I struggle with solitude a lot. What I mean is, though I enjoy my space, I don't want to be alone. I believe I don't want to interact with people but I want their voices, their warmth around me. Is this normal?
I recently rented a place in Benin city. I picked a part of the city that has a poor road system. Cars can barely get in and when it rains, it is inaccessible. I love the place. I can be myself, walk around nude in my apartment, get high, get real low, cook, eat out, smoke to my heart's content without worrying about someone bursting in on me unannounced. It is normal for folks to visit you without calling first over here. It is normal for your parents to appear out of the blue with a packed bag.
Solitude for me is that silence of night when everyone sleeps and the sounds are distant and indecipherable. That time when you can hear your breathing and your thoughts, when all the performance is not needed. That is my best time to write and think. There are other times when my lover will be right beside me and I will feel so alone. This is not solitude, I think. It is a more negative emotion and dangerous for me. When I feel like that I begin to think dangerous thoughts.
I envy people who have access to safe solitary spaces in this world and have the money to go there. I wish I could go some place where it is just me and the mountain air, the straggling trees, a cold stream that freezes sometimes and birds. I will watch the sky come down in clumps of dew, the way the sun hides behind the shadows of mountains, the ice chipped river, animals making their way through their own dilenmas. I believe I will learn more about myself in such a place than in a boisterous city.
In truth, I feel like since I moved to my own place, my writing has improved in sense of structure and story telling. I feel a little bit disconnected from myself anyhow and the same sacrilegious thoughts still stir in my soul but I am writing and reading better and for me that is worth more than gold. So silence for me is truly golden. I go days without saying a word even though I hold a continual conversation in my head, interacting with everything I see.
What I have not dared yet is to put off my phone. I am afraid that if I do so, something bad will happen. I am afraid that if I put off my phone, I might not have the willpower to put it on again. So I still linger behind the scenes, like a vouyer, listening to people talk, live their lives and try to find laughter among the debris of existence.
I am presently working on a collection of eleven poems. The poems are my reaction to something I saw on Netflix some days ago. I think it is one of the most chilling things I have seen on television. I am up to eight poems now and will hopefully be done with the remaining three this week. I am writing a dark thing and I know it and it worries me but not as it should and that is the biggest worry; that I'm comfortable in this skin of dark thoughts, twisted fancies. How did I become this cynical, pessimist; this warped?
I intend to leave the poems untitled and instead just use a general title for the collection. I do not know where to submit it yet and I feel like it won't be accepted because I am telling a story that does not belong to me. In so many ways, in writing these poems, I am telling stories of myself and of you, my reader, who knows what it means to be manipulated, twisted and forsaken.
It is solitude that has enabled me to write these poems. One thing I have come to learn about solitude is, it is expensive to maintain. To live a solitary life means to have money to maintain your distance from other persons around you. How do I do this? It is crypto that has made it possible. I have spent this year creating a space where I can be who I want to be, unecumbered by family obligations, love, friendship, work. It is hard. It is very hard and sometimes, unsafe for me. But I love it. I love knowing that if I am tired of humanity, there's a place I can go to and I will find the solitude I hunger for.
I thought maybe I will write a poem but it ended up being an essay. But here, a poem to keep you far into this night:
Terror of being alone
The solitary branch in the wind,
The bird of broken wings perched
On the leaf, the bead of river on the tip
Drowsy paddling down the waterfall.
The cacophonic tongues of many waters,
All that sparkle in the light, a camera
Shy in that independent moment,
Not sure if at the bottom, a life raft
Will lift body from pleasure into heaven.
It is this solitude that a prophet wanders,
Lost from his god, broken from the stalk,
Spine twisted with rust & warping
Of salt stained wood. He wanders
Seeking any groove, any mountain
That holds something holy, aloof,
Uncontested; somewhere a stone
For pillow, a carpet of dead leaves
For bed & feet will suffice.
O prophet where is your body?
How will you soar before heaven
To hear your god's anger & pain?
A solitary dog barks at the night.
He hungers for the passing season,
For the hunt, for the hand that
Once held his collar. The downtrodden
Path awaits all who come to
The mountain to pray. At the top,
The fire burns into the char of
Bones & prayers. This place
Is in the eye of that branch,
That bird, that solitary leaf
Floating on a frozen river.
This is a good place as any
To peel chrysalis from skin
& Like any pupae become something
More than a poet, than a prophet,
Than a terror struck soul.
There, I have given you something of myself. I have conversed with you this night. This is not an easy thing to say but you are a friend and this is important today. I love you and I hope that you are happy. Good night.