note: ten-part series continued! | 1

“It’s like a Buddhist resort here,” he said as his mother served him a bowl of bibim bap. It wasn’t the normal Koreatown fare. The rice was dark brown, of assorted grains, and the vegetables were fresh and plentiful, not to mention organic. His parents had stopped eating meat years ago as a health measure. He didn’t mind; it was a welcomed sight after weeks of greasy Chinese take-out and flabby turkey sandwiches from the corner deli.

“So have you heard from Janet lately?” his mother asked as she sat across from him at the dining table.

“Mom. I don’t know. I told you we stopped talking a couple of months ago. It’s over. She’s out of my life now,” he said. He kept his head down and ate from the bowl.

“I’m sorry. I just thought you guys would at least check up on each other. You were friendly even after it ended and -”

“Mom. Please. I didn’t come here for this.”

His mother got up from the chair and walked towards the kitchen counter. She leaned on her elbows and rested her head on her left palm. She looked and took in the image of her sullen son eating at the table – the once cute boy who had grown up to become this unkempt, awkward, and now lonely man. She let out a sigh and walked out of his sight.

****

He found his father intensely absorbing the pages of his latest passion, Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus – Capitalism and Schizophrenia. He remembered learning about Deleuze from his college days. The French philosopher had become a chronically sick man by his late sixties, and at seventy years old, he jumped out of the hospital window and took his own life. You can theorize all you want, he thought, but we all die in the end. He wondered how his father never tired of the tedious reading.

“You should read this some day,” his father said, his eyes still fixed on the pages. “It explains a great deal about how capitalism alienates us by forcing us to care for ourselves as individuals but at the same time, it forces us to come together as social groups to function. It’s a mentally diseased system.”

He nodded and muttered some vague comments in agreement. There was a time when heated philosophical conversations with his father enlivened a Sunday afternoon with both of them reaching for the bookshelf to point out quotes and refute the counterparty’s arguments. Sometime in the past fifteen years, he had lost complete interest and stopped reading. He grew tired from his father’s ongoing summary and decided to take a walk outside.

Suburbia isn’t so bad, he thought. He liked the sight of basketball hoops in driveways and the lushness of well-manicured lawns. He had discussed the possibility of living in the suburbs with Janet on several occasions when they used to entertain the idea of kids. He crushed the cigarette butt and took out another one. A carton here would be cheaper, he remembered. He headed towards the local 7-Eleven.