I hit the road a bit earlier than I’d planned, but happily so. I got a few things done to provide for my Traveling Partner’s comfort while I am away, and did a bit of tidying up, too. The drive was beautiful – mild temperatures, clear skies with just a few fluffy clouds scooting past on the breeze, and sunshine – it felt like Spring, and there was no traffic.
A great day for a drive.
I arrived at my destination too early to check in to the hotel, so I went from favorite beach to favorite view point to favorite quiet corner, stopping to walk the beach, or sit in quiet meditation on a bench, rock, or driftwood log. It was a lovely way to pass solitary hours, and I arrived at the hotel nearer to check-in time with a smile on my face and feeling very relaxed.
After check-in, I discovered that the elevator was being serviced… so… several round trips from the ground floor parking up the stairs to the 4th floor room later, and I was finally “moved in”. 😀 I unpacked enough to plug in the computer, check my connectivity, verify my Blue Tooth devices were doing their thing, and put my phone on a charger. I unpacked toiletries to the bathroom counter. I grabbed my book, kicked off my shoes (put on my slippers) and sat down with a cup of tea and a contented sigh.
Afternoon sunshine.
…I woke up later, the sun going down and twilight taking over… my Traveling Partner had pinged me a reminder that a favorite creator has a new episode coming out tonight. I say thanks, and set a reminder; something fun we can “do together” while we’re apart. I like that. There’s certainly room in my experience for that kind of shared fun. 😀
I shake off the remnants of sleepiness, and drink my (now cold) tea. I broke 3 finger nails getting my luggage to my room, so I cut my nails back and file them smooth to reduce the chances that I’ll end up biting them down to the quick. I make a fresh cup of tea (chamomile), and drag a chair onto the balcony to watch the light fade – no beautiful sunset on this cloudy overcast evening, but I love listening to the waves crash in, and breathing the fresh sea breeze. It’s a moment to savor, and very satisfying just as it is.
The ceaseless ringing in my ears is almost masked by the sound of wind and water. My headache almost fades into the background of calm and contentment. My arthritic spine seems irrelevant in this moment. It’s lovely. It’s enough. I sit with it awhile – as long as I can before darkness falls. It’s a good time to enjoy the evening light before I begin again.
Some people are not at all into being alone. Solitude can be nerve-wracking for people who don’t like being alone. I’m not one of those people. Quite the contrary, some of my easiest most relaxed and comfortably contented moments are those when I am alone. I enjoy a solitary hike more than I enjoy companionship on the trail, and even the distant presence of others within view is a subtle irritant when I am most craving solitude. It’s beyond the irritation that is the sound of voices… it’s almost as if the mere presence of another human consciousness is too much for mine. It’s a little weird, because human primates are social creatures – even me. I just happen to have a strong liking for solitude, and a relatively high need for it, from a basic self-care perspective. Yes, yes, I know; it’s likely a trauma thing, but honestly that’s neither here nor there when it comes time to care for this fragile vessel in practical terms.
I’m sipping my coffee and counting down the hours; tomorrow I head to the coast for a couple days of quiet solitude. I’ll have my paints with me, my camera, and I’ll be near to a couple of favorite trails, and miles and miles of walkable beach. I’ll bring Lord of the Rings (books) – maybe I’ll finish it? I’ll sleep in (maybe) and nap (probably), and my life will not be constrained by clocks or calendars or lengthy to-do lists. It’ll just be me, being. I’m looking forward to it. Like… a lot.
…Funny… I’m also aware that I’ll miss my Traveling Partner the entire time I’m gone (which is okay, we gain a lot of perspective on how deeply we love each other when we have a chance to miss each other now and then)…
Yesterday’s unexpected almost-Spring weather of breezy sunshine and mild temperatures has given way to stormy gray clouds and intermittent rain. This does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for tomorrow’s drive, or the coastal weekend ahead; rain or shine a view of the ocean is a marvelous change of scenery. When I go to this favorite location, I often leave the balcony door open wide to the ocean breeze and the sound of the waves crashing in for hours. If it’s chilly weather, I put on layers. I love to listen to the sound of the seashore. (Funny how different from each other the Atlantic and Pacific coasts sound. Funnier still that they both remind me of my Granny, and times we spent on the seashore together.) Being on the coast, near the seashore with a view of the ocean, really does something to replenish and recharge me. Similar-but-different to forested getaways or visits to vast plains or deserts; they each have something to offer the solitary traveler.
