aliens going outside
some observations while sitting on the balcony
Periodically, I sit out on the balcony to read. The fresh riverside air and warm concrete under my feet make me feel as though I have at least done something akin to really going outside, on the days when I could not bring myself to do so.
If I were to momentarily detach myself from my own human experience, as if I were an alien of some sort, it in fact seemed as though going outside would be intense ecstasy for a human, one she could not help but be excited to take part in each day.
‘If I one day turned into man,’ I would think as my alien self, ‘I would first rush to put bare toes to lush grass and fleshy skin to flowing water.’
But upon returning to myself, my actual human self, my legs do not run over themselves to get outside; I instead will often find myself, legs still, admiring the way the light ventures through the branches and leaves outside my window, before turning my back to the beautiful vision encased in glass and wooden moulding on the wall.
On the balcony, the scent of my neighbor’s cigarettes two floors down wafts slowly up to my nose. It’s sweet and soft in the July air, and heavy on my senses in a way that feels like a weighted blanket, or a lover’s breath on my neck.
I inhale deeply, encasing myself in the memory of when I, for a short stint, indulged in such a habit, on Parisian balconies smaller than this one, along the bright streets of Vienna, and in the rural Dutch countryside amongst peers and teachers. Upon returning to the United States, the habit withered away at the hands of the ever poor quality of American goods. It was a slow and strained withering, not without my attempts at keeping the magic of the deathly practice alive for the better part of a year. I don’t understand American Spirits, and I didn’t smoke enough to finish a pack of Marlboros before they started tasting like shoes.
Circumstance has a way of keeping me naturally from overindulgence—I have no taste for the cigarettes of the country in which I live, a drop too much of sugar or caffeine leave my stomach writhing in pain for hours, and a health condition prevents me from consuming alcohol without a special pill taken prior that shouldn’t be taken too often. I guess I feel lucky.
My diagonally downstairs neighbor must have gone inside, as the air has returned to its regular, slightly salty scent. Come to think of it now, I rarely see her outside-outside; that is to say, if I do see her, I only ever see her on the balcony. Perhaps we have something in common.
The sun has nearly set, only the very bottom windows of distant skyscrapers still reflecting the golden light, and the waxing moon is a vivid silver above them. I relish the still warm concrete floor underneath my feet. Delicate smells of laundry and dinner time spices float by to the tune of the distant cardinals’ songs.
Last night over the dinner table, well after the plates had been cleared, we spoke at length about the nature of the universe—specifically, on the topic of whether we humans had free will or not.
One of us believed everything happens for a reason. Another believed it came down to chemical reactions and theoretically explainable science. I said I believed in the law of conservation of matter and in cause and effect. That every occurrence has a previous cause or causing factors, thereby determining every occurrence to be the result of something else, seems to me quite evident. Of course, this implies that everything is already on its set course, infinitely influencing and bouncing off of one another, effectively negating free will. This doesn’t, however, necessarily negate science or negate some sort of God. But it does negate complete self-reliance.
I listen to the echo of dogs barking and people making their noises. I think about my character of an alien imagining what it might be like to be turned human. I realize to my amusement that in my head, I had assumed that ‘aliens’ were a sort of monolith, all greenish grey and near mirror images of one another—and although they did not know grass or water like ours, it was a given that they have long had their need for community well-satisfied due to their vast superiority to humans. So perhaps it is true an alien may first run to the grass. Me? I must still be longing for others like me, others like me.