A Strange Feeling of Displacement

I feel almost unutterably sad right now.

There's a tightness in my stomach and a dizziness in my head. Also a vague nausea.

I find this quite interesting, because maybe as recently as five years back,  would not have had quite this reaction to the things I have seen today.

At work, there is a balcony, on which we smoke. This balcony overlooks a second-floor patio, complete with tables, chairs and umbrellas against the sun - and three poor, bedraggled Cape Ash trees planted in a narrow drainage ditch running around one side.

The company who have been leasing the second floor are moving out, and the patio is being re-waterproofed, lest it drizzle upon the heads of the mining-house lawyers downstairs from them.
(I cannot tell you how that prospect fails to fill me with alarm - wet mining-house lawyers deserve most things which reduce their self importance.)

So, the trees are being dug up - cramped root system and all- and planted in big pots, temporarily I think.

Meanwhile, the sparrows who have made their nests for years in these trees -the sparrows who are my constant little friends of a cold morning - are sitting metres up the building, shouting and crying in alarm.

I feel despondent with the knowledge that most people see nothing wrong with any of this - the cramped, lollipop ed planting of great spreading African trees, the subsequent uprooting of them and the displacement of the birds.

But I feel as if I've been sobbing for hours.