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| Sunset Crater, July, 2018, photo by Anita C. Fonte |
At evening, the
distant lowing of some cows on the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and
melodious…. Walden, Henry David
Thoreau, p. 87.
What is such solitude to me?
When and where do I experience it? How does solitude help or hurt
me?—These are questions that a Poets & Writers prompt from March,
2017 poses and it has taken me four months to go back to this section and
compose my responses to it. Just lately,
in honor of Thoreau’s 200th birthday, I pulled out my Signet Classic
edition (probably from college 1967-71 since the cost of the book was fifty
cents and there is no publishing date listed), and began reading it a few
paragraphs at night before I go to bed.
His time is not my time.
He rallies against trains and not cell phones. For me, the culprit of my “noise” is
television where the daily dramas of Trumpland as reported on CNN or MSNBC
becomes a Greek chorus as I do online tasks.
I do turn it off for “writing” and/or escape to my local Starbucks
where, in the past, I could expect a decent degree of solitude. But, as I write this, there is one heavy
haired female who ignores my annoyed glances and talks on her cellphone as if
this were her private office! This kind
of partial solitude is unhealthy for me and it’s becoming so common at cafés
that I have been thinking of what else can I do to find/create solitude?
In the distant past, which I recall in the quote above, I
experienced quietude and solitude at my Grandparents’ farm on Randall
Road. They didn’t raise cows, but their
neighbor did, and the black and white Angus breed would linger by the wire
fence, chewing their grass and plopping their cow pies on the picked
ground. Sometimes I would hang in the
branch of an oak tree, or lie on the soft hill and chew on a blade of wild
wheat. I was content—a feeling I rarely
have in my sixth decade. I do not often
experience contentment to that depth.
Of
course, my memory may be faulty. Maybe,
even then, I was anxious about school (probably) or fearful about what mood my
dad would be in when he picked me up from my grandparents. My dad might have been bipolar, and
definitely had Italian son-of-an alcoholic behaviors plus WWII PTSD, so life
was daily drama with him at home. My
maternal grandparents who had the farm, were Cherokee, Scots-Irish, German and
stoical Methodists. My mom was much like
them. And there was a part of her
girlish charm that couldn’t cope with my dad’s complexities. So that farm was my refuge and the symbol of
my childhood contentment and happiness.
Sometimes, living in the desert, looking at the night sky, I
experience moments of bliss, thinking about how the sky is bigger than I can
see: a great “out there” that holds mystery and magic. And the mountains are places where I can
sometimes escape to feel similar moments.
But I am usually with someone, not alone, so solitude isn’t part of that
kind of escape. When I go to the
Botanical Gardens, I am often alone and I feel safe.
Aha! Now there’s a place where I can
cultivate more healthful solitude. And when I read a good story I am into a
transitory solitude; that kind of aloneness inspires me to write or convinces
me it is futile to write at all. It depends on the mood I am in going into the
story. How can I encourage myself to be
more “in the mood” of being inspired and not discouraged? Maybe, before I read, I can pause and make
the intention to be open to inspiration.
So what just happened as I write this? Either the noise around me drowned out the
annoying talker behind me (she still is gabbing), or, for just a few lines, I
was lost in the flow. So a small miracle
can happen, even among the noise. 7.27.17
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