Moonless night, stars down to the ground. Clouds of breath streaming past my cheek. My feet swishing through the cold heavy sand. Walking to calm down. Stopping to calm down. Starting again to calm down. Everything is work, everything has to be earned. My watering eyes bring down a rain of needles from the feeble stars, stitching me into the night. How can I sleep in this silence, the blood hissing in my ears like a hostile crowd? I patrol twenty yards of frigid sand, working to exhaust myself.
I try the tent. Huggermugger in plastic dereliction. The floor covered in used handkerchiefs, empty bottles, dirty clothes, ripped packaging, a torch with a flickering yellow bulb. Outside, no limits; inside, no room. Then no limits inside, then none inside me. Agoraphobia on the bone, agoraphobia in the marrow. I struggle into my sleeping bag and, after half an hour of writhing, my arms pinned to my side and a cold zip in my mouth, imagine I’d be better off outside. And so I burst out of the tent like a swimmer coming up for air, and find myself back under the covered dish of stars, under the dazzling rain of diamond and sapphire needles, a prisoner of too much space.