Member-only story
The anguish of will-less contemplation
It’s 7 am. It’s Sunday. I step out of the back door of my apartment onto the balcony and look at the vast orange hued sky. I know there’s a lake underneath but it’s blocked by the Salvation Army building. The seagulls fly with their ugly screech. I feel anxious. I look away. Away from the sky and at the street underneath. A black squirrel runs. It looks paranoid.
‘I haven’t felt anxious in a while but it’s back,’ I think. ‘I hadn’t felt anxiety inside my room with my wife, books, tea and food, or at work with people and machines. But I feel anxious now looking at the vast sky. It means it is nature that makes me anxious.’
This thought takes the anxiety away. But a counterargument brings it back: ‘But you didn’t feel anxious yesterday afternoon when you stepped out this way.’
I recall times when I have stepped outside during afternoons and evenings. I remember seeing people and cars. I remember looking at the sky conscious that there were people underneath, by the beach, near the water. With their cars, phones, desires.
‘So it must be nature and solitude,’ I think.
I try to validate that argument by looking for the opposite of nature and solitude. I find it: People.
I look at the empty street and then at the bus terminal to my right.
