I was late to work yesterday, and on my way to the train I saw this guy from very far away, sitting on a railing by the Utica stop. He had very dark skin and a shiny black du-rag on. He was trying very hard to get the perfect selfie. He balanced his Honestea on his shoulder, then thought better of it. He returned to a scrolling position, I assume looking through his various attempts. I felt horrified; the whole thing was so incredibly vulnerable. But then I realized that the park was empty, except for him and me. I decided the whole thing wasn't so bad then, and somehow this meant that I wasn't horrified but actually this feeling was guilt. For walking in on him?

Anyway, sometimes I get this thing–I see another black person doing something incredibly mundane, like this selfie man, and I get really emotional. Or a woman heading to work. Or a kid playing in a store while his mom shops. It's not quite a sadness, but more like a crumbling or spilling over. I guess it could be considered sublime in character, both the horror and joy of recognition. I'm struck by an immense interest in the interior life of this stranger, and it feels happy because I can sort of recognize it as some jouissance-y thing. Even if one-sided, I know my interest in them comes from some distant idea of being-together. Then I become terrified by a visceral and overwhelming desire to ensure that everything is okay for them.

This is the worst manifestation of my control issues. In Paris, I had sobbing fit and D had to calm me down; I kept saying, in various ways, that I love so many people and how can we make sure that nothing ever happens to any of them. I used to do something similar in high school; sophomore year it seemed like all of my friends were terribly depressed. I would stay up until 4am some nights, crying in my dad's arms about how I couldn't make it better. In retrospect, perhaps I too was depressed, but why dwell on the past.

This kind of obsessive empathy doesn't really seem sustainable at a planetary scale, but I also don't think it's a bad feeling. To lose it would make things smoother, but that would mean losing the texture of experience.