The Miscellany

Loneliness

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Loneliness is a location beside life — beyond the horizon.  Existence there is inevitable; the iron bell will drop its hammer, burst will the pipeline. In this crowded void, knives develop new purposes, perspectives fall away like windswept snow squalls blown directionless yet correctly. No one likes the lonely — a hard truth to hear.  From contagious diseases, we tremble away. Like fear, we forget loneliness —  feigning ignorance of its symptoms. In the haphazardness of life, we even envy the lonely, but this is a mistake. Suffering, we must not envy. Yet, as the other side is not our side, green will always be greener. Clichés still remain remarkably unable to teach. Loneliness stays a cliché. No one wants it around; it is as banal as the ninety-four year old man sitting at the shopping mall in front of Sears watching the teenagers playing hard to get with each other. The old man is their foreshadow though — their future, but clichés have no voice, and the youth have underdeveloped ear. 

Loneliness, like heart disease, liver failure, and hip replacement, reveals aged territory — a disease of adulthood. Its signals remain as numerous as the butterflies, yet as transparent as windows in a Cadillac — windows from which an old woman receives protection from the elements, or from which the elements gain protection from her. Yet she has a telephone and a name, and it is loneliness which causes her to sit beside that phone from morning till night and conference with kids who call her Mother. Teens typically call after finding her number in high school hallways or stapled to telephone polls. Her message: Mother’s always home. They tell her about their friends, their parents, their lives, and she tells them that all will pass, that life contains ups and downs, that people change, that love is hard, that the world cannot rest in hopelessness. She listens, and they hang up feeling better but not knowing exactly why. Mother’s symptoms manifest quietness; her loneliness stays sublimated. 

Life in a cabin is lonely. Nature falls short of enough. Nothing unperceived proves real. With only his eyes, Drummer has no perspective. Heat comes from wood and flame. Food can be hauled in a car and stored. Water is sucked from the ground. People are not so easy to access. No telephone lines stretch to Drummer’s cabin, as if the lines themselves would ease the angst through their potential. He could move into town, or drink at the tavern, or even smoke cigarettes on a park bench, but that would not make a difference. if he had a phone, maybe he would call Mother, but she most likely would refuse to talk to a lonely old man. Such is not her affair.

Time is irrelevant to the lonely. Past, present and future jumble together like ingredients for cakes. After kneading and molding, they become inseparable. Beth clutches the handset and counts the rings. When she reaches fifteen, she replaces the handset and waits thirty minutes before re-dialing. She wants to talk to Drummer, but Drummer died in sixty-eight and before that he lived four years without a phone.

Love precedes loneliness. The unconnected confuse the taste of loneliness with sour green apples. These people are the solitary trees in overgrown fields. Only the trees of the forest understand loneliness as they drop leaves onto tiny flowers that are too naive to comprehend the sun’s deception. I have had leaves dropped on me; I know. 

Suicide is for the lonely, for those who lack hope, who despair. Mother could have despaired, but she found a straw and clutched it. Drummer died naturally. Suicide? Not technically. But he must have felt that wind and known no blanket would be enough; he must have seen the storm and known the cabin would fall; he must have, one does not live that long and not know things. Beth passed in seventy-six, the bicentennial, and left me here.

Hopelessness arises from the soul like the transparent bubble blown with the child’s breath. Only a second, less than a second, before it breaks away from the plastic ring, floats beyond retrieval, and bursts on a blade of green grass. For to be hopeless is to be without even the hope of touching that breath. The lonely forget to breathe. At the end, Beth and Drummer forgot, I see that now.

Loneliness exists for the albino squirrel and the seagull, but for each it remains different — opposite. The squirrel loses hope of acceptance, of ever being good enough, but the seagull loses hope of accepting, of others ever being worthy. Both the same, yet one becoming the fertilizer of the earth and the other becoming the Buddha. Beth and Drummer are fertilizer. 

Without parents one moves up the ladder, becomes one generation higher. Eventually we all know this too; except the tragic, they mourn their children; they are the loneliest of all. Drummer mourned his father in fifty-eight, and lost Sawyer, my brother, in sixty-four. Drummer was a strong climber, but when he had to look down from his great height and see Sawyer no longer ascending, he froze. To not look down is the secret, do not allow yourself to know how much you stand to lose. I was not on Sawyer’s rung: I was not high enough to be hurt in the fall.

