On Solitude ~ Day 1

Funny that I’m calling today On Solitude ~ Day 1. Today is not my first day meditating on solitude. Years it’s been, I’d say. Also, I recently started consciously thinking about it again, meditating on it, last week when the idea came to me: write about living alone (“alone”) in the woods. Walden Pond kind of thing. So it’s Day 1, but also Day 7 and Day Infinity. It’s also funny because I just said goodbye to my beloved uncle and aunt and cousin, hands sticky with chocolate and malt as we hugged in the crowded ice cream shop parking lot, then onward home, pulling over to the side of the road (randomly, feeling fidgety) to look at a photo of my beautiful friend on social media, only to get a call from another beautiful friend. I invited her and her beau to come up and stay with me any time this week. Solitude.

I woke up today and my normal morning mental racket started in quick, until I remembered it was Momma Sheela Day. I smiled, remembered. Momma. A breath and a thank. Momma. Nine years to the day since she died quite abruptly, shockingly. Farming accident, and she wasn’t even a farmer. She was everything and nothing. She was lightening quick love and nah nah you can’t catch me. It’s safe to say I take after her. Smiles when I remember Momma Sheela. And then I remembered dear uncle and aunt and cousin coming to visit today. Company was the very reminder: Solitude. Meditate on solitude. Write about solitude. It starts, officially, today. I chose today because Momma Sheela Day is a sacred, joyful day to me, and because solitude is likewise sacred. And joyful.

Solitude is not about being alone. It is not about being lonely. And of course, it’s not ~not~ about being alone, or not being lonely. This morning I made the deal with myself to practice solitude all day. It didn’t matter that I would be with other people. In fact, all the better! Mix it up! When I agreed to take on this assignment, knowing myself, I had some terms: I write On Solitude, independent of how many days I wake up and don’t speak to a soul. I write On Solitude even with a houseful of people. I write On Solitude for the experience of solitude itself. Hello.

Solitude is being with yourself in the room, even when you are alone. It’s being with yourself in the room surrounded by the crowd. Simple enough. We all get it.

So why then is solitude such a gentle topic to broach with people? I say this because I’m a lone wolf, I’m a troubador-nomad-vagabond. I spend whole chapters of life wandering in solitude. I factor solitude into the equation, and when I don’t, all the variables go wonky. Solitude is sacred to me. But many loved ones have looked me in the eye and told me they wouldn’t, couldn’t live alone by the beach, two hours from any recognizable subway stop. They wouldn’t, couldn’t move to the woods. Alone.

I was on the phone with Shari-my-fairy-godmother picking dates for her arrival yesterday. She’s got stuff to sort through in the Tea Barn, too.

“So when is your brother coming? The 17th?”

“That’s when my extended family is coming. My brother’s coming on the 14th, 15th.”

“Oh, and then you’re having people the weekend of the 10th?”

“And I’ll be down in New York the 8th or 9th.”

Solitude. Four, five hours of driving each way. Mind calibrating. Reflecting. Defraging. If I’m doing it right. Solitude isn’t about being alone, or lonely. I can get lost in rumination and come out of a long stretch of aloneness all the more wretched. I don’t do that to myself as much anymore. I like being kind within my own mind.

There it is. Solitude. Kindness within ones own mind. Being able to sit with yourself and appreciate the things that catch your notice, the thoughts that arise, the sudden perspectives to mull over, consider. Getting into your own rhythym and rocking with it. Being with yourself in the room. Being with yourself in the crowd.

Why 100 Days of Solitude? Well, the original idea was for a year and I know myself too well to set myself up for crushing failure like that. 100 Days. More my speed. But why Solitude? Because as I shared about my plans with people, coming up to Ithaca, working on the Tea Barn alone (but not alone!), living in a cabin by myself, I heard loving cries of, “oh no, ALONE!” “ALONE, oh NO!”

Not literally, but sometimes literally.

“Watch out, make sure you don’t get too alone up there.”

How to explain the giddiness I felt and feel at the prospect of aloneness. No, not aloneness. We all get it. Solitude.

I’m 37 years old. I like that. I like the number, I like the age. Prime. I like that I’ve lived a few lifetimes with myself in this body, and by now I know we’re all changing all the time. I know that all facets of life will always ebb and flow, and I like knowing. I also like knowing that in the midst of change, all this ebb and flow, when I feel a flow of solitude entering into my life, something magical… mystical, begins to happen. Even this. You reading this, me sitting with fingers on the keys is only happening because I’m prioritizing solitude. I could be in a bustling cafe with headphones on, or here, on the steps of Gopi’s cabin, chickadees whistling call and response in the hemlock trees around me, all dappled with late evening sun. It’s the solitude that brings on the magic. Even in a circle. Even in a crowd.

I admit: Solitude generally comes easier alone in the woods. The pre-dawn bird songs and the clatter of deers hooves on the front porch. The flush of heat on my face from the roaring fire, wind chimes accompanying every meal, punctuating moments of revelation as though on cue. It’s easy to find solitude alone in the woods. To get into the present moment, hear the sound of my own breath as I gasp in joy, fireflies at night, woodpecker at my window in the morning light. The realization that the driveway is long, long enough to hear an approaching car. Nothing stopping me from baring myself to the noonday sun and reading delicious prose until it’s time to go inside and get another sparkling water. Tough stuff, I know. I promise, I remember subways. And going to an office, even, way back when. Solitude there, too.

But let me tell you: Some days I go to bed with the sun because I just can’t be in solitude anymore. I can’t be alone in the room with myself any longer. I’m a lousy roommate in my own head. No, more like a sulking lover. Or a tire-wired child. I know when to call it a night, give myself a chance to start again the next day. But that too, staring solitude in the face and feeling a sense of awe, overwhelm, presence… that’s as much of an encounter with oneself as staying up late in front of the fireplace writing a poem. The echoes of that avoidance are energetic fodder for the next time solitude arises. Some soil to till. Thinking about sitting on the meditation mat is also a meditation. Missing someone is a way of holding them close.

I have to acknowledge the original inspiration for this assignment to myself, this loosely articulated contract I’ve made to meditate on solitude for 100 days and write about it as the spirit moves me. This meditation and this contract arose from a desire to put people at ease about my continuing adventures with solitude (“ALONE, oh NO!”), but also to articulate why solitude is so precious to me, why I don’t fear a life alone (“alone”) in the woods. Why I’m better with solitude in the mix. And also, I’m sitting here on the steps of Gopi’s cabin, fireflies enchanting the woods around me, in titillated expectancy, anticipation, gratitude for what’s to come. What arises in the space created through conscious awareness of solitude? What do I do, when I am truly with myself in the room, alone or in the crowd?