The glut of information, the hubbub of people who worked in the buildings around my property, all of it was a sickness. I could even feel it physically, like an exotic pneumonia, a pulling-down at the stomach, the chest area, a ragged feeling of need. I was determined to cure it. However, it’s one thing to wish for solitude, and another thing to embrace it. I understood that for all of my misanthropy, if that’s what it was, part of me still longed for the most basic connection—saying hello, or hearing someone work in another room. These thoughts disturbed me. They didn’t fit with the other
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