Hymn to Solitude
“Amour”,
she would say that and little else. Then she would rest her head on my
shoulder. After, she would disappear for at least a week or more. One of us was
lying. The way that she said it, so gently but with such intensity, it kept me
waiting around.
Of course I worked but gave very
little thought to exploring other options when my brush was not in my hand.
“Amour”
she sighed. Her eyes were a dark sky from which stars had drifted low to beauty
mark her chin. Once again no definitive plans had been made and as I walked
home in frustration, I realized that all this time she had not been talking to
me but merely echoing the prayer that someone had once recited to the sky.
I had been working hard but still
found myself feeling lonely. I was bitten and scratched by this feeling, especially
at night when the heat from making dinner required me to open a window and I
could hear people passing by down below. I taped a picture of Stravinsky to the
refrigerator as in my head it made sense to do so.
The corner as viewed from the
window by my bed. There is a traffic light, the red one; it is the
understanding of desolation. I am grateful for that light. No one walks by and
even the trees offer only a limited lattice of shadows akin to clarity of
thought.
A hymn to solitude.
Sorry, I have this prayer to share
but recite another one instead. In the early hours of a new day the street
light is crowned with a halo of mist, sainted for all it has witnessed and for
always standing alone as all who are holy must do.
Thanksgiving, the local churches
were offering their free turkey dinner complete with all the fixings, donated
by those in need of assuaging their guilt. Each had a long line spilling out
their doors and down the sidewalk. Regardless of the denomination, the queue for
each church was comprised of the same people clapping their own shoulders to
stay warm. Some talking to themselves others with dull gray blankets thrown
over their shoulders looking like extras from a Goya painting.
Not tied in to this but seeming so
by coincidence, a long line of cars moving with the traffic light induced
stuttered rhythm. Groups of people of varying abilities try to dance a
choreography in sync as they exit the city.
Later jaundiced squares of light
from apartments which offer no evidence of humanity despite their illumination,
intermittently mark the sidewalk. Counterpoint to this light, the dark
silhouettes of bushes, their roughhewn edges making them appear as a series of
tiny waves frozen at the moment right before breaking upon the pavement. If I
could see a cat, even from a distance down the end of the alley, then this
night would be perfect. I am drunk off of sweet desolation.
- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015
