have mentioned theirs, it’s advisable and with effort, possible to turn your eyes from the creature’s transparent gaze, but it’s impossible not to turn them back to it again. You may think you’ve broken free, but unawares you are once more unavoidably drawn to the same icy, never-ending stare.
I remained observing the aviary a little while longer. A few of the large birds had changed their places, and now a pale beam of sun lit up their beaks from above. And the spatial counterpoint their beaks created with the meat almost on the floor had intensified, so much so that for a moment I imagined that my eyes were the vertex of a rather large angle: one line represented my downward gaze at the birds’ red meat, while the other shot upward, where the beaks could be seen.
The shady path I had come along continued toward the park’s interior. I caught sight of a bright point toward the end of the path—the afternoon light, as it turned out. I headed in that direction, since I intended to keep strolling through the park and the idea of a slight change in scenery appealed to me. Before I left the canopy of trees that surrounded the aviary, I looked back several times, a habit of mine, and was struck by the color of the ground in the aviary and its environs. It seemed like another surface, not dirty but dirtied, though no stains or traces of garbage were visible. It had a different shade of color, most likely owing to the birds and their constant production of feathers, dust, and droppings, scattered in great part by the breeze. I wanted to study that color more closely, but meanwhile told myself that if anyone saw me stopping repeatedly to look back, he or she might think I’d been seized by a kind of fear of or obsession with birds. No matter where I am or what I do, I cannot free myself from the thought that I’m being observed and judged by others, nor from my frustrating inability to imagine the nature of their evaluations.
As I approached the open section of the park, which from my perspective promised to be fairly large, I could more clearly make out splotches of color that represented people in various postures and situations: they were sitting on benches, walking, or lying in the sun and under isolated trees. A large fountain in the center sprayed jets of water all around, creating a mist that blurred the surrounding space like a vaporous, unmoving cloud. When I reached the tree-lined mall and got closer to the fountain, I saw bougainvilleas again, purple like those in the circular garden, spread out here and there over a much greater space. As perhaps might be imagined, I instantly felt a bond with the few people walking there, since they were sharing in that halfheartedness, even lethargy, of mine toward walking in parks, which I referred to earlier as well.
So I began to think about how long I’ve been taking walks. Years, decades. And if I live significantly longer I could keep on adding, because one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll never stop. But despite this great amount of walking, however, no walk has provided me with any genuine revelation. In my case it’s not as it was in the past, when walkers felt reunited with something that was revealed only during the course of the walk, or believed they had discovered aspects of the world or relationships within nature that had been hidden until then. I never discovered anything, only a vague idea of what was new and different, and rather fleeting at that. I now think I went on walks to experience a specific type of anxiety, one that I’ll call nostalgic anxiety, or empty nostalgia. Nostalgic anxiety would be a state of deprivation in which one has no chance for genuine nostalgia. There may be various reasons for the block. If I’m going to explain it, I have to tell the story of my borrowed ideas, which I’m full of—I say “borrowed,” but I’m not suggesting I don’t have full rights to them, on the contrary . . .
One of these ideas, among the
I remained observing the aviary a little while longer. A few of the large birds had changed their places, and now a pale beam of sun lit up their beaks from above. And the spatial counterpoint their beaks created with the meat almost on the floor had intensified, so much so that for a moment I imagined that my eyes were the vertex of a rather large angle: one line represented my downward gaze at the birds’ red meat, while the other shot upward, where the beaks could be seen.
The shady path I had come along continued toward the park’s interior. I caught sight of a bright point toward the end of the path—the afternoon light, as it turned out. I headed in that direction, since I intended to keep strolling through the park and the idea of a slight change in scenery appealed to me. Before I left the canopy of trees that surrounded the aviary, I looked back several times, a habit of mine, and was struck by the color of the ground in the aviary and its environs. It seemed like another surface, not dirty but dirtied, though no stains or traces of garbage were visible. It had a different shade of color, most likely owing to the birds and their constant production of feathers, dust, and droppings, scattered in great part by the breeze. I wanted to study that color more closely, but meanwhile told myself that if anyone saw me stopping repeatedly to look back, he or she might think I’d been seized by a kind of fear of or obsession with birds. No matter where I am or what I do, I cannot free myself from the thought that I’m being observed and judged by others, nor from my frustrating inability to imagine the nature of their evaluations.
As I approached the open section of the park, which from my perspective promised to be fairly large, I could more clearly make out splotches of color that represented people in various postures and situations: they were sitting on benches, walking, or lying in the sun and under isolated trees. A large fountain in the center sprayed jets of water all around, creating a mist that blurred the surrounding space like a vaporous, unmoving cloud. When I reached the tree-lined mall and got closer to the fountain, I saw bougainvilleas again, purple like those in the circular garden, spread out here and there over a much greater space. As perhaps might be imagined, I instantly felt a bond with the few people walking there, since they were sharing in that halfheartedness, even lethargy, of mine toward walking in parks, which I referred to earlier as well.
So I began to think about how long I’ve been taking walks. Years, decades. And if I live significantly longer I could keep on adding, because one thing I’m sure of is that I’ll never stop. But despite this great amount of walking, however, no walk has provided me with any genuine revelation. In my case it’s not as it was in the past, when walkers felt reunited with something that was revealed only during the course of the walk, or believed they had discovered aspects of the world or relationships within nature that had been hidden until then. I never discovered anything, only a vague idea of what was new and different, and rather fleeting at that. I now think I went on walks to experience a specific type of anxiety, one that I’ll call nostalgic anxiety, or empty nostalgia. Nostalgic anxiety would be a state of deprivation in which one has no chance for genuine nostalgia. There may be various reasons for the block. If I’m going to explain it, I have to tell the story of my borrowed ideas, which I’m full of—I say “borrowed,” but I’m not suggesting I don’t have full rights to them, on the contrary . . .
One of these ideas, among the
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