SATURDAY
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Rod & Sunny: Photo by Bob
Gentry 8/5/1999
A Thought for Today
Each of us should be alone at times, if
only to confront ourselves.
SOMETH'NG
for SATURDAY
Forward - from the book "Alone"
What follows in this book is a collection of poetry and prose that touches
on a number of subjects; they have, however, the umbrella - I might have
said electric blanket - of being written of and about the state of
alone.
Attempting to define alone is futile, the symptoms and the end
result are always different. It is enough to say that if you believe
yourself to be alone, you are. Seemingly, there is almost no way to set
about with any success to circumvent or avoid its coming - even as you see
it approaching in the distance. But most often alone can be
reasoned with and it passes. Someone comes by and makes it pass. If not,
take it as a partner. We’ve all known worse.
Alone is not the end - or it shouldn’t be. In truth, it is a starting
place. One more square. One for reaching out.
I am not a joiner. Somewhere I once said that people join clubs now for
the very reason they once carried them, a need for security. Maybe I’m
alone more often than I should be, because I try to find security within
myself.
Though I believe very strongly in social intercourse, mentally and other
wise, the man who detailed the advantages of masturbation as not having to
dress up, being certain not to disappoint anyone, done on your own time
and at your appointed place, and, best of all, meeting a better class of
people, did have a point of view hardly arguable.
Alone, like love, regardless of what the primers say, can be a noun,
pronoun, adverb, or adjective - depending on its use and the extent to
which it comes, stays, or returns to your life. Darkness and retreat have
more than once been my cover. By now I’ve traveled deep enough into the
darkness that hiking back through any clearing is a journey not taken
without some thought.
With growing frequency I now plan nightly outings in the morning, awaiting
them through the day, and with approaching
darkness work myself into an apathy that a closing battle line could not
penetrate. I am never sure what I miss by staying home. Doubtlessly, I’ve
avoided disappointments that might have chipped away a little more of my
self-confidence. Possibly on one given night I missed the silver apple
that, bitten into, would have changed my life.
I chose the shadows, they did not choose me. I stay here securely not just
because I feel plain, but because disappearance is by now the easy way.
The habit. The worn path that I can trod knowingly and be assured safe
passage home.
Don’t ask me how it might have been, or what it could or should have been
like. How different all my days would be if I’d
strode securely into public sunlight. More and more I take the sun alone -
always at the edge of the clearing, close enough to the wood to crouch low
or retreat at ease should the beautiful enemy pass by.
I have never said I liked always being alone. I have said I like it better
than being with just anybody. The need to merely touch
someone I’ve seen, or imagined, can be so great at times that it’s as
close to madness as I ever hope to come.
The brushing of two minds, or hands, or bodies together. Even eyes focused
at distance can make the loneliest of us all alive and full of hope -
momentary or otherwise. And I have known two minds and bodies seemingly
compatible in every way to meet in love and be so alone together you would
swear they’d never met. We do meet each other over and over every day. But
centuries can seemingly go by before two people meet in some special way
that causes an end to their individual loneliness.
Much of this book is new. Since I go on being the same man trying to find
the answers to some of the same questions, some of these poems will be
newer to me than they are to you. Other poems were written years ago, but
never shown or shared, and some are taken from other collections. If I
have to describe them, personal and private come to mind.
But those words, too, have been for me nouns, pronouns, verbs - far more
than adjectives.
If these pages are so personal and private, why let them go
? Why not ? There is a chance, however small, that some one will
read, understand, even stop and turn in my direction.
To repeat myself, sometimes someone passes by and stops; then you’re not
alone. Some of these words are smoke signals.
Rod McKuen - 1975
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