Earthrise
Maybe hell isn’t other people. Maybe hell is how we see other people. How we don't see them at all, but rather see shadowy reflections, echoes of our own fractured selves – a sneer where there should be a smile, a jeer where there's just a stone face. Like a funhouse mirror, they appear distorted, reflecting our own fragmented selves. We're caught in this cosmic dance, tangled in duality: brain-body, mind-brain, within-without.
The world outside exists just as a continuum of the inside. The towering high-rise casting its shadow on the sidewalk, the teetering bottle of alkaline water on the darkwood table – a gift from your folks when you moved in – Orion's belt up in the sky, the city of San Francisco flickering on a dusty screen. The whole universe crammed into 4mm of pupil, a microcosm rendered on a 12.6mm canvas.
Your personal cosmos reboots at dawn after shutting down for seven hours or so, stirred by the rattle of blinds, the sound of tires on wet pavement, the hum of a radiator. For the seventeen hours that follow, it flickers, flares, and sputters in a stop-start rhythm, collapsing and rising again.
First, the city wakes up in your window, its people navigating through its streets like ants: a hive reduced to hurried footsteps. Hell isn't other people, no. Hell is what you see. Half-read books strewn on the floor, their spines cracked and pages dog-eared. Dust gathering on an old mini grand. A souped-up Porsche roaring through a child's interrupted dream.
As the day begins, scenes of life flicker and fade like fragments of a disjointed film. A vendor's voice, rough from years of selling grey-market AirPods to indifferent ears, blends into the urban noise. Office workers huddle in the shade of skyscrapers, sipping on cigarettes, gulping down coffee.
Time slips by, unnoticed, as the urban landscape merges into a blend of light and shadow. The sky above shifts from blue to twilight, stars appear. The noise of the day gives way to the hushed whispers of the night, the city exhaling as it sheds the weight of the sun.
In the fading light, the world outside becomes a fleeting reflection in a windowpane, a distorted echo of the life within. High-rise, teetering bottle, flickering screen – they all merge and dissolve into darkness. The day draws to a close. The universe folding in upon itself, retreating to the shadows to heal from you.
