Too Much Anger. Not Enough Incense.
8/11/2026
I’ve never had such a long summer in my life. I suppose everything stretches out when you have to wait. A few times I woke up around midnight and, angry, couldn’t fall back asleep until dawn. It’s a shame when you can’t direct that anger at a particular person. It would be much easier. But there are only situations—more than one, more than two—that I willingly chose to become attached to, and now, like an angry dog circling its kennel, I have to pace around, growling that the days are passing and nothing is changing. I could fly away, I think, but before summer I promised myself I wouldn’t set foot outside my forest until I had tied up all the loose ends. And if at first I was afraid I wouldn’t have much of this summer left to spend on the shore of my lake, now I’m afraid I’ll have time to count every falling leaf and still be waiting.
The librarians at the nearest library probably think I’ve made it my mission to read their entire collection this summer, because I’ve picked every book I could find off the shelves. Once, they used to help. I wonder if I should read a bunch of self-help books and, modifying them, start repeating curses so that someone might kick the asses of the dozen or so people who, without even coordinating with one another, keep extending my wait indefinitely. And so I wander around my forest, hair all tangled, different books tucked under my arms, grumbling and cursing the whole world, and understanding more and more those women who are described in fairy tales as witches. Maybe they simply had to wait for something for far too long.
And so the weeks and months passed, on the little pier where I came every evening to watch the sunset. Most days, I would sit there, watching that orange bud drifting above the treetops, grumbling. I would get so caught up in my anger that eventually I realized sound travels very quickly across water, and the fisherman drifting in his boat in the distance could hear everything. So he kept turning around, making sure to remember the woman swearing so profusely. Later, I would whisper to myself the speeches I would give if only I ever got the chance.
And then I got tired.
Dark clouds lined up above the trees, and I childishly rejoiced—so, the sky would turn pink after my sun had set. I remembered how sweetly the salty ocean air smells when a red sky like that appears. It seems like it was so long ago, even though, truthfully—it was just now. As evening came, my best friend would always park his scooter by my little cabin and never even ask where or when I was going. He knew. I missed it, I realized. I missed those times when, at this hour of the day, I would do nothing but think about how good things would be tomorrow, next week, or next month. Strange, but they were. Always different, but still good.
There was one enormous difference separating that time from this one—during those months, I used to dream. I would pull simple, earthly dreams—or seemingly impossible illusions—closer and closer to my days, and they would effortlessly dawn into reality. Everything happened suddenly, among all the other miracles, because there were no thoughts weighing them down with reality. Telling me that things like that simply didn’t happen. That they were impossible. Until eventually it became: well, things like that can only happen to her.
“Too much critical thinking, not enough incense”—I once wrote it down in my reminders as the plane took off from Sri Lanka for the last time. And now that memory suddenly appeared on my phone screen, just as the sky had turned bright red.
I hadn’t tortured anyone else through all these months. Only myself. With analyses of why everything was happening the opposite way I wanted it to. Letting those thoughts grow wild, taking every minute away from the most beautiful part of the day—the very time I once wouldn’t even give to the people I loved. And that anger I had directed at others suddenly turned back on me. No one had made a plan to deliberately torment me. I had created that plan and carried it out all by myself.
That’s probably enough, I thought, and, turning onto my other side, I stared at the reflection of the red sky in the water.
There is a kind of strength that only those who have spent a long time alone will understand. Those who had no one around to pull them out by the arms from the holes they had dug for themselves. You cannot owe anyone else for those nights when you woke up cursing fate, because you were the only one who had to listen to that despair. That is how faith grows. Not in gods. Not in fate. In that one single person who would always find a way out of the darkness.
“Pretty good,” the fisherman said as he passed much closer, mesmerized by the burning sky.
“Good,” I nodded, thinking that he probably thought I was someone else this time, because this one was quiet. This one wasn’t swearing.
I light an incense stick. Out of habit. Once, even my hair used to smell of it. I would catch the scent when I lay down at night. Now they had spent the whole summer gathering dust, shut away in a box.
Nothing has ended. Everything has stayed the same. I still spend most of the day walking around and grumbling. Just not this hour. A deal is a deal, I think, as I force the unnecessary thoughts aside. Somehow, I’ll put it all together. I promised myself that once I’ve waited this out, I will still have the strength to be happy.
Not everything will necessarily happen the way my thoughts arrange it at sunset. Maybe it will happen in a way my imagination and experience cannot even encompass. Maybe I’ll have to explode with anger again and lightning-bolt the sky with curses, blaming everyone. But for that one hour, everything can stop. If you know how to make a deal with the sky that it won’t rain, and with yourself that you won’t curse either it or fate. Maybe the whole world would heal a little if it gave itself even one hour to dream. So that somewhere in all this mental rubbish, there would still be room for a small miracle.
And for now, I’ll keep trying to be angry at night. August is a very good month for it. Because the sky is usually clear, and no matter how much anger you’ve stored up, human being, for a moment you become powerless. For one second, following that tiny flash, it’s impossible not to think about the best possible version of your life.
Let’s not trust reality completely.