Letter writing (note cards and postcards) is a joy for me. It's a lovely exercise in connecting with those far and wide. Dare I say appreciated as well. Though my handwriting is self limiting. I can barely read it and there's no spell check in my fountain pen. So it goes.
This tome of blah is written to Donna ashes. It is my way of sharing with her as in "Hey Donna I'm home my day was really something." or not. Yet writing to someone, even no one, can be a perfect tool to pull that sharp edged jig saw puzzle pieces from within me to see the 3D image they make on the coffee table. So it goes.
I am reading 'Desert Solitaire' by Edward Abbey. It's his years spent as a Park Ranger in the Moab Utah National Park. It is a one man's journal of isolation, insight, and story telling. Brilliantly striking for Abbey's ability to describe flora, fauna, animals, cave drawings, people, and his thinking in such vivid detail and language. Color me all jelly. So it goes.
This is not a book report/review. This is squarely placed carefully on the shoulders of isolation. Abbey is aware of his isolation (he chose it) and does so much with it. It's a book of deep reflection and insight. Not unlike others who spirited themselves into the woods to think. What can I learn and apply to my pandemic isolation, which hardly raises to Abbey's? So it goes.
The following section rang in my ears. Manuscript here.
But how, you might ask, does living outdoors on the terrace enable me to escape that other form of isolation, the solitary confinement of the mind? For there are the bad moments, or were, especially at the beginning of my life here, when I would sit down at the table for supper inside the housetrailer and discover with a sudden shock that I was alone. There was nobody, nobody at all, on the other side of the table. Alone-ness became loneliness and the sensation was strong enough to remind me (how could I have forgotten?) that the one thing better than solitude, the only thing better than solitude, is society.
By society I do not mean the roar of city streets or the cultured and cultural talk of the schoolmen (reach for your revolver!) or human life in general. I mean the society of a friend or friends or a good, friendly woman.
My/our pandemic isolation is not at this extreme. It's moderated by the simple fact, I'm a city dweller and do have a community of humans surrounding me. There is the ever present social media, technology, phone calls, emails, text messages, etc. etc. There is volunteer work. All and all I'm not in solitude. It's more a plaintive whine, enough already my doom scrolling has exposed the isolation and our collective grief. Abby was alone and did much with it. So it goes.
In the evenings after work I sit at the table outside and watch the sky condensing in the form of twilight over the desert. I am alone but loneliness has passed like a shadow, has come and is gone. I hear the mutter of the flames in the fireplace, eating wood. Far away to the south I can see the headlights of a car or truck approaching Moab. It is so far away, that merged point of light, that unless you watch it steadily you will not perceive that it is in motion; relative to the distance the light moves as the stars move or about as fast as the sun fades from the sky or the fire consumes the log.
So I sit in my ersatz solitary confinement trying to ferret out meaning and purpose. Poking my snout into holes seeking the scent of a voice that I can harvest to resonate with others as Abbey has. There are many ghosts and just the me of me that places a Jersey Barricade in my path. Stopping my seeking meaning and purpose. The list of what is stoping me is repetitive like a dog repeatedly humping your leg to prove his value. Grief, self-worth, no immediate family, the comfort of isolation, and so on. I'm even yawning at me. Maybe I can learn how to fold queen sized fitted sheets.
How, in a strange and awful thought, I'd kind of cherish taking Donna to a chemo appointment. Making her a meal that would not initiate post chemo nausea. Rushing to shop for our weekly meals. You know have those external lists and not the costumed to-do lists I make up, just to do what is there not what is not there: me.
Between these moments of eureka I can do this and my minds stasis ideation sitting atop of potential boredom drives me to varying degrees of insanity (LOL). I clean, wash, dust, polish, on and on in an infinite suffocating loop of avoiding while doing something anything. (In my defense I do like clutter free and clean.) In my worst moments of this boredom I find myself texting friends who show great patience and kindness to all kinds of shit irrelevant to them or anyone but me. I will say, each and everyone has not told me to shut up go away. Still I recoil at my own bold display of needy without regard to the lives of others.
Reflecting upon this and all that is swirling within me it seems critical that I find peace in my own world. Stay in my lane as Abbey has done and piece together my reality. To accept what I cannot change and change what I can change--largely me. I need to accept that the small acts I do to help and serve others is as much as I/we can do. Those individuals who've said I saved their lives as a crisis counselor should carry me forward embrace me in self-love. Should, a third person verb that separates me from accepting me.
I guess time will tell if being at peace in my lane happens.