I can remember all those dates, the years I climbed on the ladder, but now, on the top rung, they all seem irrelevant. From here, the view denies comprehension; from here, I can see even why I could not see then, why they still can not see.

The Buddha taught compassion in the world yet knew its illusuariness. I can see that too from where I stand. The tallest buildings truly own the city. The mightiest trees own the forest. The highest mountains own the Earth — the Himalayas, Mount Everest — they reign supreme. I know this, yet I have not been there.

Beth left me antiques and heirlooms that I mostly sold at auction. The money surprised me. Chairs that I climbed to reach the upper cabinets when I was a boy were handled like relics. Books that propped open doors and leveled tables were now finally being read. I was glad to see this rebirth, to learn that everything transforms, that everything, even the lonely, has worth. 

Marriage is lonely. Mary does not stand on the ladder with me. Her father is one-hundred-six. Her brother is eighty-one. Beth and Drummer are still here through their objects, is the view from Mary’s rung. Only Mary's father understands me, but he is too high to communicate. He only looks. I envy him. This I could never tell Mary, she would laugh. 

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Mary's father reminds me of Jason’s infancy — cooing, looking, absent to self. Mary enjoyed playing with Jason when he grew to be a toddler; I loved playing with him as an infant. Jason is grown and away now. Mary's father never really even knew him. Mary's brother used to buy him toy cars for his birthdays. Mary does not miss Jason. She is happy he is happy. Happiness I have surpassed: I miss Jason.

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Every July sixteenth, Mary and I drive her brother to the cemetery and leave flowers for his wife and beside her, for their mother. I am embarrassed that Beth and Drummer are gone, it makes me too much older than Mary and her brother. Yet it is inevitable. I will no longer go with them to see their father; the realities are too naked. Their father understands this I am sure. Mary and her brother do not. They call me selfish. I allow it; I accept it. Protestation is irrelevant, lessons are learned only through death. But with Mary away, with Jason away, I remember loneliness, for even on the top rung, there is loneliness.

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I have a boil on my chin which I refuse to have removed. It could be easily done, but secretly I want Mary to touch it first. She pretends she doesn't care about it; yet, even in intimacy, she subtly, delicately, beautifully, avoids it — moving fingers, lips, arms, gently around it, tracing my face with fingertips of purity. She can climb trees and avoid the poison oak; she can pick wild roses without danger; she can dance around cobras leaving them senseless and alone; this, she has learned. 

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On his body, Mary's father has several growths. A goiter I call the Buddha-belly falls over his collar; its manifestation is undisguisable. Before I stopped visiting, I stroked the flesh of the belly to drive away the loneliness it caused. I know Mary's father appreciated the gesture; yet, Mary tells me he has yet to opt to have it removed. This I do not understand, but I am not him, and I give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Mary and I often go to the theater and listen to the symphony. This habit we developed after Jason grew. It fills the spaces, somewhat. Once we attended a performance of Mahler’s 8th: The Symphony of a Thousand. Mary was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the production, by the brass behind us, by the four woodwinds far to our left, by the violins in the balcony, by the children’s voices. I was caught in the Faust, in the end of knowledge, in the end of music. Leonard Bernstein said that Mahler’s symphonies lose popularity not because of their difficult scores, nor their lengths, but because their agonizing messages are simply too true, telling something too dreadful to hear. Watching the conductor turn to us, the audience, for the purpose of cuing the various musicians spread among us, I understood the loneliness of community, I understood what music could not do.

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There is an old man I see occasionally at the grocery. He always smiles, yet I have never heard him speak.  When she sees him, Mary is uneasy. I only wish to touch him, to kiss his forehead, but I fear he will not understand, so I remain within myself. Approaching the lonely creates loneliness. It reminds us of our inevitable limits.  For this man, I can do nothing. We live in different cells, separated by translucent concrete too thick ever to chisel away. The owner of the market, Mary knows. The old man is named James, and he lives alone in an assisted-care center. One year at Christmas, Mary sent him flowers and fruit. The card read: Thinking of you this Holiday Season. She did not sign it. To the gift, I was in opposition. James most likely did not need flowers, and I know few people who believe fruit is a gift.

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On the cork board beside the refrigerator, a Christian poem is tacked. It conveys an experience of a beach walker who finds solace from the idea of Jesus pacing beside him — who merges the two worlds and finds companionship. This walker is a Buddha. I am not capable of this merger. I can not see the invisible so clearly. Right before he left home, Jason thumbtacked the poem to the board. He told Mary to read it when she felt lonely. When she reads it, she thinks of Jason and smiles. 

