solitude

A few years ago, I thought I wanted to be with someone, but his answer was no. I know that’s common, but his reason stuck with me, one word: solitude. It took a few minutes to find that word, but when he did, he knew that was it. Solitude. As a generally extroverted person, I didn’t get it. Why would anyone want to be alone?

It’s taken me until recently to understand.

We were on a hike, some friends & me, and as usual, I lagged behind. About six miles in (the tail end of a loop trail), I realized that I didn’t mind hanging back. I soaked in the shade of the Redwoods and breathed in the green. I could see no one ahead of me on the trail, no one behind. With the quiet of the woods around me, I kept going at my pace. To me, hikes aren’t the time for timing to beat a personal best.

After being consumed by the regular chaos of city living, I realized that one moment was what I longed for: to be truly alone. (I admit, it was weird at first to hike without my dog, but honestly, do you know what it feels like to be truly alone?)

Sometimes it’s easy to feel alone when surrounded by people. In the city, you can walk up the street & not talk to anyone (rarely, albeit) and feel like you are the only person alive—the rest of the passersby are part of the surroundings. Have you felt that?

I just wasted about twenty minutes trying to find a single word, but it’s a word that means the realization that every person around you is simultaneously leading their own life with their own emotions, feelings, needs, beliefs. The notion crossed my mind occasionally over the years, but my first memory of it was at a gas station in Utah. It was my biggest solo trip. The man at the pump across from me had deep lines in his face, though he could not have been more than fifty. It suddenly occurred to me that this man had lived 40+ years before this one moment of our lives crossing. Have you ever thought this about your co-workers? Your boss? I think about it at work the most: all of these acquaintances, but we are all human, at our core.

It’s funny to think that we are different. We live off our experiences and become so indulged in our own lives that it’s easy to forget that everyone else’s lives are just as complex. They go to bed at night. They get hungry. They feel sad. Sometimes remembering this is the only way living on the other side of the country from my family makes sense. Life does not stop in Pennsylvania just because I am out here. That’s why it’s always different when I go back; that’s why people call with news: life is still moving, even when I am not there to witness it.

Sometimes the complexity feels like too much. Sometimes I wish it would slow down (how many times have I wished it would go faster?). Sometimes I wish I could go back. But the pace is constant, along with change and intricacy.

I think that’s why we all need moments to be alone. This is my season of understanding solitude.

Solitude can often be confused with prolonged singleness. I’ve mistaken it myself, wondered why I am single, why that person chose to be single. There is a difference. There is a tiny knowing somewhere that solitude is a choice, that even when the opportunity to not be single presents itself, the direction to take is apparent: solitude.

That is where I am. While there are moments of doubting that, there are more reassurances that this is where I am supposed to be. I am grateful to live alone (with the company of my pets).

As I flip through pages of Rilke on solitude in Letters to a Younger Poet, I realize this topic is just beginning. I’ll leave you with these excerpts from Rilke:

“There is only one solitude, and it is vast and not easy to bear and almost everyone has moments when they would happily exchange it for some form of company, be it ever so banal or trivial, for the illusion of some slight correspondence with whoever one happens to come across, however unworthy…But perhaps those are precisely the hours when solitude grows, for its growth is painful like the growth of boys and sad like the beginning of spring. But that must not put you off. What is needed is this, and this alone: solitude, great inner loneliness. Going into oneself and not meeting anyone for hours- that is what one must arrive at. Loneliness of the kind one knew as a child, when the grown-ups went back and forth bound up in things which seemed grave and weighty because they looked so busy, and because one had no idea what they were up to.”

and

“And you must not let yourself be diverted out of your solitude by the fact that something in you wants to escape from it. Precisely this desire, if you use it calmly and judiciously, as a kind of tool, will help you to extend your solitude over a greater expanse of ground. People have tended (with the help of conventions) to resolve everything in the direction of easiness, of the light, and on the lightest side of the light; but it is clear that we must hold to the heavy, the difficult. All living things do this, everything in nature grows & defends itself according to its kind and is a distinct creature from out of its own resources, strives to be so at any cost and in the face of all resistance. We know little, but that we must hold fast to what is difficult is a certainty that will never forsake us. It is good to be alone, for solitude is difficult; that something is difficult should be one more reason to do it. To love is also good, for love is hard. Love between one person and another: that is perhaps the hardest thing it is laid on us to do, the utmost, the ultimate trial and test, the work for which all other work is just preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, do not yet know how to love: they must learn. With their whole being, with all their strength, concerted on their solitary, fearful, upward beating hearts, they have to learn to love.”

