Solitude
Sometimes it bothers me: the loneliness. I try not to let it. I try to calmly listen to all the people that are always around me. They’re constantly speaking their wants and their needs, their fears and their desires.
And it bothers me. Sometimes. Being so lonely. All the things I simply don’t seem to share with anyone. It makes me feel different. It makes me feel separate. Separate yet always surrounded by a multitude of people and I’ll begin to feel that it just isn’t fair: since I’m alone in a crowd I shouldn’t really have to deal with a crowd.
It bothers me.
Then I begin to want it: solitude. I’ll think that I need it: solitude.
I’ll just have to find it: solitude.
So I’ll run from the crowd. I’ll run as fast as I can past all the people, past the town, even past the fields and until I’m well into the woods I’ll just keep running. I’ll run until I’m simply out of the strength for running. Then gasping for air I’ll sit back under a large tree to catch my breath.
As my panting slows the consequences of my barge into the woods begins to subside. The swaying of the limbs of the saplings slows then stops. Bugs begin buzzing again. Looking up into the crown of the tree I see that the leaves have begun their slow dance with the breeze again.
With all as it should be the trunk begins to creak again and I listen to the trees speaking to one another. About a man who so rudely invaded their space with his need to find solitude; a man who seems separate from the needs of the trees.
But then they begin to speak of another man. They begin to speak about a man not so different from the trees; a man whose only need is to find the place where he belongs, a space that he can call his own.
I listen further. I listen for an unknown time as their speaking turns to the taste of the water and the smell of the air. To the warmth of the sun as it filters through the crown to shimmer on my face.
I see in the shimmering that the elves have begun to join me.
I hear in the shimmering that the sylphs have begun to sing.
The ambience of the place I call solitude surrounds me.
Here in solitude I’m never alone.