Mind Tricks, Isolation and Solitude

 

It’s been a hard week on my ego and loneliness meter…and that sucks. There’s that word again, the one I claim to hate but have been using too much lately. What am I whining about this time? Woe is me, there wasn't many people around to interact with this week. Ya, I know, everyone (but me) had places to go and things to do and those who didn’t were camping out in front of their air conditioners trying to avoid the blistering heat. Even the blog community has been slow. Ditto on Facebook and replies to a mass e-mail sent to my Gathering Girls group seeking RSVPs for our bimonthly brunch came in so late I was nervous we’d have to cancel. And worst of all, one of the few humans I saw all week, the cashier at the grocery store “chatted” in grunts, having left his words at home in his other pair of pants. Who knows, maybe his Guinea pig died that morning and grunts were all he could muster for a woman old enough to be his great-grandmother. Wait! Was I wearing my hearing aids? Maybe he was just a low talker like the guy featured in a Jerry Seinfeld episode.

Either way, the lady at Starbucks spoke in full sentences while she finished cleaning a machine, “I’ll be right with you, Sweetie," she said. "Give me a minute to get this back together.” Grey hair earns you nicknames like that, but I’m not complaining. The only other voice I’ve heard the past few days was the “card services” robocall-lady---Rachel---who promised to lower my rates if only I’d press #1 and give the scammer my credit card numbers. Sometimes I wish I had one of those old Chatty Cathy dolls who’d talk to me with a pull of her string. But she was a needy lump of vinyl under her nylon wig, always saying things like: “Tell me a story” and “Please brush my hair” or asking questions like, “Do you love me?” “Will you play with me?” and “May I have a cookie?” That’s just what I’d need, someone else competing with me for the cookies in the house. Levi my Might Schnauzer can smell sugar-loaded treats from two rooms over.

Four of the seven in my Gathering Girls group did show up for our two hour brunch on Monday. (The other three had medical issues keeping them from joining us.) We had a spirited conversation about books, movies and bumpy finger joints, fancy rings and the relentless heat. I love being with these ladies. We crack each other up continuously. I was the only one without some place to go on the 4rd of July. (That would be another 'woe is me' if you're counting.) I wish we all lived within cup-of-sugar-borrowing distance. Not that I have much use for raw sugar these days. I did clean, hull and mash two quarts of strawberries for shortcake that could have used sweetening. My belly and my freezer thanked me for the berries anyway. And so did Levi. He sat patiently at my knee when I cut them up waiting for the slivers he got every time 4-5 strawberries went into the stainless steel mixing bowl. He’s got great manners. Levi also got a great haircut this week. Yes, his social life was equally as isolated as mine over the holiday week. My brunch and his haircut were the sum total of our fun.  

“Isolation is aloneness that feels forced upon you, like a punishment,” wrote Jeanne Marie Laskas. “Solitude is aloneness you choose and embrace. I think great things can come out of solitude, out of going to a place where all is quiet except the beating of your heart.” I do find that beating-of-your-own-heart solitude from time to time but I’m sure I’m not the only one who occasionally struggles to find that illusive factor that turns times of isolation into solitude. Over the Fourth, people all around me were having family time or traveling and even if I stayed off Facebook my mind’s eye could still see those happy faces and almost smell the food on their grills. (Oh, wait. that's my neighbor's grill I'm smelling. I'm guessing its steak.)

Doris Grumbach in Fifty Days of Solitude wrote: “The reason that extended solitude seemed so hard to endure was not that we missed others but that we began to wonder if we ourselves were present, because for so long our existence depended upon assurances from them.” Oh. My. God! That’s me! Apparently I need people to (metaphorically) pat me on the top of my head and feed my ego by saying, “Good girl!” Painting, writing, cooking, knitting, reading, keeping a nice house---none of those are good enough if it’s only my own voice telling me I did well. 

I send these thoughts off with the winds and whims of Mother Cyberspace hoping they’ll find someone who knows how to do the “mind trick” that transitions our hours of isolation into solitude. And it is a mind trick, something that has to come from within... ©

If this were true for humans, wouldn't I have wings like Tinker Bell by now?

Loneliness and Dogs that Play Dead

I don’t know how pioneers did it…stay sane while living without much human contact for months on end. It’s been nearly a year---slight exaggeration---since I’ve been out of the house to talk to anyone, and that was just a clerk at the supermarket. He was a chatty-Kathy but that was hardly enough to keep the marbles in my head from falling out. Between periods of snow, fog, pouring rain and ice the weird weather has me trapped in 1500 square feet of boredom. But the fact is I’d have no where to go even if I could. I’d have to make something up---like a desperate need for purple eye shadow---just so I’d have a reason to back the car out of the garage. I have one week out of the month where all four of my reoccurring social events fall and then it’s nothingness again until the next month. I can only have so many conversations with the dog before he lets me know I’m about as interesting as watching a digital clock tick off an hour. I could take up bingo and go the senior center once a week but I don’t need can goods and with my luck, I’d win a bunch of soup and lima beans.

I’ve been hanging out on YouTube a lot lately where I fell in love with Bobby McFerrin a few days ago. Why has the world been hiding this genre bending guy from me all these years? I got all excited when I found out he’s actually going to do a concert in my town in the spring but that was a short-lived excitement because the tickets start at $350 and if I didn’t want to go alone I’d have to buy two and arm-twist someone else into going with me. But who? I can’t think of anyone I like $350 worth. Damn it! It’s all Don’s fault for dying and leaving me alone in the house with too much time on my hands.

On Facebook someone posted a picture of a dog with a sign hanging around his neck. It read: I spontaneously drop to the floor and play dead even when no one tells me to because I’m hoping for treats. That intrigued me enough to look the trick up in my dog training book but after reading the instructions for teaching ‘play dead’ I realized that while Levi isn’t too old to learn it, I’m too old to teach it. It would require me to get down on the floor with him which old people who live alone and have fake knees can’t do if they ever want to get back up again. The last time I was on the floor, I had to have Don park his wheelchair next to me so I could climb up the side. Woo is me. So I’ve been trying to teach Levi to balance and catch treats placed on his nose instead of playing dead. He thinks I’m crazy and looks at me with disgust. If he could talk he’d say, “Who wants to eat a treat that’s been on a nose during flu season? That’s gross!” And that’s coming from a dog who licks himself.

Paul Tillich, who I don’t know anything about other than he wrote a cool line that ended up in an internet collection of quotations, once said: “Language has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone.” I wonder what word good old Paul would use for that limbo place in between loneliness and solitude. That’s the place I’m at. I still miss Don daily but I can’t call it ‘painful’…not like it was in the beginning. But I’m not ready to say I’m at peace with being alone like the word ‘solitude’ requires. It’s boring at best and boring at worse with more boring in between. If it gets any worse I’ll start baking cookies to take to the neighbors so they’ll be obligated to invite me in for coffee. I wonder if that would work. Better yet, if I go to the mall and spontaneously fall to the floor and play dead I'll bet I’d get treated with a lot of attention. Damn it! I forgot. I’m snowed in! ©