Desalt and dropout—12
Casey continues her eating when the rain gets smaller and and smaller and the world outside retires to its normal in the evening. Casey rarely goes out when it gets dark. The most possible reason is that she is not brave enough to be surrounded by an exhausted world. After the day’s work, people, machines, cars, trees, buildings, diurnal insects are drained empty of their energy but the night lights, which are nocturnal beings as company of the urban dark.
Casey stays out late occasionally when she has to go on socials, for example, dining with friends or colleagues, or working overtime. Even so, she manages to go home by midnight. The busy streets at late night are taken over by speeding cars. Most of men resort to inside of some kind of shelter, home, bars, shopping malls, restaurants, theaters, traveling cars and etc. On the contrast, the quiet alleys thrive with people flocks back to home. The convenient stores get busier. The vegetable shops are crowded with people in and out with bags of vegetables. The restaurants are full with people talking and drinking at their high. The playgrounds are filled with children shouting and running about. What a scene of life. Casey likes watching the activity of people but not for long. So, she always believe that what she sees on the way home from the bus stop is enough for an otherwise dull day.
Casey loves watching people standing far away rather than to be part of them. For this very reason, Casey is not much a social person. She would spend her spare time at home reading or doing housework rather than go shopping and other activities that her contemporaries fancy a lot. Casey has never succeed in developing the hobby of going shopping. Even window shopping is a real pain to her. She never goes to shopping mall unless she has the need for something necessary. She was definitely one of the first users of online shopping. When Jinjing Mall was available, she opened an account and bought books. It was not long for her to find that the books she had bought online was cat copies. She filed complaints but in vain. The unpleasant experiences have been the red flags for her to become a patron of online shopping too. She gets almost everything she needs for her daily life from the corner shops and (summer)markets and store in a handy location. She would not fork out much time to these kinds of things. She is a person to keep life as easy as possible. In this regard, Casey is no less than an elderly man who lives a simple and peaceful life. For a young woman in her thirties, such kind of a life style may seem as tasteless as plain water for most of modern people today.
Modern people is the opposite of Casey in terms of life style. They keep up with fashion and new things every second day and night. They glue on their phones and on their social circles in case of they are left behind even a moment of wink. They believe they will not live without their dependency on their circles, virtual or real. They lighten up on their face when they are busy with interacting with others. Once they happen to stay alone, they find they are fish out of water. They could not survive for even a second without connecting with the outer world. They make calls, send messages, watch short videos, enjoying themselves for being connected. Casey wish she would be one of them.
Casey gives a deep sign and looks at the dumplings in her bowl. She hesitates to have one more or not. (To be continued)