write on: words on notes

If you couldn’t tell by my sudden on-burst of multiple blogs & poems, I’m a bit behind on writing. So much that it pains me, and I am finally losing sleep over it: sleep time spent writing. It’s necessary.

The notes keep piling up. It starts with a Post-It or a few lines on my phone. It doesn’t seem like much until they’re everywhere. I reached a breaking point when an offering envelope from my sister’s church fell out of my pocket; it was empty save for a few lines written across the back. Or again when I reached into my bag for a pen and pulled out three crinkled Post-Its with dirt coating their sticky backs and the smeared writing barely legible.

The tension builds every day because I know that the words are there, but they are not being captured. Every once in a while, I find peace in the unwritten: let them go; they were not meant to stay. Most of the time, this is not the case. I’m still fretting over the loss of recordings I made on a hike. I always had the intent of listening to them to write down the poems and lines, but when I got a new computer at work, the recordings broke. The words are gone. I have to save the smudged Post-Its before it’s too late.

I am always trying to keep up, even if that just means moving the notes to my official “notebook” instead of loose words floating around my possessions, waiting to be lost. Just when I think I’ve covered them all, or at least found them a temporary home before expanding on their ideas, I find more: a sun-stained page on the windowsill, a few notes jotted in the corner of the church bulletin. The thoughts don’t stop, so even while I am behind in recording them, new ideas or realizations are rushing in, begging to be written down.

I think of Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird: "So whenever I am leaving the house without my purse - in which there are actual note pads, let alone index cards- I fold an index card lengthwise in half, stick it in my back pocket with a pen, and head out, knowing that if I have an idea, or see something lovely or strange or for any reason worth remembering, I will be able to jot down a couple of words to remind me of it." Reading that may have been the start of my obsession with notes. But then there is the encouragement: "Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table, close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird."

So here’s to the forgotten words: to those lost in my mind, on the street, in cyberspace. And here’s to “keeping up”: to writing through what’s there, to recognizing that, even with words gone, there is no shortage of material. Here’s to the muses: to continuing to write despite exhaustion, emptiness, and busyness, to finding motivation when the words hide or shrink or prolonged seasons without writing try to convince me the writing life is over.

Write on, friends, note by note. 

end of day

“The sun rises, & the sun goes down, & it hastens to the place where it rises.” – Ecclesiastes 1:5

When I get into bed each night, the lists try to gobble me up—all of the things I didn’t do; all of the new things to do tomorrow. Like counting sheep, I track on my fingers what I didn’t write down, what I must remember, what has to get done. When I wake up, I do the same. Lists have become my prayers, and they empty me.

When I really do pray, it feels empty—my heart & mind consumed by the jumble of shit yet to happen; it weighs on me & steals my thoughts. I usually stop praying mid-sentence & with, “That’s all I have” or “I just can’t talk anymore”.

Why am I wordless when it comes to God, yet the words do not stop within me?

It’s not just God—I’ve been void of words in general. It has taken a struggling force to get myself to write these days. I feel the pull, yet I cannot get the words out. They are in my head, but they refuse to touch the page.

I wonder if people had so much on their minds when they called it a night in biblical times. I also think of the Amish: rising & lying down with the sun. Are they all so anxious to get to bed and disappear for a while? Does the unending to-do list weigh on them like the hope of one day getting it all done?

I like to imagine that days came to a peaceful close for them: what’s done is done.

Even as a child, my nighttime mind was restless. I’ve probably spent more time tossing & turning over thoughts than I have actually sleeping in my bed—the words, the work, the uncertainty are the single pea under my mattress. All of the “but I didn’t do”s and the “I never got around to”s make my whole self restless.

