That’s just how I’m feeling right now. Generally I like solitude. Which is a good thing. It’s kind of handy when you’re writing and, sometimes, when making art. But it wears thin at times. Like now. And I wondered if it would help to revisit something I wrote in Creating Recovery*…
Solitude and meditation gave me an awareness, a perspective which I have never lost: that of solidarity with the rest of mankind.
~Vincent Aleixandre
When you look at the painting above, do you sense tranquility or disharmony?
Does the tree seem to be a naturalized part of the landscape? Or alone and out of place?
When the painting was first completed I saw beauty, strength, unity. Several months later, the sight of this lone naked tree made me want to weep. Both times, I had worked in solitude. Only during the latter did I feel alone. Not because there were no other people in my presence, but because I had recently experienced loss. In quiet solitude I recognized that my need, at that time, was to grieve.
~Painter’s Notes
I am not grieving now and looking at the tree does not make me want to weep. There is is a sort of… bond… solidarity, I guess… and I get it. As a friend recently observed, the tree in my painting has a certain “pathetic” lonesomeness. In a way both strange and soothing, I find myself amused at the thought. Lonesome? Pathetically so… In thinking it over I see that, somehow, this one little word makes the melancholy seem more fleeting, temporary; the pity party cannot go on indefinitely. It’s just too pathetic. That reminds me not to take me or my current emotional state too seriously.
We are never truly alone. Feeling that way is simply a sign of our humanity, of our need for each other.
I am a human just being human. AND there are very likely more humans out there also feeling as pathetically lonesome as I do. The odds are pretty good. So, I’m going to imagine that for the moment–in a misery-loves-company kind of way–we are having our own morose little get-together. Get the kleenex. And party on. This, too, will pass.
*The page cited in the entry above can be viewed at https://creatingrecovery.studio/2011/06/28/meditation-forty-three/
Creating Recovery, an inspirational how-to for people facing significant change (for one of various reasons), can be read online at https://creatingrecovery.studio/
moya 