Esoteric Bowl

A neighbor stopped by the house and gave me a large sack of tangerines. I love tangerines, but there is no way that I could have eaten all the tangerines that she had given me.

I decided to share the fruit with some of the other neighbors, but apparently they too received their own sack of tangerines. The neighbor with the tangerine tree must have hit the mother lode.

I decided to walk over to the nearby Chinese restaurant that I sometimes visit, to share the tangerines with the owner there. They are always very kind to me whenever I stop by, and I thought they might enjoy the fruit. When I gave Mamasan the sack of tangerines, she looked inside and smiled. She told me to wait a moment and then she went back into the kitchen. When she returned, she gave me a large bag of crispy gau gee. We thanked each other several times before I left the restaurant. I love gau gee, but there was no way that I could eat all that she had given me. Okay, maybe I could eat it all, but I knew that I shouldn’t.

I was about to head on home when I saw that the Japanese bakery that I sometimes shop at had a going out of business sign in the window. I stopped by to say hello one last time. Apparently the rent is too costly for the young couple to stay at this location. It’s unfortunate that they couldn’t make it in the area.  Not only were they the only bakery in town, but their baked-goods were fantastic and the owners were always friendly. I gave the woman the bag of gau gee, telling her that it was for good luck at their new location. She briefly looked inside, then raised the bag to show her husband as they spoke to each other in Japanese. In a moments time, they filled a large pink box with pastries for me, saying that this was good luck for me also. They and their bakery will be missed.

I’m standing at the intersection with the pink box in hand, waiting for the light to turn green. While I am waiting, I see the Internet Cafe across the street. There was a time when I used to go there just about everyday to use the computer and to have a cup of coffee, but I seldom stop by there anymore. Feeling the giving mood in full force, I decided to pay them a visit and to share the pastries with the crew. The employees were grateful for the offer and were happy to share in the pastries. A few of the customers also took. Before leaving, the girls gave me a package with three individual slices of carrot cake.

When I arrived home, I began to take the carrot cake out of the package to put into the refrigerator. I thought about this wonderful infectious giving that had taken place and how it all got started. I put one of the slices of cake into my refrigerator and took the other two slices over to the neighbor that started this giving cycle by sharing the tangerines. She was so happy when I told her what was inside the package. She told me that she had been having one of her cravings for carrot cake.

To keep a house clean, one needs a good strategy. Even a small place like mine is in need of some form of systematic cleaning plan. Everyone has their own gauge of mess-tolerance and their own unique cleaning style. My mess-tolerance for my home generally fluctuates somewhere around the mid-range level. My floors are never quite clean enough to eat off of, but the city has never declared my place a landfill. The fact that my tolerance fluctuates at all is a sign of tremendous growth when you consider that my childhood bedroom was often referred to as the pigpen.

When cleaning, I like to try varied approaches depending on my mood at the time. Sometimes I will try the Bounce Approach, where I focus on one task and then the next, with less emphasis on cleaning a particular room. An example of this approach would be to clean the bathroom sink and then go to the bedroom to make the bed and then return to the bathroom to sweep the floor. Obviously the bounce form of cleaning does waste time and energy, but it does allow for picking and choosing the tasks that I really want to do and to avoid cleaning the oven for as long as possible.

The opposite of the bounce approach is a form I call Convict Cleaning. This style of cleaning is the one room at a time approach. An example of this would be to go in the bathroom and clean everything from top to bottom until the entire room is cleaned. While this approach is economical in both time and energy, it does have a way of bringing about childhood memories of being sentenced to my bedroom for an entire Saturday until the room is cleaned.

Another approach to cleaning that I sometimes do is Reminiscence Cleaning. This approach to cleaning begins with good intentions, but somehow the task of cleaning gets lost along the way. An example of this method often occurs when I decide to organize and clean my junk-drawer. Soon the contents from the drawer are surrounding me in seperate stacks and piles, and I eventually get lost in reading old letters and looking at photographs from the past. Very little organizing and cleaning is accomplished in this approach, but it is fun to do now and then.

Of course there are many other approaches to cleaning a home. Years ago when I was sharing a place with a particular girlfriend, we practiced the She Knows Best form of cleaning. This approach is when the woman of the house wants to do all the cleaning herself, not only because she knows in her heart that she cleans best, but she also has a strong belief that the male in the house is an idiot.

Admittedly, on some rare occasions I have practiced the strategy of Politician Style cleaning. An example of this method would be when company is coming over and I resort to shoving everything into a closet or sweeping things under a rug. I first tried this form of cleaning when I was a child, but apparently Mother’s are aware of this approach to cleaning.

