elizabethlevett

Somebody said I should start the day off with the roll of a die (just one) and then write. I thought about it the first morning while still in bed. For some reason, wrapped in warm, flannel sheets, my foggy half-sleep logic suggested that the first day would be one, the second day would be two, and so on. Had to smile to myself as I realized that was nonsense. What are the odds, right?

Day one I rolled a one. Well, there you go.

Just one. Just once. I started thinking about being alone and whether that’s even a thing that’s real.

Just me and nobody else but me.

It never happens. Not ever. Like just now, I finally get a little time to write by myself and my neighbors pick the same moment to talk and laugh just outside my window.

No, I will not poke my nose wicked-witch like out through the blinds at them.

But maybe some one of these days I just might. (And did she have to slam the door?)

Or last week. I get a few minutes to myself in between teaching online classes and decide to go out in the sun with a cup of coffee.

The contractors who’ve been slamming around for weeks remodeling upstairs have their break at the same time. That means they’ll have their coffee at the same time. They sit on the stairs above they are directly in my line of sight as I am directly in theirs. They look down and wave. I wave back. (“Go away,” I want to say, but I never do. They work hard up there busting walls with sledgehammers and throwing things around. They need to make a living.)

Nobody gets a break.

Let’s say I decide I’ve had enough of listening to the news or watching a movie or even scrolling around online for something to engage me in the evening. I go sit in the garden and just be quiet. The contractors have all gone home. And yet. The folks out back must have cleaned up their dinner things and so they’re sitting out with their little kids who are playing a game of “who can scream the loudest?”

Is it me? Somehow, I don’t think so. I believe that taking things personally is generally not a good choice. So I try studiously to avoid it. But come on. Even if I go for a quiet walk I always find the street they’re tearing up or the remote park trail with – inexplicably – a truck backing up for about five million feet or a tree getting sawed up or chipped.

Can’t I just ever be alone and have some peace and quiet? Just once? Maybe not. Maybe we’re never alone even when we think we are. Maybe we’re always alone. No. I don’t think so. I think our connection to each other is not the lie, it’s the isolation we imagine that fools us in the end. The connection is a constant, we just have to look out the window once in a while. There really is always somebody there. And I think that’s not a bad thing.

When we do feel the stillness of our souls in the depth of grief or fear or even deep contentment it isn’t our singularity that’s calling for our attention, it’s the reality that we mean something – but only insofar as we mean something to someone else. We just need a little quiet to find that out. Even though it seems we so seldom get it. Even at those times, or especially, we aren’t ever really alone.