Yet we are called to work until we return to dust. What are the fruits of my labor?

“Even in the night, his heart does not rest.” – Ecclesiastes 2:23

Literally & figuratively, the heart does not rest, even at night. We are filled. With what? Data, words, questions, doubts, love, empathy, emotion, plans. All of the worry and wonder feels more real once time is up at end of day.

Yet the sun hastens to return, and the lists and concerns will be waiting, & as best said by the Weepies: the world spins madly on.

the five-year plan

My new job has been a challenge. I’ve always been one to accept a challenge, but as I talked with some ladies at church about careers and God and what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives and how that compares with what we are doing, I realized that I have no idea what I’m doing. Actually, that realization hits me in the face every day.

I think it started when one of my friends mentioned that she wanted to look for a job where she felt challenged. My first thought was, “I would like my next job to not be a challenge.” Then I stopped and let that sink in: it isn’t true; I only want to believe it’s true as a mental escape from the current untamable busyness that is my day-to-day. I think that’s an okay place to be.

I’m nearly two months into my new role, and just today, I had that “aha” moment of how what I do now is different from what I did before. The whole dynamics have changed, and it was a necessary shift in order to effectively do my job. Let’s face it: deep down, I enjoy what I am currently doing, BUT it is hard. Duh. I admit, I’ve had several breakdowns on-the-job where I just caved in to feeling inadequate or overwhelmed. It’s like training for a marathon: you have to start with the short runs, and you’re going to get blisters before you achieve a sustained pace.

Feeling humbled by the “aha” moment, I told my manager about it. She added to my feeling-like-I-am-where-I-belong joy by telling me that I’m getting a career coach—a professional coach who I can ask anything about careers, skills, the corporate world, what’s next: anything. The doors to opportunity are opening; will I be able to step inside?

At work, I tend to be shy and lack confidence. Today, I had my first mentoring session, yet another moment of me realizing just how much I have to learn. I think my first month on the job was me pretending to be totally confident so that I could prove that they hired the right person. My second month is now me realizing that I have so much to grow on and so much to learn, and I need to be open to taking it all in.

It’s much harder than it sounds.

In the session, my mentor explained how to best network within the company. As she spoke, a tiny fear crept up my chest, just thinking about having to talk to strangers. Even though we work on the same team, this was the first real conversation my mentor and I had even had, and we had a pretty awkward elevator ride to the coffee shop. Even then, she talked most of the time. I need to learn to shake the awkward, inverted shyness and become a conversationalist. Maybe that’s something for the career coach.

Every day, I wake up shocked that I work where I do. Blessed but shocked. Also, every day, I realize that I have no idea what I am doing presently and furthermore have no idea what my 5-year plan looks like.

I’ve always had a 5-year plan. Now, I have ideas or speculations, even, of what I’d like to do, but I’m not certain that they are things I want to achieve…plans change…It’s not that I want to leave, it’s just that I’m always planning, but it feels weird because I took this job for the people; I spent months at my last job imagining a new job, now I have it—the dream job, and it’s not where I thought I’d be, but it is what I want right now, but it’s not the long-term solution, so how do I prepare for the future, for what’s next without losing contentment for where I am?

an encouragement to writers (I think)

I get into these moods where I suddenly think that I don’t need sleep because my life should be spent reading and writing and learning instead of sitting idle in bed. I guess it’s more of a season than a mood because it lasts a bit longer and tends to happen after Daylight Savings, when the days get just little longer, and I start to think that I can be everything at once.

I’ll come home from work and explore the outside world: walking the dog, going to the park, watching the dusk, sitting on the rocks watching the shore. And when I come in, I suddenly find that I have a whole evening to spend as I please—read, write, & repeat.

Somehow, I constantly seem to be simultaneously reading 5-8 books at a time. I keep, well, multiple books of poetry on my nightstand as well as a solid novel to trudge through a little at a time. My purse has a Kindle plus a paperback, always. Literary journals are scattered over my apartment—on the windowsill, on the back of the toilet, on the tv stand. As are Bibles. And journals, notebooks, and Post-Its. This sounds very scattered, but I like to think it’s an organized chaos such that a visitor wouldn’t notice how frantic my attempts at intellectuality really are.

