Solitudes

There has been much talk about loneliness during the pandemic years.  Yet these are the days I crave solitude.  Not as an alternative to loneliness, which is not a common feeling for me.  Not as an antidote, either.  But, as an end in itself.  I love solitude but, paradoxically, it has eluded me just when you’d think it was most available.

If loneliness speaks to absence and insufficiency, solitude somehow speaks to plenitude, self-sufficiency, a state of being that seeks nothing but itself.  If I were to draw a cosmic picture, solitude might be a distant star, so quiet and very much at peace.

I don’t think I can explain the lure of solitude in analytical terms—or maybe I’m just not inclined to—but I’d like to at least hint at its gravitational pull by describing some of the times when I felt content in its embrace.

I first noticed the peacefulness of being alone when, as a teenager, I took long, hot showers.  The water poured onto me.  It was soothing, though I couldn’t name why I needed soothing.  With time, I grew more and more relaxed.  At first, I puzzled about this phenomenon but, after a while, I just stopped thinking.   I was just there.  I had no desire to be anywhere else, and I knew, without knowing why, that the experience could only happen when I was alone.

Each summer, for about 25 years, I traveled to the high Sierra Nevada mountains in search of solitude.  At the end of the day of climbing, I’d often find myself sitting at the edge of a lake. The wind would have died down and the surface of the lake had grown smooth.  The sun would have fallen just below the horizon.  That’s the moment when the sky transforms itself from dark blue into the lightest shades of orange and yellow and lavender, each layered upon the other.  There are no other people around, or none that I notice at such moments.  My heart has quieted.  My mind … well, there is no mind, not in the sense of thinking.  It is absorbed, consumed by the sky and the lake and the snow-tipped mountains. 

There’s a second space where I regularly seek solace and solitude.  I’m at my desk.  The door is closed.  It’s cool and very quiet.  The only sound, my fingers across the keyboard.  I’m writing.  I might begin by describing yesterday’s events or my anticipation of the day ahead.  But within minutes—five, maybe 10—I’ve lost my train of thought.  Or let it go.  In its place, there are images, feelings, but none that remain very long.  They come and they flee.  And as they flee, as my mind empties out, my breathing slows, my heart is quiet, my mind flows like a mountain stream.  I want to stay here forever. 

If I grow self-conscious and wonder what’s going on ‘out there,’ everything quickens.  There may be no one outside my study but the self-consciousness has brought the sense that others are in the room.  The spell of solitude is broken.  It was lovely while it lasted. 

Here’s a third place of solitude.  I’m sitting very quietly and with almost no movement.  This is a prelude to meditation.  To help myself, I’ve invited Deva Primal to chant for me.  The chanting is rhythmic and beautiful and, at first, I pay close attention to her languid voice.  But after a while, it fades into the distance and I am sitting in what feels like silence.  As time passes, the silence gathers itself around me, like a soft blanket.  My body relaxes.  I am grateful.

Now an experience of hard-won relaxation. I have lately been consumed by news, politics and covid.  It’s a type of focus that keeps my body tense.  I try breathing slowly, quietly.  I am still consumed.  I take a walk.  Still tense.  Trying, without success, to slow my breathing.  After a half hour, though, my beathing begins to slow. Ten minutes later, it’s better still.  Now, at last, I feel what’s around me.  The crisp new autumn air brushes across my face.  I see the texture of the trees more clearly than usual and the small rocks on the trail become comfortable beneath my feet. 

Solitude is rarely perfect in itself or in its impact on me; and it’s not a panacea for what ails me.  It provides a refuge but doesn’t eliminate hard times. I have no inclination to become a hermit or a monk, living in a cave in the Himalayas. 

I don’t know why solitude was so elusive during the pandemic and why it has returned just as my social life has come back to life.  Maybe it’s the contrast I’ve needed.  Maybe the pandemic created an intimacy with Franny that sufficed, that was cocoon-like in itself.  A kind of collective solitude.  In fact, I miss some of that cocoon.  But I’m also pleased to be finding my old friend again.