Walking for the Loneliness
The city exhales as dusk settle, painting the sky in bruised purples and pinks. I find my rhythm on the never-changing road. A tide of humanity surges past – commuters welded to flickering screens, delivery riders weaving perilous paths, taxis bleating impatient horns – each locked in their own urgent orbit, their eyes fixed on destinations just beyond reach. Here, under a long exposure captured in the relentless sunset, I am the anomaly: the man walking against the current, pace unhurried, destination perhaps nonexistent. Commuters, riders, taxis... they dissolve into luminous trails, their urgency rendered as abstract smears against the pavement. Only my slow, deliberate form retains its sharp edges.
The sheer velocity of Beijing should have rendered me obsolete, yet strangely, I do not feel out of place, like I always do. Here, amidst the luminous river of motion, I am paradoxically anchored.
And within this stillness, a spaces opens. A compulsion rises within me, a need to speak into this receptive void I created. I imagine this Absent Presence absorbing it all, not with judgment, but with a deep, wordless comprehension. There’s no need for explanation, for justification. It simply contains. I pour out the anxieties deemed too trivial, the vulnerabilities too raw, the thoughts too bizarre for daylight consumption. Here, in this self-made sanctuary of imagined understanding, I am laid bare, metaphorical but oh-so-real in its absence.
Fueled by this fragile communion, fantasies bloom. Not of grand gestures, but of impossible ordinariness imbued with connection. I imagine a world where every step, every breath, is a shared experience. The silence between us not empty, but thick with unspoken resonance.
"Pathetic", inevitable intrusion, I whisper, "elaborate self-delusion. A man dreaming impossible shits 'cause the real thing terrifies him. How utterly... disgusting". The solace sought moments ago now feels cheap, foolish. The vulnerability offered to the void suddenly feels exposed under my own unforgiving spotlight.
Why do I persist in building these intricate castles of imagined connection, only to be the one holding the wrecking ball? I crave the sweetness of the connection fantasy, yet my own mind condemns it as a failure.
The walk continues, my steps feel heavier. The path bends, leading back towards the clustered lights and the murmur of the crowd. Yet, as my steps resume their steady rhythm on the road, carrying me homeward, I know the emptiness will beckon again. I walk on, embraced by my chosen solitude, perpetually haunted by the ghost of a connection I both architect and annihilate.