May 5th

I still have a cold and I have difficulty breathing through my mouth and nose. I have experimented breathing through my ears but I am not certain yet if it’s physiologically possible.

Today I sat in the living room of my apartment. I rarely visit this room as the ceilings are very high and I have a phobia of rooms with high ceilings, so I did my best not to look up. I’m not sure why the ceiling in this room is higher than the other rooms, especially as I am on the highest floor in the building, but then again I occasionally locate closets in my apartment that I’m not certain I had previously known existed.

I sat in a chair with my blanket and looked out of the window. There is a lot going on outside of the window. For example, a young person in a hooded sweatshirt came by and spray-painted a rude word on my trash can and ran away. Some time later a man working with the trash collecting truck picked up the trash can and appeared to be annoyed at getting wet spray paint on his gloves. He then backed up into the road and collided with a cyclist who almost fell into the back end of the trash collecting truck. Thankfully no-one was hurt. However, judging by his body language, following the collision the cyclist appeared distinctly more inclined to violence towards the trash collector man. There was a lot of finger pointing and angry words and I closed my window so I couldn’t hear it.

I saw another person sitting in the window of the apartment building opposite mine. He seemed to also be watching the argument between the trash collector and cyclist. The opposite building is not very close but I could see that the man in the window was very old. After a while he looked up and smiled and waved. I did not wave back and I looked away because he might have been waving at someone in another window on this side of street, and I did not wish to be rude. Also, waving makes me uncomfortable.

When I looked back down at the street, a police car had arrived and a tired looking police officer was trying to take notes from both the cyclist and the trash collection man. Several bags of trash had by now been strewn around the area, and the cyclist was holding what appeared to be one of my take-out containers and gesturing at the trash collector man in an aggressive manner. I had hoped that it was not my trash bags that were open because I do not think I have the energy to go downstairs and refill my bags and also make it back upstairs, as my lungs feel as though they have the capacity of a small sugar packet.