The Cost of Loneliness

The price one pays to obtain it

Market value

Cost / benefit ratio

Gross Domestic Paralysis (GDP)

Auction: what am I bid

The cost of solitude

The price one pays to jettison it

Gelatinous Diabolical Penis (GDP) 

The price or cost of oneliness

Sex drugs rock 'n' roll

What my bid

Mortgage the past present future

On loan

Currency exchange (dollars to do-nots)

Sex rugs rock 'n' stroll

Giant Dwarf Projection (GDP)

If these walls could talk

Lace curtains

Do you want to know a secret

Silos

The walls have ears

GDP

Rental (dis)agreement

Room for hire

Nowhere man woman child

The cost of living

Adjusted for inflation (or deflation)

Economies of scale

One is the (l)oneliest number

Enough

Is

A feast

The Alphabet of U and I

Consider the notion of making sense of things. The notion of making sense of objects, events, places, actions, people, even notions. Et cetera. And others. 

Humans found it necessary to create order. We came up with numbers and letters and other symbols. In the case of letters, we sequenced them, not infinitely like numbers, but finitely. Numbers are only infinite in how you use them, how you use the mathematical "alphabet," such as the digits 0 through 9. An alphabet theoretically could be infinite, if one's imagination were infinite. If the sequence of letters were not repeated, you would have to stop somewhere, or else it wouldn't be an alphabet. It would be something else. If the letters weren't culled, used as an original building block, the whole purpose would be lost. You'd be back to where you started: an inexhaustible ocean of random letters floating and bobbing, or sinking, or coming at you as waves, receding as waves, forever, ad infinitum -- crying out to be ordered and sequenced into an alphabet.

Where would we be without alphabets? Would there be world peace and harmony if one universal alphabet existed, and was adopted universally? In the post-digital world, will alphabets go the way of telegraph wires?

Forget, if you will, about the grand, universal notion of an alphabet. What about me? What about you? How do we order the capillaried, flickering drama of endlessly repeating nows?

I can only speak for myself, of course.

What is my alpha + beta and eventually + omega?

It's such a searingly personal question, even invasive.

Where should I begin? 

This is hard. I don't understand the question, or the topic, if there is one.

I imagined this would make for a whimsically profound, or profoundly whimsical, exercise.

Now I'm lost.

I might say my alphabet starts with watching, reading, and writing. But that sounds boring. I don't even know what it means.

You might say your alphabet starts with sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. But that sounds clichéd. You don't even know what it means, you decide, with an LOL, or a nearly silent chuckle (NSC).

Money, food, comfort, fame, fortune.

Again, I'm not getting a picture, certainly not a clear one.

Decades ago, I discovered a wonderful book title: The Alphabet of Grace, by Frederick Buechner. I never read the book. Perhaps it's time. (Or maybe I read it long ago and have forgotten.)

Love, mercy, rejection, acceptance, pain, surrender, truth, lies, arrogance, acceptance. 

At least our "alphabet" seems to be gaining some traction, heft, momentum. 

Sex, sin, oblivion, ecstasy, sobriety, silence, solitude, union, obsession, compulsion, love, mercy, rejection, acceptance, pain, surrender, truth, lies, arrogance, acceptance. 

Alphabet soup.

How many alphabet noodles (what else can you call them?)?

Who holds the spoon?

What kind of broth?

What kind of bowl?

What if, as you are almost finished, you find one U and one I at the bottom of the bowl?
 

insular

It is 4:41 p.m., and I have yet to leave the house today, spending time wrapping presents, napping, eating, and now napping. (Though the last sentence is long-ish, it is NOT a run-on sentence, which has nothing to do with sentence length, longevity, rhythm, or cadence. Look it up.) Is my staying in a reaction to the aforementioned frenzy or a tidal opposite of activity or mere holiday depression? (How dare one call it mere, ma mere.) But, having shaved and showered, I shall now venture out into the world, beyond the insular confines of my pauline walls.

100 days of solitude

One hundred days of solitude? More like 910, closer to 1,000 days of solitude. But who's counting? Let us define our terms first; one term, singular: solitude. We (the royal, solitary, sovereign we) are referring to the self not cohabiting, which decades ago might've been termed the bachelor's life, or "estranged" in a cheap novel or B-movie. Truth be told, though, in those numbered (sometimes numb and unencumbered) days of solitude not every day, or night, was a solo flight, with or without radar, with or without moral or immoral compasses. All of which might yet reduce the count of days significantly. But who's counting?

So solitude has its virtues, or at least its goals. Whether it is encountered in Reykjavik or Syracuse, solitude forces the issue of self. You gotta confront it, on some level, and see what you come up with after sifting through the sands; see what specks of gold you find, or sprinklings of fine ash and black dust on the beach. Is it volcanic debris? Or metaphysical flotsam (or is it jetsam?)?

I get confused.

Last night, I watched the shadow of a tree against the stark white backdrop of a garage in my horizon. The shadow, the light, the fence to the left on a slight hill. It was an utterly ordinary sight I soaked in at sunset as I peered through a window while sitting in a meeting. By meeting's end the tree still stood but the shadow was gone. The sun had set. It was enough. It was abundance.

I was not confused.

break fast, slowly

Upon reflection, breakfast is my favorite meal. This from a guy who sermonizes on the value and importance of communal eating. This from one who loftily pontificates on the tribal need for family interaction around one table, even if voices and views are discordant.

Breakfast involves ritual. Breakfast tea with milk, exactly three slices of Heidelberg Baking Company bread, preferably Cracked Wheat, with Earth Balance buttery spread, one slice with Welch's grape jelly.

I typically read from The New Yorker or the New York Times, one from several days ago.

I take my time.

Time takes me.

Solitary Refinement

I tend to prize solitude and seek moments being alone. This week forced me to revisit some of my premises about my domestic premises. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights I was back home, having been required to go back to work (not enough vacation days) while Spousal Unit and Irishstep Daughter cavorted at camp. Especially on the first two nights, I slept poorly. (Well, some of that, at least on Wednesday evening, may've been fueled by the espresso I had while having al fresco desserts with AnimatorSon and BalletDaughter at Frankie's Piccolo Bistro.) I stayed up later than usual, browsing the Double U Times 3 and reading and et cetera. Yeah, especially that et cetera. It's as if, contrary me, missed the friction, had no one to bounce off of, had no one against which solitariness provided a context, a refuge, or a backdrop. Coming into a house absent of the dog or children or wife, seemed, well, empty. (The cats don't count, all right. And only pisscat Nickie was around until Friday morning, when his nemesis Tommy sauntered home.)

So, this afternoon, upon arriving back, upon distributing the capillaried collection of clutter, what do you think I did?

Took a nap in the back room, by myself.

Go figure: the capillaried complications and configurations of self and context and solitude and space and time.

(Already missing BalletDaughter as she soon wings her way eastward across the night sky into the Berliner dawn. God bless.)