…I used to think I might like to take a cruise, then I really considered being crowded into a huge floating city with thousands of very human strangers and… um… no. That actually doesn’t sound pleasant at all. Too much people-ing. lol
So, yeah, the countdown to solitude has commenced in earnest… tonight I’ll pack my paints in my paint box for portability. Tomorrow… everything else, and a trip to the store for my Traveling Partner so he can also comfortably chill and enjoy some time on his own terms without having to fuss over groceries. The plan is made, and so are the reservations. 😀 It’s almost time to begin again.
I’m sitting in my car at a favorite trailhead listening to the rain batter the car and feeling it rocked by gusty winds. Dawn has arrived and daybreak reveals gray skies. I’m not surprised, and knew when I woke that it would likely be a rainy morning.
The drive to this trail is about 40 minutes. It was more than quiet. Without exaggerating, I can say that it was eerie, surreal, and strangely like an end-of-the-world sci-fi adventure; there was no traffic. There were simply no other cars on the road, which is so unusual I began checking the time repeatedly, wondering if it was somehow much earlier than I thought. I scanned the neighborhoods I drove past, looking for lights on, anywhere. The world slept, or had been abandoned, it seemed. It was spooky. Traffic signals operated normally. No other cars. I drove past a huge car dealership all lit up. No people. Past a hospital, no sign of anyone else. Past a shopping center, no one in sight. No sign of anyone else, anywhere. Super strange.
As I neared my destination, I came to a hill, and the one car I would see (on the whole drive) came the other direction, high beams on. “Asshole.” I said to myself when the driver didn’t turn their lights down, momentarily blinding me.
I continued my journey, musing about the high likelihood, demonstrated on my drive, that about half of the people in a given place and time are going to be assholes… Then I noticed that I had forgotten that my own high beams were on. lol …I realized that it’s probably also true that about half of the people in a given place and time are probably stupid people… And that it’s not going to be obvious at all which are which, just looking at them. I laugh out loud wondering whether I’m stupid or an asshole. I decide I’ve probably spent plenty of time in both categories over the years (don’t we all?), and make room to cut myself (and that other driver) a little slack for being so very human.
… Still super weird that I only saw one car on the entire drive…
I get to the trailhead safely and park. I sit listening to the rain and watching for dawn to become daylight, hoping for the rain to ease up enough to get a good walk in, happy to have something to do while my Traveling Partner gets some sleep.
The big oaks on the slope are a dark brown silhouetted against a stormy blue-gray sky. I’m still alone here, some time later, which is unusual but welcome. I listen to the geese overhead. The rain stops. It’s time to begin again.
I slept as deeply last night as I had slept restlessly the night before, which is to say, very. I woke once during the night, thinking it was morning, and seeing the room somewhat illuminated, as if by imminent dawn, I got up to look out through the glass door to see what the day may hold. I was surprised that it was not yet close to dawn. The light was only the ground floor hotel lighting (of the beach access below my balcony), diffused and reflected by a dense fog. No view here. None. I went back to sleep.
I slept deeply and woke… discontented and restless. The fog persists. I can only now, just barely, make out the edges of the low tide. I frown at the fog. I’m surprised to feel completely disinterested in a beach walk on a foggy morning – so unlike me! I shower, feeling fussy. I dress, feeling a tad restless, not quite “cross”. I get coffee, reflecting on the feeling of the moment. I return feeling mostly pretty well sorted out; I miss my Traveling Partner more, at this point, than I am enjoying my own company. It’s not a surprise. I was gonna get here sooner or later – far better to arrive at this emotional place before I finish my bit of away time, able to return home fully appreciating the human being waiting for me there. 🙂
So, I packed my bag. Re-loaded the car. I’m taking my leisure over my coffee, and a bit of writing. The wide-open balcony door fills the room with briny ocean breezes. Eventually, this moment right here will feel “complete” and be finished, likely with the click of the “publish” button, or perhaps after one last lingering look out to the horizon, as the morning sun begins to burn away the fog? At that point, I’ll message my partner that I’m on my way home, and get that journey going.
…It already feels like “time to begin again”… I miss that guy. 🙂
So, I sit here with my coffee, the sound of the ocean, and this quiet moment, watching the fog diminish, then thicken, revealing the rocky shore at low tide, then coyly hiding it away again. If I were to curate a collection of moments to share, this one might make it into that collection; it has a certain moody unsettled loveliness. More than enough to satisfy a desire for solitary contemplation.
I hear the plaintive forlorn call of a seagull before I see the bird fly past. Yep. Time to begin again.