For today, I have decided to use the Minimalist Approach to cleaning. This form of cleaning is almost spiritual in nature, allowing the cleaner to focus on one particular area to be cleaned and then becoming one with that area. For example, Z. There, I just cleaned the letter ‘Z’ on my keyboard and I’m done with cleaning for the day. While this approach may be spiritually gratifying, it takes forever to clean an entire home.

On this day, a significant record in human history was established. Today, at approximately 7:04am (EST), the largest number of people at any given moment in world history collectively experienced the feeling of despair. The former despairing record had been challenged several times this year, yet it was not surpassed until today when a man sitting alone in Central Park was overheard mumbling repeatedly, “I don’t give a shit.”

If a friend of mine should suddenly become famous, I promise that I will not be the one sharing amusing anecdotes with the media about the good old days. And if a member of my family falls victim to a natural disaster, I cross my heart that I will not be involved in any press conference or feel a need to share my sorrow on television to begin the healing process. And if the police discover human body parts in my neighbor’s freezer, I swear that I will not be providing interviews about what a swell person my neighbor has always been.

Early Sunday morning, while flipping through the channels on television, I counted more than twenty infomercials airing simultaneously. Over twenty! There was a time not so long ago when there weren’t any infomercials, and when they did start appearing, they were always relegated to certain channels.

One infomercial of note had a chef standing behind a counter with a variety of food dishes. He was being ‘interviewed’ before a studio audience. At one point the interviewer says to the chef, “It actually makes the food taste better.” The funny thing is, the infomercial was not about a mini-oven or a grill or some newfound spice, but rather about a set of knives. Now I’ll accept that these special knives may very well cut through an aluminum can, but make food taste better?

Do you ever have leftovers from dinner? And do you put the leftovers in the Tupperware or in one of your nice containers and then place it in the refrigerator to save for later? And do you then kind of forget that you have those leftovers in the refrigerator? And then one day do you see the container and suddenly remember putting food in there a long time ago? And do you then become overwhelmed by an unrealistic fear of opening the container, not wanting to see or smell what has become of the leftovers? And do you then wish that you would have put the leftovers inside an empty butter container instead of the nice container so that you could just throw the whole thing out without having to deal with what’s inside? And do you then slowly close the refrigerator door and make a promise to yourself that you will definately take care of the container and leftovers later on?
Yeah, this never happens with me either.

It should be noted that I was once young, naive, and idealistic.

I was sharing a large oceanfront home with three guys and a girl. Aside from the occasional morning chitchat in the kitchen, or the few times we all happened to be watching television together, the five of us did our own thing and had lives of our own outside the home.

Two of the guys had planned a party, and since I was invited and didn’t have anything else going on, I decided to stick around. A total of fifteen people were expected to come, but within a few hours twice as many people had filled our house, backyard, and patio. It wasn’t a problem though, as there was plenty of food, drink, and party essentials for all to enjoy.

I had spent most of the night meeting and mingling. As the time passed into the night, half of the crowd had left and the party mellowed with soft music and the occasional outburst of laughter. Those remaining were either involved in small group discussions or had paired off into intimate twos.

I was sitting out on the patio, nursing a beer, invovled in conversation with a woman that I had met earlier in the evening. She was six years older than I, and from Peru. Despite her limited English and my inadequate Spanish skills, we were able to discuss a variety of issues and share in some laughter as well. We shared stories about ourselves, our individual travels, and our common love of Hawaii.

During our discussion, she told me that her visa had recently expired and that despite her repeated requests, Immigration was forcing her to leave Hawaii and to return to Peru. It was an emotional subject for her, and I could see the frustration in her eyes. She loved her country dearly, but she had been in the States long enough to realize that a better future for her was here.

She had four days before she had to leave. Her options had run out and the only alternative that remained was for someone to marry her. I felt badly for her, but not in a pity kind of way. I felt badly because here was this woman that wanted only the opportunity for a better life for herself and yet it was being denied on the basis of where she was born. It was unfair.

She told me that a couple of guys had volunteered to marry her, but she had refused their offers because they wanted money or sex or both in return. Somewhere in the night, I volunteered to marry her. I did so not for the promise of money or sex. I thought that helping her stay here might be the greatest opportunity that I would ever have to help someone change their life in such a dramatic way. I thought that no matter what else I do in life, I might be able to reflect on this act of giving and know that at least once, I put someone before myself without any expectation of something in return. Like I said, I was young, naive, and idealistic.

Anyway, we did rush to get married and we did eventually divorce. In between those events we ended up spending five years or so together. We no longer keep in touch, but last I heard is that she lives near the Great Lakes, is married to a dentist, and they have a half a dozen kids.