How much time do you actually spend on your own without your face in your phone? What does solitude mean to you? is it the unbroken space of time alone or doing stuff without company, which I’d argue might not be solitude but more distraction from alone-ness which so many of us are so anxious to avoid
two books I have read that sing about solitude and are so different they utterly compliment each other are Sylvain Tessons Consolations of the Forest – the story of his six months alone in a cabin in Siberia wrestling with heartbreak and alcoholism as he survives on dried pasta Tabasco sauce and litres upon litres of vodka. it is poetic and also very funny especially about how pathetic we each feel after a break up and particularly when it’s by text. it’s all the more moving when you can consider how he survived Siberia and then almost killed himself falling off a roof when seriously boozed-up at home back in France poor sod
the Book of Silence by Sara Maitland is quieter and more introspective and brilliantly conversational. don’t feel sorry for me she says at one point, explaining how she chose to go live on a deserted Scottish hillside – a deliberate radical decision to dive into intense silence. She also writes a brilliant history of those she calls silence hunters, hers is one of the few books I’ve read twice and know that I’ll go back to again
I spend a lot of time alone mostly by choice. I also travel a lot, usually on my own. Rarely do I feel lonely though when it has struck me that I have usually been in a city, often a city I know, when suddenly I can feel desolate and insignificant, unwanted and unneeded like a lost atom
I loved these two books because they storied the beauty of solitude and talked through spirals of loneliness and the differences between. I’d love to have a drink with both of them – in Sylvan’s case maybe a coffee. He might be a big-time boozer – he certainly was when he wrote the book – but also acutely perceptive. how’s this thought; sometimes the best cure for loneliness is to spend more time on your own
think about that one, I know I do
