LONELY

The other day, for the first time in a while, I was feeling lonely. I live alone and most of the time I don't think about it, don't say, I'm alone - it's just the way I live and doesn't mean much either way. So feeling lonely the other day was out of the ordinary. There were friends I could call, meetings to go to, any number of things to keep me busy. But none of it felt right. I was restless but again none of things I thought about doing, seemed like they'd satisfy. Still, I moved though the day and gradually, I realized what I was lonely for - myself. I was lonely for myself, for the me whose mind is engaged, following an interesting train of thought, trying to understand something about the world, the me who wants to learn something new, make something new. The me who wants to focus. I was missing the kind of focus that in a way obliterates me; it's a focus in which to lose myself. In the best of times, it's what writing gives me - the joy of forgetting my self-consciousness, of disappearing into the idea. Discovering self by forgetting self. Becoming completely absorbed, engaged, so free I can let myself be led in that state where choices are made but I have no sense of making them. 
     When I'm connected to myself in that way I'm fully connected to a limitless energy. It's impossible to be lonely or pull down any other possible label. I'm fully myself. Full.

ALONE AT THE END

A friend of mine worries that she'll be alone at the end. This is a common fear but for some reason I who have so many fears don't have this one. In fact, I assume I will be alone at the end.  I picture myself helpless in a hospital bed, with only strangers passing through and I believe that somehow I'll manage to make it all right. I may be fooling myself but I can imagine a profound acceptance flowing through me - whatever is, is. And the comfort of my mind, my consciousness, still having thoughts, still thinking about things. Yes, I may be fooling myself but the lack of fear of the end is a very good illusion to have.
     Years ago, I was selling my photos and ephemera at an outdoor market. There was an older woman selling next to me and midday I realize she was having some sort of trouble. Her face had turned white, she couldn't catch her breathe and looked like she was going to pass out. In seconds, several of us were helping her to sit down, asked if she wanted water, said we should call 911. But she said to wait, she was sure she'd be all right. And she was. Her color returned, she took deep breaths and telephoned her son who came, packed her up and drove her home.
     I often think of her surrounded by strangers rushing to help. I think, if we had called an ambulance and I rode with her, I'd be holding her hand and I don't doubt that I'd be feeling as much care and concern, as much love for her as I ever have. And she'd be feeling it for me. The touch of another human hand - even a stranger's hand - maybe it's enough  to be touching life at the moment of letting go.

COLERIDGE: LONESOME ROAD

 Something the other day reminded me of the stanza from The Ancient Mariner:

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread
And having once turned round walks on
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

I remember the force of these words the first  time I read them; they perfectly captured a feeling I had so much of the time, of some impending horror, annihilation nipping at my heels. And someone else knew; someone else experienced the same hideous feeling. Coleridge, himself a tormented soul, causing me to gasp in recognition two hundred years later.
    I often think that, while words are what we have in common, there are few things that have the individual and particular resonances a word does. Dictionaries carve definitions in stone but what a word suggests to me, the resonance it has for me, its many connotations are strictly my own. Some of them are even unknown to me, an atmosphere, a shadow moving so quickly across my consciousness that I have only the dimmest sense of it, can't grasp it, even though -- and this is important -- it leaves behind an effect, additional information, an alteration in my thought. Sometimes, that shadow of a thought will over time emerge more clearly; something new will happen and I'll think of yes I knew that -- I just didn't know quite yet that I knew.
     Coleridge's words didn't need to seep in or wait to become more clear - I knew in a moment that here was someone who felt just what I did. And who said it so simply, so clearly that two hundred years later another human being felt his existence, felt it at the core.