THE NECESSARY


Sometime this winter a very strange feeling began to set in. Shortly after my 34th birthday, I started feeling this intense desire to be alone. I’m always reflective around that time; I like to think of it as my personal New Year. For me, it’s a time of looking back and forward; a time of evaluating where I am, where I want to be, and what I need to do to get there. It’s a time of planning: setting goals and timeframes, writing out my affirmations. But last year, there was something more than reflection going on. It was deeper. I was winding down to the last few chapters of my novel and for the life of me I just couldn’t get it down. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It seemed my mind was so full, overrun with thoughts, lists of things to do, people to call, places to go, things to drop off and pick up. Even at rest, my mind was still going. When I tried to sit down at the computer to work on my novel, nothing would come. I’d stare at the blank white screen, typing for the sake of typing, only to wind up the next morning reading stuff that had nothing to do with my story. It was like taking a left turn instead of a right and instead of pausing to look at a map, reason things out, you keep going only to wind up a hundred miles out of the way. During that time I was also part of an online writer’s group. There were no critiques going on but lots of emails and opinions and ideas. To sum it up, there was just a lot of chi (energy, activity) and what I now realize was just noise going on in my space. A melancholy feeling set in; I wasn’t making near the progress I’d wanted to. I began attributing it to the weather—the older I get, the more profound my aversion is to Northeast winters. I attributed it to the lack of light, even ran over to Home Depot and bought some forced hyacinths. Now, that did wonders for my mood and the scent in my house was heavenly for two good weeks but after that it was just the same old melancholy. No progress on the novel, nor my essays. No poems. Nothing. I began to think (quite ridiculously) that I should stop writing altogether. Maybe, like Alice Walker has recently said, I have said all I have to say. Maybe there isn’t anything left to write about. After all, I have been writing for over a decade. Maybe this is it. Maybe I need to consider other avenues of expression. Maybe, I just need to put this novel aside and begin the next. Maybe. So I thought on this for a while and then, as the Universe does, the name of a book came to me; a book that a work friend had recommended to me a few years back when Kid#1 was just a toddler and Kid #2 was on the way and I was lamenting about balancing motherhood/career/writing/marriage. It wasn’t until I jumped over to Amazon, ordered the book and read the following that it all made sense:


“For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverberations after even the simplest conversation …. I often feel exhausted, but it is not my work that tires (work is a rest); it is the effort of pushing away the lives and needs of others before I can come to my work with any freshness and zest.”

“The things I cannot stand, that make me flare up like a cat making a fat tail, are pretensiousness, smugness, the coarse grain that often shows itself in a turn of phrase. I hate vulgarity, coarseness of soul. I hate small talk with a passionate hatred. Why? I suppose because any meeting with another human being is collision for me now. It is always expensive, and I will not waste my time. It is never a waste of time to be outdoors, and never a waste of time to lie down and rest for even a couple of hours. It is then that images float up and then that I plan my work. But it is a waste of time to see people who have only a social surface to show. I will make every effort to find out the real person, but if I can’t, then I am upset and cross. Time wasted is poison.”
---May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude, The Intimate Diary of a Year in the Life of a Creative Woman.


And then I jumped over to a very familiar place, and re-read something I’d read a while ago:


“Every person, especially every woman, should be alone sometime during the year, some part of each week, and each day. How revolutionary that sounds and how impossible of an attainment. To many women such a program seems quite out of reach.They have no extra income to spend on a vacation for themselves; no time left over from the weekly drudgery of housework for a day off; no energy after the daily cooking, cleaning and washing for even an hour of creative solitude. Is then an economic problem? I do not think so….If women were convinced that a day off or an hour of solitude was a reasonable ambition, they would find a way of attaining it.

…It is more a question of inner convictions than of outer pressures, though, of course, the outer pressures are there and make it more difficult. As far as the search for solitude is concerned, we live in a negative atmosphere as invisible, as all pervasive, and as enervating as an August afternoon. The world today does not understand, in either man or woman, the need to be alone.

…If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it—like a secret vice!

…Actually, these are amongst the most important times in one’s life—when one is alone. Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer to work out his thoughts; the musician to compose; the saint to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.”
---Ann Morrow Lindbergh, Gifts From the Sea.


And so, after I meditated on the above, I knew what I needed to do. I needed to go inside myself and I knew I needed more than just a day off or some time alone. I needed to cultivate a life of solitude. And so this is why I can completely understand what girlfriend Nakachi means when she writes:

"i live a solitary life, never spending more than a few hours a week in the company of others. i find people exhausting and intensely troubling. the more time i spend with them the more i invest emotionally and there is frighteningly little return. if i could sell a fraction of the stock i've acquired in dead love and aggravation on the real market, i could make you rich. so i keep my distance from the herd in an effort to ration my emotions."


I am alone these days. I send less email so there’s less to answer. I steer clear of the Funk Masters: you know, the people who are never happy unless mess is stirred up, who always need to call you and let you know what’s going down. People who see the glass half empty, ALL the time. People who have all the questions and don’t want to take the time to find their own answers. People who use up a whole hour of your time telling you about the man/woman that’s doing them wrong and what should they do and once you tell them what they should do, give you a thousand reasons why they can’t do it. People are exhausting. And it’s only after I started cultivating my life of solitude have I seen the wellspring of creativity that lies within. It was only after being alone, settling into my aloneness, getting comfy and pouring a glass of tea with it, that I’ve seen how absolutely necessary it is for my vocation as a writer, as an artist.

Be well. Be Love(d).
Angel