The Sun is Ambivalence

21 Mar, 2025

Every year, like clockwork, the spring will usher in such an ambivalence. I always welcome the sunshine because it brings back all of the colors which were lost during the dark winter months. The red of brick houses become sharper and more vivid, and the sea has a fuller color with its depth lighting up and the foam seeming light. I like to see the flowers spring forth from their little nooks and hear the sound of birds chirping. Once I used to live in a city which had sakura flowers bloom next to a little pond every spring. The pink of the flowers made me speechless for the two weeks they would be on the trees. Everything feels so wonderful. The spring is beautiful. But it is also empty.

When the sun shines down, the people come out of their houses and come together on lawns and porches and parks. They drink beer, they laugh, they talk about everything between here and the sun – and more often than not, they talk about the sun. As I walk down the street listening to the birds making conversation, I find myself looking at the smiling people and feeling sad. I remember to my experiences of basking in the sun, having picnics with friends, or even falling in that heavy spring love. Knowing how the sun makes me feel when I’m alone and remembering the pleasures of being outside together taints the former with the lack of the latter.

I don’t have any friends where I currently live. This is partly because I am bad at making friends, partly because I don’t plan on staying here for long, and partly because I work a lot. If there ever was a time to make friends it would be during the wonderful spring weather, wouldn’t it? But I just can’t. Either I don’t have the time, or my social style or my interests doesn’t match whomever I am trying to befriend. I have few friends in general, and those I have are scattered all over the world.

The lack of anyone to share the beautiful weather with almost seems to drain the colors recently introduced right out of again. The bricks aren’t vivid but overwhelming, and the sea turns vast and uneasy. It feels as if the amount of impressions starts to fill up inside my body and as the amount increases, a tingling starts. A pressure starts to build and build, and as I expand I feel the tingling turn into rumbling. The rumbling becomes louder and louder as the pressure continues to mount. A discomfort takes hold and I want to let go. The rumbling turns into a rattle and ever as I want to release the pressure, there is no key to the release valve. Until the feeling pops and everything deflates.

Having no friends to share the sunshine with makes the friendships I see being nourished feel mocking. It feels as if I am withering on the vine while others are getting plenty of chatter. I want to cry feeling as if I don’t belong on the grass or under the trees. The book I am reading is just a substitute for a friend, a sorry excuse of a reason to be outside. I don’t even want to read it, I really want someone to ask me about it. I just want to share the wonder of how beautiful everything is with someone. But no one cares that I sit perched under the tree reading in the park, as I am merely an ornament of what the park looks like that particular day. I might as well stayed home. I might as well not even exist. The loneliness I might feel at this moment becomes mixed like a paint with the happiness of impressions into this goopy tar of ambivalence which stains every thought it touches.

I have my most intense moods of the year during the two contrasting sides of the calendar. After New Years I often succumb to a deep melancholy. I become nervous and agitated, but most of all is that everything seems bleaker and grayer. The night becomes longer and the only thing which brings me any solace is the shine of Hercules and Orion in the sky. I have my second intense mood in the dead of summer after coming out of the laziness of vacation which turns into a lonely listlessness. I become lonely because I am reminded how alone I am most of the time. I am just as alone on the ice sheet as I am on the beach, but the beach just feels a lot more lonely. My evening walks during winter are lonely, yes, but the people stay inside so I cannot imagine how alone I really am. Loneliness is a longing for belonging. I wish I had someone to share the dulcet sounds of the sea with.

.dash

#misc-misc