On Being Inside Bottom of the Well
Moving stuff from Facebook for archival purposes.
The well bottom is like the bottom of the sea. Things down here stay very still, keeping their original forms, as if under tremendous pressure, unchanged from day to day.
A round slice of light floats high above me: the evening sky. Looking up at it, I think about the October evening world, where 'people' must be going about their lives... They are the vaguely defined "people," and I used to be a nameless one among them... They are up there, on the face of the earth; I am down here, in the bottom of a well...
Sometimes I feel that I may never find my way back to that world, that I may never again be able to feel the peace of being enveloped in the light... And then I feel a dull ache in the chest, as if something inside there is being squeezed to death.
- Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Whenever I feel depressed or anxious, I always think of this passage and how it beautifully articulates the feeling of solitude and both wanting to stay in the well and yet also be out there, bathed in moonlight. How the world turns and turns and turns while I stay deep inside the earth, clinging to my head with both hands, trying to stop mindless fear from escaping to reality. Wells, caves, hallways, the liminal space between worlds - such powerful symbols for isolation.