Angxious

It was Sunday afternoon, just after noon. The first week of March in San Francisco. Grey, cold. I'd just gotten off the bus and I was walking home. For the past several months I've been on a health kick, eating right and not drinking, exercising, even on weekends. After the gym I took a walk to Hayes Valley where I stopped at a Greek restaurant for a salad with chicken on top. So far this year my diet has consisted largely of salads. And chicken. Sure there's been the occasional burger, or fish, but for the most part it's leafy green vegetables and poultry. Once I was done eating I remembered I needed to finish editing a series of photos I'd taken during a last-minute trip to Yosemite two weeks ago. The weather reports indicated there was to be a storm, and a chance of snow. Having never seen winter at Yosemite, or a storm, or snow, I decided it would make sense to check it out. The gamble paid off. It rained and stormed incessantly and the mountains were draped in curtains of fog and mist, lending the landscape a soft, dreamy feel that you had to see to believe.

But now, as I headed up towards my apartment, the sky looked heavy. It seemed to have darkened noticeably since I'd gotten on the bus. The wind, which had been shaking the trees, stopped. A brief silence in nature's song is usually telling of a coming storm. On the sidewalk small dots began appearing all around me. When I looked up I couldn't believe what I saw. It was snowing. Not full-blown snowing, but snowing, by San Francisco's standards. The rain was falling too slowly and it was too bright. Two girls rushed out of their doorway to capture the moment, recording a video with their phones. I tried to do the same but my iPhone froze and crashed when I launched the camera app. The snow had quickly turned into hail. Small, pea-sized balls were bouncing off houses and cars. Little granules of ice stuck to my black fleece and started to slowly melt. There was the sound of hissing as the hail fell. I smiled and laughed at the unexpected weather and how I seemed to intuit it the moment just before it happened. As fast as it started, it was over. The only trace of it happening was an unmelted piece of ice perched on my sleeve like a diamond in a jewelry store case.

I trudged up the stairs and put the key in my door. My feet squeaked against the wood floors as I walked in. Usually I take my shoes off before entering my apartment, but today, for some reason, I didn't. I put my bag down in the kitchen and bent down to unlace my shoes. My phone, seemingly recovered from its previous failure, chirped and vibrated from inside my pocket. I pulled it out as I sat down onto the couch. Reminder: Doctor's Appointment @ 7:34PM. Huh? What an unusual time for a doctor's appointment. I must have typed it in wrong when I created the event. When I checked my calendar, though, there weren't any doctor's appointments listed for today. That's odd. Maybe it was for next Sunday morning? Nope. There weren't any doctor's appointments in the coming week. In fact, I'd be leaving for Japan next week, so I wouldn't have scheduled something for a time when I wouldn't be here. My email didn't reveal any possible appointments, either. What the fuck. Maybe I'd just set a random reminder for myself to do something at 7:34 tonight? But it's such a specific time to do something. And it doesn't quite line up with any of my typical Sunday activities; laundry, cooking dinner, watching TV, reading. I felt myself getting frustrated at the fact that I couldn't remember what this was about.

As a distraction, I started working on the photos. Editing photos is perhaps one of my favorite ways to spend time. Hours can slip by as micro-adjustments are made to saturation and contrast, color balance, sharpness, exposure, and clarity, just to get the right combination. It's easy to obsessively hunt the frame for dust particles that may have come in between the lens and the camera sensor, or to lighten the glow of sunlight as it bleeds into and across the scene. Small changes in one value can dramatically change the entire photograph from warm and inviting to cold and lonely. Those aren't the only two possibilities, of course. A photograph can easily evoke any set of sentiments, which is why photographs are so moving. All that is required is to look. It speaks for itself. After finishing dozens of photos it was time for a break. My phone rang out again. A text message. I unlocked the phone and saw it was from a number I didn't recognize. It said:

Hello! You have an upcoming consult @ 7:34PM with Dr. Doctor. Reply 1 to confirm. To cancel/reschedule, do NOT call/text this number! This is just an automated message. If you need to cancel please contact us at our main number. Thanks for respecting our 48hr cancellation policy!