The most clutter at my apartment is on my bookshelves, and I like it that way. They are overflowing, yet I never seem to have enough. It’s like how they say when you pull out one hair, three more grow in its place—when I read one book, well, you can finish the rest. Sometimes I scan the shelves for the books I haven’t read and I wonder if I will get to read them all in my life. I think of my Grandpap, who has read all of his books, many multiple times through. I hope I can do the same, though I don’t think I’ll ever catch up. I’m still not through the Classics let alone reading books from present-day.

Then there’s writing. If I spend all of my time reading, when will I write? When will I do things to write about? It’s a very amusing circuit of constant discomfort: not reading enough, not writing enough, not living enough.

I do believe this to simply be the nature of the writer’s life: nothing satisfies. Even when we think it does, like having time to write, the words are all wrong, and we feel just as unsatisfied as if we hadn’t written at all.

I used to be single-minded: one book at a time, one poem at a time, one post at a time. Now I find that I am reading more than I can comprehend, writing such random things that I have half-poems and lost paragraphs in scattered documents on my computer’s desktop (just tonight I’ve started and not nearly made sense of three different pieces), random notes on my phone, computer, and Post-Its that haven’t made it to my notebook, and I am wondering why I ever thought I needed sleep to begin with.

There came a time last summer when I decided 5 hours of sleep was plenty for a young woman. I created a pattern of what I would read when and what I would write when. I actually woke up at 5am to read the Bible then force myself into poetry. I was coming out of a long season of not writing a single poem for months on end, and I was desperate to write something. Since winter, I’ve become a bit of a bear, soaking in all the sleep I can with the long dark nights; summer leaves no excuse for sleep.

I do this a lot—force myself into patterns that I pray will become daily rituals but usually whither after a few months. I suppose I’m doing so now with my new-found motivation, but I will always pray that the muses would keep me company even when I don’t feel like thinking let alone putting thought to paper.

Just now, I turned to stare at my bookshelf as I waited for the next sentence, actually more like wondering why I am even writing these (I guess I’m documenting these words as encouragement for when this season ends or returns; I’ll need reminded.)  My bookshelves say: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, no, yes, yes, yes, no, no, yes…tallying which books I’ve read vs. haven’t. I do this frequently. When I finally decided to “invest” in a second bookshelf, I told my then-roommate that I thought I had finally reached a point where the number of books on my shelf I had read out numbered those I hadn’t. Time for more books, I thought. Got to keep the balance in-flux.

The funny thing is, there are some books I have that I can’t imagine ever reading, but they have sentimental value, and who knows? Maybe someday I will. Like No Latitude for Error by Sir Edmond Hilary. As a sprouting teen, I thought I would, but now I realize that I simply hold onto it because it is the only book I have autographed (I despise autographed things), but this one is different because: 1) of Hilary’s accomplishments 2) because the book was my dad’s dad’s and then my dad’s and now mine. It has its own lineage and lives on the same shelves it has for many years now, shelves my dad built when he was in high school.

I guess it’s all a bit of idolatry. Sometimes I ponder the point of learning if we all end up in the ground anyways. A bit morbid, I know, but with how easy it has become to publish your own books and send them off for no one to read makes me uneasy. Like anyone is a writer now just because they can get published. Not that I don’t think anyone could be a writer. I just think there is a distinction between a writer and an author, and people desperate to get published get those confused and rush into becoming a title on a shelf instead of an impact in the hearts and minds of readers. (At Barnes & Noble, the cashier asked me to sign the receipt; I told him I’d rather be signing a book; he asked if I was an author. No, I said, I’m a writer.) And the people who confuse the two and skip straight to author try to escape what I’m going through right now—the ebbing seasons of the writer’s life: the hypnotic chaos of feeling inadequate, then motivated; accomplished, then purposeless.

An artist does not choose this—it is simply in his blood, his being, his life and work. There is no joy without it and limited joy with it. But there is hope.