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Jason believed steel workers knew secrets. To work twelve hours, stumble to a shelter which you do not own, eat meat and potatoes, and replace some other guy on a worn mattress where you stay until he comes to replace you is simplicity, is honesty, is reality––nothing to do with satisfaction, with fulfillment. Obsessions with satisfaction, with fulfillment destroy us; they produce loneliness. Jason is profound, but the long-shift was no carefree life. Despair arises in no time. In the mills, Mary’s two uncles worked. Harry, blind drunk on whiskey, fell down twenty-four concrete stairs — a pebble over the falls: Howard cracked his head on a low beam and pushed a broom on the night shift until he dropped off, like an apple in a windstorm. The ignorant are not blessed. No one is blessed.  Mary disagrees.

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Mother phoned me before loneliness fully enveloped me, back when enduring seemed possible, even likely. She needed to talk about Jason, she said. She said she had never called a parent before, that most of her contacts were from the parent-less, from the phone booths of emptiness, from the void; but that Jason was eccentric for an old man, extraordinary for an adult, unbelievable as a child. I listened to the voice in my ear, still unclear of its origin. Beth was dead. The dead have no need for phones: they have no one to call. Yet Mother continued. Jason is a philosopher, a theologian, a metaphysician. Jason understands. He knows your struggles. He knows Mary’s struggles. He understands loneliness like a wave understands the sea. He knows that some fruit is never harvested. He knows that glaciers creep slower than the watched clock. He knows that despair is woven into Nature’s blanket. Why I sit here beside my phone, he knows. These intuitions his father ignores, he says. He says his father will not let go, will not drop his dukes, will not allow things to be. Jason is right, Mother told me. She said she knew it before he told her. She knew she would one day make such a call, she said. She said she knew the call would be futile, in vain, but necessary, like the warm spell in January, bound to do more harm than good, yet completely right. Mary does not connect to you, she said. She said Mary needs a soul mate, a kindred-spirit. Mary will never live through the fighting, she said. Still I wondered who this voice belonged to, yet I could not ask, she knew me, and I knew that somewhere deep within my being, I knew her, that somewhere, I once lived in her womb, in her mind, in her soul. Mary was fortunate to have Jason, she said. Mother said that I did not know Jason. Time interferes, she said. Mother said she could have loved Jason, that Jason was her match, that people are often born too many years apart to meet their spiritual partners, that loneliness was this. Then Mother was gone.

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For every gorge we see, a mountain exists in the invisible world. When we descend into canyons, we climb the mountains of the Buddha land. This is why Mount Everest is so lonely, this is why the summit is the base, why apexes are heavy; I know this also. Until many years after Mary left, it was not apparent to me. She left me sparring in an empty ring, a flower with no petals, a mirror which does not reflect. Then I had to stop fighting. I had to understand the inevitable. I had to surrender.

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Grief glues us together, but the seawater soon dissolves all binding, leaving loneliness. When Mary's brother died, Jason called me. Mary and I reunited then, but it did not last. She was higher, but still her father lived on, and our levels differed too much. For a time, we pretended that we understood. In the dark, we played charades. We lit candles in every room to celebrate the sunshine. Naked, we ran around Walden pond at night, and made love beside the rock pile. How silly we were. People as high as we should have known better. Yet we chose to climb down for a time, to be children once more, to forget all we understood, to pretend love was real, lasting, eternal. One can only forget for a short time. The memory is impossible to erase, and no matter how many dams are constructed, eventually the levees break, and the world of superficial joy is washed under twenty miles of loneliness.

A grown-child’s old bedroom is a museum. It is evolution. It is the billions of stars in the sky, all seeming to shine at once, a reminder of the confusion of time, the deception of it all. In Jason’s room is a baseball card collection. Thumbtacked to the wall, there is a music poster. A blue spread covers his mattress. In his desk drawer are remnants of papers and pencil stubs, but in the back of the bottom drawer, crinkled and dried, fragile, is a pink flier with faded ink: Mother’s always home and a phone number.

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Sometimes at night, I call Mother. She does not answer anymore. The phone just rings and rings. After fifteen rings, I hang up and try again every thirty minutes until I am too tired to remember. Just the number, the dialing, the potential is enough sometimes.

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Mary's father still lives. He will live on and on: he is the lama, he will never die.