Hmm. I could feel my pulse rising slightly. My chest felt tight. Was I angry or anxious? I'm not sure. Definitely confused. Maybe angry and anxious. Angxious. I grabbed my computer and did a quick search for Dr. Doctor. Unsurprisingly, it didn't yield any helpful results. I tried to narrow it down to San Francisco, but it just provided me with all sorts of doctors in the San Francisco bay area. I picked up my phone and read the text again. Why isn't there a callback number? And why would they text me hours before the appointment if they have a 48hr cancellation policy? In frustration I texted the number back, asking what their main number was. Almost immediately I received a message back:

HeLlo! you have resPonded to an automated MEssage with an invalid entry. please reply 1 to confirm your appointment. 934740#7309:110-1

Instead of getting clearer, things were getting more bizarre. What kind of message is this? Why is it capitalized like that? And what do the numbers at the end mean? This must be a scam. Somehow I was added to a mailing list. Or might it be a prank? One of my friends could have created an event on my phone while I was in the bathroom. No, this would be a bit elaborate for most of my friends. I noticed it was suddenly sunny outside. The weather was incredibly sporadic today. Early this morning it was cloudy, then raining, then sunny, then it snows for 15 seconds, hails for 45 and then abruptly stops. Resolved to get to the bottom of this, I called the number instead of texting it. It rang five times and then I was greeted by three ascending tones and an operator who told me my call couldn't be completed as dialed. There goes that idea.

Dr. Doctor. Wasn't that the name of a song from the 80's? Turns out it was a song from 1978, by Robert Palmer.

A pretty face don't make no pretty heart
I learned that, buddy, from the start
You think I'm cute, a little bit shy
Momma, I ain't that kind of guy
Doctor, doctor, give me the news
I got a bad case of lovin' you
No pill's gonna cure my illI got a bad case of lovin' you, whoa

What makes this all stranger, now that I think about it, is that I recently broke up with my girlfriend. A week ago, actually. We'd been together for almost a year and a half. It wasn't working...even though we'd wanted it to. We were hurting more than we were happy. And, when you're hurting, the hardest thing to find for each other is empathy. A friend told me that the other day, completely unrelated to my current situation. He said empathy is one of humanity's highest spiritual aspirations. Fittingly, it is scarcest in our greatest times of need. Despair and fear always scream loud enough to reduce empathy to a whisper. It's true - pain blinds us, just like love does. Where they differ, though, is that love is the absence of pain; it is feeling warm, not cold; safe, not threatened; full, not empty; protected, not imperiled. But love is fragile. Lately I've been fascinated with the question: why do humans seem so intent on seeking happiness in another? Why do we pair up and pick one person to spend the rest of our lives with? The answer, I suspect, is perhaps because we can seldom find happiness in ourselves. When we are born, we are born incomplete, in a state of unrelenting and insatiable need; to be delivered, fed, washed, clothed, cared for. We bond out of necessity. It is all we know.

Now my mind wanders to her. We were supposed to go to Japan together. The trip was arranged months ago. The decision to go despite our breakup was made last night.

"I'm worried," she said, "that we'll go there and we'll fight. I don't want to fight."

"Neither do I," I told her.

"Good. So the way I'm thinking about this is, I'm going to Japan. If you want to come, great. Then we're each going to Japan."

"Okay, I do want to come," I said. "My feeling has been that we should go, and still is."

"Okay, fine. I'm going and you're going."

"Yeah, okay, cool. We're going."

"Yeah, but. The way I'm thinking about it is I'm going and you're going. We're not together."

"I didn't say we were together."

"Okay, good."

"But, we are each going. So we're also going together, technically."

"Right."

Maybe she's the one behind this? No, it doesn't make sense. What would be her motive? Across the street from me a large group of college kids are having a party. The sun is shining and the music is playing loud. James Brown now. Before that it was Black Sabbath, and before that it was a rap artist I'm unfamiliar with. Their occasional cheering and screaming signifies they're playing a game. Alcohol is probably involved. Sunday doesn't matter when you're young. I remember when I used to party on Sundays, taking mushrooms and drinking on Ocean Beach, dancing in silent discos. How I was able to get up and go to work the next morning, I'm not sure. There's an enviable, unyielding quality about youth. It is both patient and irreverent and trifling, yet there is nothing more important than the lessons learned by the experiencing of it. It is what gives way to wisdom. Creedence Clearwater Revival is blasting. These kids have an eclectic taste.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son. I ain't no fortunate one.

I can't focus on editing photos so I get up to make a shake. I've been enjoying homemade, organic smoothies like a good San Franciscan should. I fill the blender with a bit of water. I add a scoop of chia seeds and a scoop of protein powder before I peel the banana and break it into three pieces. Then I throw in a few fistfuls of vegetables and a pinch of ginger, and turn the blender on. It whirs loudly as it grinds the ingredients into a green liquid. Small flakes of kale or spinach can be seen getting sucked down the side of the container, towards the blades that will cut them into still smaller pieces. Staring absent-mindedly at the kale, I think: it can't be helped. Then, observing: that's a weird, sort of misplaced thought. What can't be helped? The kale? Love? Loss? And then it hits me: the capitalization.

The text message. It said, HLP ME.