A Brief Feeling of Apartness

i write to you from a side room

Some days I feel especially weird, more apart from other people than other days. Sure, I’m always objectively aberrant in many ways: I’ve lived an unusual life path in an unusual place in an unusual era. But that tends to blend into the general rhythms of life.

Then on certain evenings, I feel a high level of apartness. It arises. It’s a feeling in the body, in the atmosphere. This doesn’t need to be a problem. I am still content. But it is the sensation of being contentedly distant, watching the other people from a lighthouse.

Right now, for example. I am typing this in a cool bedroom at a party marking the end of a symposium, at which I feel like something of an outsider but not unpleasantly so. From here I can see my friend Priya in the kitchen, and she looks so authentic and lifelike, tastefully lit, effectively and seamlessly a human being.