I have given much thought to the difference between being alone and being lonely. Of the two, I am alone. I would even go so far as to say that it is not that I am alone but that I live alone.
1:30
I still intend to write about the rest of my halloweekend and post more pictures. But I wanted to talk with you about living alone.
It's a little funny that I have come to this conclusion again all these years later. Little Kiki was so moved by Heart of Darkness, by this passage in particular, and now I am almost afraid to admit it because it seems that people are forced to read these things in an academic setting and then find them distasteful because of it. It's a shame because Heart of Darkness, Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, are such excellent books and it seems the more people who read them the less fashionable it is to actually like them.
In anycase, the passage which moved me at first reading and is strangely relevant again now that I have contemplated living alone more deeply:
He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream -- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams. . . ."
He was silent for a while.
". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence -- that which makes its truth, its meaning -- its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream -- alone. . . ."Although, I have only spent 4 evenings in a row alone in my apartment. Maybe these feelings change after a long, long time of living alone. I will not find out because I am glad to tell you that I am becoming a cat foster parent. Wally the cat is coming to live with me tomorrow and I am very looking forward to it.
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| Artists Rendering of Kiki in Oz, where Wally is a stuffed animal and Nathan is a magician. |
