Life in progress

Tag Archives: alone


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O is for Once

Once upon a time there was a girl who spent most of her time alone. She lived with her parents; their best friends–a childless couple–lived next door. On weekends there were parties. Parties with all adults. The girl would go to the parties until an acceptable time which was bedtime and then she would go upstairs and read in her room, or colour, or play with her dolls. Occasionally one of the adults would come and say hello, but for the most part she spent her time making up stories in her head. In her imagination she had a life with many friends of her own. They would have parties most weekends and they would laugh and have serious discussions.

The girl didn’t mind being alone because even when she was with people, she would usually observe, listen, and let her imagination wander. She was a little jealous of her friends–her real friends–who had siblings, but she couldn’t really picture what it would be like never to be alone.

As she grew up she found that she liked people well enough. In high school she had a wonderful group of friends with whom she used to party. They’d sometimes skip school and drive to Niagara Falls just for fun.

But what comes around…

Now the girl is older and has a family of her own. She still has one of her old high school friends who she sees every day. She sits in her room and reads and imagines worlds in which people have parties with lots of friends, but now she has a computer on which she records her imaginings full of colourful adventures and happy endings. Stories that begin with “Once upon a time.”

 


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Daily Post – Surreality

The Daily Post today asks, “What’s the most surreal experience you’ve ever had?”

It was October, 2005. I was in Hiroshima, in the restaurant on the top floor of a highrise hotel, having dinner. They sat me at a corner table, with a corner window that faced the night-lit city. Being that the hotel is on the water, the road stretched out, away from the hotel – I could see for miles.

My dinner companions, as they had been throughout my trip, were my pad and pen. I no longer have the pad, but I remember writing how I felt – the awe-inspiring enormity of being completely alone, thousands of miles away from everyone and everything I knew. Not a soul in the world who could recognize me and know my name knew where I was at that moment. When the waitress approached my table she bowed, placed a cushion on the floor and knelt to take my order. It was the same when she brought the food and cleared the table – bowing deeply before she knelt and when she stood. So so foreign.

Being completely alone, I discovered, is a surreal experience. With no responsibility to anyone but myself and the world – what felt like the entire world – stretched out before me, I was simultaneously a speck on the face of the earth and an entire universe in and of myself. I don’t remember if the fact that I looked out over a city that was once wiped out, turned to rubble, its innocent population murdered in a single explosion of proportions larger than any of us alive can imagine had anything to do with my perception of surreality that night, but I suspect it did.

But I was there. The place I’ve read of in the history books. Hiroshima, Japan. Anything could have happened there.

Anything.

from the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima

From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima

From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima

From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima

 

The A-Bomb Dome, 2005

The A-Bomb Dome, 2005

Sunrise, from my room

Sunrise, from my room

http://www.princehotels.com/en/hiroshima/?


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Changes

Every once in a while I find something that changes me. Often it’s a thought, an idea that will niggle its way into my consciousness and take root. Often it doesn’t last; I’m relatively sure this won’t either.

This particular change in me was brought on by my vacation. I woke up this morning at 5:40 and I decided to get up. Just me, on my own. I was tempted to go back to sleep: sleep is a rare commodity for me. But today I felt like I needed the solitude that followed me around for eleven days in Japan.

It was strange, being alone with so very many people around. An experience unique for all of its sameness – because really, aren’t we all alone? When I consider the fact that at any given moment, I am the only one who observes what I am observing from my perspective I have a profound sense of being alone in the world. When, in Japan, I took that thought one step further to realize that all the people around me have grown up and experienced the world in a foreign setting, with few of the same cultural experiences, I am taken to a new awareness altogether. I don’t believe I really lived until I had this feeling – and it’s one I truly revel in, as long as I feel safe. From what I’ve seen and how I felt, Japan has one of the safest societies on earth.

And so one of my most treasured experiences while I was there was walking countless times across the street in Shibuya, Tokyo, amidst hundreds of people crossing in every direction.

DSC00361

panoramic view of Shibuya crossing

Ah, the humanity.

Life-changing. For me.

And yet for so many it is simply life. Routine. They come out of the Hachiko exit where the famous statue resides on the DSC00343entirely indescribable side of the train station (there are two “south” entrances on different sides of the building) and they go to work, or meet a friend, or… or… whatever. I was simply wandering around this vast part of a vast world, all alone. No one I knew knew exactly where I was at that particular moment in time.

Just like when I’m having a coffee at 5:45am, all by myself in my living room.

I love it.

 


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There Are Days

stroll

There are days when I wish I could just run away – escape even for an hour. To drink a cup of coffee without being interrupted, or to close my eyes and hear nothing but the snow falling.


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Solitude

I often wonder if I am alone.

What I mean to say is, I am most happy when I am alone. My imagination and I get along very well, as do I with my loud music. I am happiest when I can dance when no one is watching. I am free-est when I can sing at the top of my lungs, knowing no one is judging my ability. I am most content when I can write without distraction.

So, am I alone in this? Is it a artist thing, or is it just that I grew up as an only child and got used to it at an early age?

I wonder if it has anything to do with the ability or the need to create.  I’ve always had my imagination to keep me company. I remember (and it was a memory just jogged this morning) trying to write a book at my mother’s friends’ dining room table – when I was five or six years old. As I grew up I would imagine for myself a different life, in which I had friends and enemies alike. I would write pages of conversations.

Of the people in my real life: an artist friend of mine, with whom I was discussing this topic the other day, told me that she also is happiest and most content when she’s by herself. My mother and my other friend (yes, I only really have two) dislike being alone. Both are creative in their own ways – my mother knits and sews, and my friend is an inventor – but they are not artists as such.

Neither of them understand this need I have to be alone, and so it makes me wonder if I’m strange. I can only ask my artistically inclined acquaintances…

Am I alone?


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Invaluable

The most supportive people in a writer’s life are the ones who understand when it’s time to *whispers* go away.