I must admit from the start that someone else came up with the title of this post. The quote stuck with me while the author’s name did not. If I could remember where I originally stumbled upon it, I would gladly acknowledge its creator. If anyone knows then let them speak via the comments section or forever hold their peace.
I am further surprised that I remembered this quote verbatim as my memory has always been a bit shaky and yes, I was punished as a student anytime rote memorization was required. However, I was always quick on the conceptual uptake so I got by.
Why did this particular sentence cling to my withering memory neurons? A couple of unrelated reasons. The concise imagery created by the wording almost makes it a ten word story, a piece of Twitterature, or a flash fiction piece (a short story form recently re-introduced to me by my fellow Substackian Nick Calder). Perhaps the most well-known example comes from Hemingway who supposedly wrote the six word story “For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Worn.” He could have used the format to write his epitaph “For Sale: Suicide Shotgun. Used Once” but now I am being morbid.
Then there is the terrifying monolithic denseness contained in the words “The Alone” that bring to my mind the even more terrifying imagery of God speaking to Moses from the burning bush. After God told Moses to lead the children of Israel out of slavery, Moses asked God who should I tell them sent me. God said tell them the “I AM” sent you. Maybe that’s when Moses developed his speech impediment. It would certainly would have scared me senseless.
Acknowledging that the I AM encompasses all things including The Alone, I don’t attached any religious significance to The Alone’s existence. Then again, I don’t believe it to be malevolent. The Alone sits inscrutably unaligned between light and darkness offering itself as a tool of the I Am if needed.
For the purposes of this discussion, do not confuse being alone with loneliness - a condition that was declared an epidemic in America by our Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. In his recently released study, Murthy defines loneliness as “A subjective distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or inadequate meaningful connections, where inadequate refers to the discrepancy or unmet need between an individual’s preferred and actual experience.” An epidemic of loneliness caused by a pandemic of isolation. That’s called a bad outcome caused by bad government, not an epidemic. Maybe that’s loneliness and perhaps I am thrown off by the word “perceived” in their definition, but that’s not The Alone.
The Alone is not absence or apathy. I can be alone without being absent and I can sit still without being apathetic. Sitting still alone requires great discipline - a fact nailed by Pascal’s in his oft quoted observation “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Ultimately for me, The Alone creates time and space for my inner self to contemplate the effects of unpredictable and unavoidable life events - both joyous and tragic.
I doubt if the Surgeon General has read this antidote for loneliness from Patrick Phillips 2015 poetry collection Elegy For A Broken Machine . . .
Elegy for Smoking
It’s not the drug I miss but all those minutes we used to steal outside the library, under restaurant awnings, out on porches, by the quiet fields. And how kind it used to make us when we’d laugh and throw our heads back and watch the dragon’s breath float from our mouths, all ravenous and doomed. Which is why I quit, of course, like almost everyone, and stay inside these days staring at my phone, chewing toothpicks and figuring the bill, while out the window, the smokers gather in their same old constellations, like memories of ourselves. Or like the remnants of some decimated tribe, come down out of the hills to tell their stories in the lightly-falling rain— to be, for a moment, simply there and nowhere else, their faces glowing each time someone lifts, like a gift, the little flame.
— Patrick Phillips