How to Be Alone

A friend today shared with me a link to a remarkable work that I cannot stop thinking about. (I'll share it in a moment -- give me a second to reflect here).

I've been adjusting to a mostly solitary life for the past 2 1/2 years, and I've learned the distinction between "Alone" and "Lonely," and most importantly, that they don't always go together.

So there I was, on my birthday two years ago, alone for the first time on my birthday in 43 years, and ... lonesome.

Thirty minutes later, after a wave of greetings and instant messages from friends online, I was still as alone as before, but no longer lonely.

Now -- please enjoy this fantastic poem from Canadian poet Tanya Davis; and be sure and click on the link to the short film of her work.



HOW TO BE ALONE
by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your avoid being alone principals.

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching... because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting life's magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that community's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

Time in a Beerbottle

In my several careers so far, I've worked with hundreds of people, nearly all of whom have contributed to the person I am.

Of course, in each workplace, some individuals have had much larger impacts than others.

Today, the birthday of American poet Charles Bukowski, has me thinking of one of these individuals.

S.L. Sanger was a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper. It was he who introduced me to Bukowski's work, and possibly instilled in me the restlessness I've struggled with in my work over these past 23 years.

I met Sanger (that's what everybody called him, including ex-wives, girlfriends, and co-workers) in the summer of 1987 on my first day as an intern reporter at the vaunted (and lamented, at least by me) P-I.

Under the auspices of the Joint Operating Agreement with the rival Seattle Times, the newspaper had just moved from its gritty offices to the posh (and very corporate) building on Elliott Avenue, near the waterfront and adjacent to Myrtle Edwards Park.

This newsroom was a strange mix of "newspapermen" (NOT gender-specific -- think characters from the "Lou Grant" series) and "journalists" (more polished, fancy-pants types).

I can still see/hear many of the former in my mind's eye - Sanger, of course; Dan Coughlin; Jon Hahn; Jean Godden; Grant Haller, Phil Webber, and many others whose names I've forgotten but who have merged into a composite of crusty, cussing, cynical, and colorful newsroom types.

One day early in my 12-week internship, I found myself using the telephone at Sanger's desk.

On the desk was a photocopy of the Bukowski poem below.

I remember asking Sanger about it. While I don't recall his response, I do recall spending several evenings at the Blue Moon Tavern, talking about life and work -- his history and future plans, my future plans.

Sanger left the P.I. after I had moved on, and I last heard from him when he was in the Midwest working on a book. I still have a letter I received from him while he was back there, in the dwindling collection of mementos I keep as life continues its course.

Next to his letter is a copy of HIS photocopy of the Bukowski poem below.

I can't say precisely what about this poem appeals to me so strongly, but I think its the mingling of misery and hopefulness all at once, in simple and vivid terms.

Read it aloud.

beerbottle
By Charles Bukowski

a very miraculous thing just happened:
my beerbottle flipped over backwards
and landed on its bottom on the floor,
and I have set it upon the table to foam down,
but the photos were not so lucky today
and there is a small slit along the leather
of my left shoe, but it's all very simple:
we cannot acquire too much: there are laws
we know nothing of, all manner of nudges
set us to burning or freezing; what sets
the blackbird in the cat's mouth
is not for us to say, or why some men
are jailed like pet squirrels
while others nuzzle in enormous breasts
through endless nights - this is the
task and the terror, and we are not
taught why. still, it's lucky the bottle
landed straightside up, and although
I have one of wine and one of whiskey,
this foretells, somehow, a good night,
and perhaps tomorrow my nose will be longer:
new shoes, less rain, more poems.