I press the trigger and the gun goes off, a dry clack softened by the rustling wind. The brown bottle shatters and a little blood spurts where the shards pierced the palm. Screaming and mayhem ensue. No one looks in my direction. The idea that they might have been shot at doesn’t even enter their minds. The commotion raises the ire of certain neighbours, and the insults start flying in both official languages. I roll my gun up in its blanket and watch the approaching storm. Each bolt of lightning illuminates the edges of the massive cumulonimbus.

When the rain starts, I go back in. I put my clothing to soak in the washing machine and take a shower. You can’t be too careful. I set the gun next to its deadlier big sister behind the dryer. By the time I’m back in bed, the night is calm once again.

Once you’ve shot at people and got away with it, those unambitious little plays that used to be enough start to lose their lustre. Like writing on the back of the bathroom door that the band playing at the bar is terrible, and the so-called musicians should die in their sleep and stop importuning us with their hackneyed dreams of musical glory — not so exciting anymore.

By shooting at my neighbours, I’ve broken one of my cardinal rules: never make a ripple in your own ecosystem. I fully understand that my plays are a little odd, but they’re also harmless and easy to pull off. I get how psychologically devastating even a minor play can be. I’ve always avoided punishing my neighbours, close colleagues, family, or friends. Time is also key: I have to leave everyone around me enough time to forget all about me. Shooting at my neighbours was negligent and weak. I think this city’s driving me crazy. Or at least pushing me to make mistakes.

Being outside and being in public aren’t exactly the same thing. And yet a sizeable portion of the population doesn’t understand the difference.

The pleasure of being all alone outside and possessed of the certainty that no one else will appear, and that the air and the light belong to you alone, is one many city dwellers will never know. Like people born blind, they simply don’t know what they’re missing. They read about and hear about other people’s experiences of such solitude but are incapable of understanding what it is. And they almost never see the connection between this absence in their lives and the emptiness deep inside, which they will spend their lives struggling in vain to fill.