wind). She had a $1500 briefcase for such an occasion, a gift from someone with far too much money and far too few gifts for me. We got to the agency – it was typically head hunter – and met with a recruiter. Me, I was looking to move from my fortune 500 bank to a high tech company in the area. I wanted to move for many reasons. Work, for sure, getting into hard core development. Home for sure, get to the northwest which still seemed pure at least to us hated outsiders from CA. Life, for sure, escape from something that was already happening but we were too afraid to admit. ...

I got up on Monday morning and put on my sandals with socks, shorts, and ratty tee-shirt. When I got to work my new boss commented that I had an interesting outfit. He was dressed in navy blue slacks and a mao shirt. When we discussed my project, my boss asked me who the leaders where and what our relationship to them. I tried to keep him focused on the merits of the work and not the superficial stuff. ...

The happy couple got up in the morning and put on their loose fitting jeans and tees. They brushed their teeth and combed back their hair. Splashed a little water on their faces and left through the front door. They were of that age and of that look of love that meant they could leave the house without shower and still look put together. They walked the two blocks to their local coffee shop – starbucks had not taken occupancy yet – and ordered two cups of joe and a scone to share. He flipped through the sporting green while they talked about what to do with the rest of their day. ...

The foreigner went to the foreign affairs section of the china DMV in order to take his driver’s test for the second time. The first time he took it was four years ago and he scored 92 out of a hundred with the passing score being 90. The foreigner needed to take the test again because he did a bad thing and that bad thing coincided with his having let a friend borrow points. The retest was part of the reeducation for the foreigner since he exceeded 12 points (after lending six) in one calendar year. ...

She entered harvest house for her weekly shopping ritual. Grab a basket, down the aisle, pick up the lentils, pick up the tofu, pick up the vegetables, pick up the fruit, pick up the carrot juice, pick up the green tea, pick up the spice. After lingering in the vitamin aisle a bit too long she turned to see Steve, her old acquaintance from the bank. Steve was someone she knew from being in the same orientation program but they were never really close. Never really friends even though she tried. He was just too painfully shy for her to break through and he wasn’t worth the extra effort. Not when Eric was also in the class. Eric was simply a man. Confident, handsome, not always the brightest light but not dumb, and sure of his convictions. So she ended up in the same clique with Eric and eventually the other clique members drifted away and it was just him and her. And for some reason – she figured it was Eric’s father’s death – Eric became a hard ass. Hard ass as in environmental and ecological freak. He sold his car and biked everywhere. If the distance was too far, Eric would take public transportation. She was devoted to Eric and soon sold her car as well. Then Eric decided that a vegan lifestyle – mind you not diet, lifestyle – was the only socially responsible thing to do. So she ended up on the diet because, after all, she did most of the cooking. And it was this diet that caused her once bubbly personality to be subdued. More buddha like was how Eric called it. Others thought she had just lost her spirit, her life spirit. And it was true that Eric could be a bit harsh at times and that he liked it rough and that he liked her how he wanted her. And she did not like that at first but then was willing to try because she loved him so, and then once tried found relief in the submission. She then quit her job at the bank, after all the bank was some kind of evil company, and she dedicated herself to a simple life with her man. A simple life which included paying for these overpriced organic groceries. ...

Her father died when she was 13 and it was quite a surprise to all even though it should only have been a surprise to some. Her mother was one of the surprised and in her grief she listened to her friend who told her “help yourself, then help your daughters”. The mother needed a really good friend then. A really good friend who would say “help your daughters first, this is the defining moment of their lives and therefore your life. you must do this for them now”. Sadly the mother she did not have such a friend so she sent her eldest and must vulnerable daughter (because of age not character) away to europe. On a vacation the mother’s well advised friends guaranteed would be good for both of them. ...

I am driving home in a surprisingly good mood after the dinner event. But I’m thinking the good mood is because of the escape versus the actual time in jail. I mean dinner. The reason I do not like these dinner party things is because my social skill are nil and I end up feeling worthless, hopeless, and stupid after such nights. That I am sentenced to wherever my lack of volume control in listening and speaking combined with my ill tuned social makes takes me. As I pull up to the stop light at fourth ring road there is a long line of buses in my lane. I do something I’ve very seldom do and take the side road cut in which leads to the … well … side road. The side road has the option of going straight or right, I am planning on going straight. I am about the fifth car in line at the red light, which has been red for a while. At car three is a policeman doing alcohol breath tests. He walks to the fourth car. The light should turn green I’m thinking. Fourth car’s driver passes, he starts to walk to my car. I am waiting on he green which doesn’t come until after I roll down my window. He asks me to blow into a brown, rectangular brick looking device. About the size of a kindle but as thick as a laptop. I blow. He raises is voice and yells something in Chinese. I figure it means he wants my license, which I take out of my wallet which he continues to bark instructions which I don’t understand. My chinese companion is on her cell phone and she hangs up and says “ut oh”. He asks for the other piece of my license which i don’t carry – i only carry the picture piece. He’s not thrilled that I don’t have it. He has me get into the back seat and he drives my car under the underpass where a police car is waiting. I am calm. I am thinking this is not good. ...