I could start with “I’m sipping my coffee…”, but I haven’t tasted it yet. It’s sitting here, hot, ready – too hot to drink, so perhaps not entirely ready. There’s probably a metaphor there, maybe one worth considering with great care.
It’s a rainy spring morning. I don’t mind the rain, so it isn’t the rain that has soured the start to this particular day… it’s just weather. So are these tears. Just emotional weather. Some mornings the challenges of making life in a share space with another human primate are emotionally difficult, frustrating, and push hard on every shred of resilience I’ve got. Living alone often requires more laborious work just getting everything done, but it does not require so much emotional work. It’s work that has to be done, in either case. Just work. Omg, though, some days I really just want to take things easy… where’s the fucking “easy” button around here??
My Traveling Partner comes in, rubs my shoulders and my neck, and says kind, tender words. It helps for a moment. I relax into his love. That helps, too. Love matters. As with other things requiring effort, avoiding the work involved in creating enduring love only results in love not enduring after all… so… we work at it. Humans being human. My partner knows this; he’s pretty skilled at love, generally. Still human. Very. We both are. We have shared much with each other over a decade, learned a lot (both of us) about love and loving, and living our life together while also taking steps to be the human being we each most want to be. There’s a lot of joy in this journey. Some stumbles. Some sorrows. Sometimes things seem quite complicated, other times very straightforward; I’m rarely certain whether the complexity of any given circumstance is self-imposed or imposed upon us.
I sip my coffee thinking about love – now that my coffee is cool enough to drink. I take a moment to give myself some credit for the pure ferocious sheer will-to-change (and grow and improve) that is characteristic of the way I love… and the frustration and resentment that can sometimes result from those efforts, if the result is successful (meaning the desired change was made), but… inadequate (in that it did not have the desired result). I have, over years and relationships, grown weary of being willing to change. It’s not fair to my current relationship that the baggage I’ve picked up over the years weighs us down, now. It’s just the nature of “baggage” to function in that way; it takes still more will to set that shit down and move on.
…This is a good cup of coffee…
I sigh aloud in this quiet room. It sounds louder than it is. I think about the day ahead, looking forward to an errand that needs to be run, trying to sort out my thoughts such that I don’t return home to discover there was one other thing that needed doing, or picking up from somewhere. Lately, I often feel as if I “can’t hear myself think”, or as if I’m struggling to hang on to a thought, however engaging, if there is any hint of a distraction of any sort at all. I sometimes feel as if I am being distracted from what I’m thinking about by the thing I am doing that I am thinking about. I only know one thing that seems to sort that sort of cognitive chaos out properly; solitude. My mental “buffers” are full, and in spite of sleeping decently well, I’m just not managing to process everything…and now my headspace is all clogged up with bulging random thought-clobs of garbage and jumbled nonsense, and it’s hard to finish any new thought at all. Or – so it seems to me, subjectively, as an internal experience.
It was August 2019 when I last went camping… perhaps I am overdue?
It’s lovely to have a home I can call my own. It’s especially nice to share this experience with my Traveling Partner… but I guess I still need what I need as this human creature that I am. Maybe it’s time to get out into the trees again, to sleep under the stars, to wonder with awe at my mortal fragility in a wilder world, to face my doubts and fears in a place from which there is no turning away from answering “the hard questions” in life? I didn’t camp at all in 2020 – pandemic closed the places that are my regular favorites, and later resulted in astonishing crowding at those that opened back up. I’ve had my vaccination… perhaps it’s time to plan a long weekend somewhere solo camping? I’ve had this thought several times, but each time I explored the idea further, it was clear that crowding in a lot of favorite spots is still an issue, and seriously the entire point is to get the fuck away from other human beings and the sounds coming out of their face holes, and yeah, even to get away from their mere presence in my awareness. Proper solitude can be hard to come by (and not everyone enjoys it – nothing wrong with you if you don’t!).
Coffee half-gone, thinking productively about how best to meet some of my emotional needs without placing a burden on my partner (who is also stretched thin emotionally by the challenges of pandemic life, himself), and how to be a better partner to him, myself; I’m feeling less weighed down by frustration and sadness. Work is work. Some things take quite a lot of it. Some challenges are more complicated – and often, as a result, more rewarding once overcome. Still, the journey, itself, is the destination; if I get hung up on outcomes and task completion, I lose so many opportunities to live joyful moments. I breathe. Exhale. Relax. Let go of random bullshit pinging on my consciousness. Another breath. Another moment…
Evening Light 