I’m grateful for a brilliant, sunny morning. I’m grateful it’s Friday. I’m grateful for like-minded individuals. I’m grateful for seeing how things fit together. I’m grateful for 8th Grade typing. I’m grateful for the things that didn’t happen. I’m grateful to be sober today.
It’s Friday and I’m feeling pretty grateful about that. It being Friday, this happened yesterday:
When I was on vacation, I read The Lonely City by Olivia Laing. Another of her books is The Trip to Echo Springs which is really fantastic. It explores the connection between alcoholism and writing with a deep dive into Tennessee Williams—it’s a fascinating book. I was at the bookstore stocking up for my trip and saw 1and brought it along. It’s a fascinating exploration of the condition of loneliness and the nature of lonely people and chronicles some of her lonely time in New York as well as loneliness expressed in art.2 I loved how she described the experience of living in the city:
When one inhabits a city, even a city as rigorously and logically constructed as Manhattan, one starts by getting lost. Over time, you begin to develop a mental map, a collection of favoured destinations and preferred routes: a labyrinth no other person could ever precisely duplicate or reproduce.
The Lonely City, p. 8.
And I thought this description of loneliness was stunning:
Loneliness feels like such a shameful experience, so counter to the lives we are supposed to lead, that it becomes increasingly inadmissible, a taboo state whose confession seems destined to cause other to turn and flee.
The Lonely City, p. 25
What does that remind you of? I read that and thought about how many meetings I’ve sat at and heard other alcoholics talk about living on the outside, not really connected to other people and how drinking seemed to be the cure. I was definitely a lonely kid and I know one of the reasons I found drinking to be so magical was that it eased the pain of that lack of connection, of being alone. Drinking somehow made the isolation feel ok, almost on purpose. Deliberate loneliness can be intoxicating:
But after you’re done kidding around with yourself, you realize you’ve just replaced one kind of emptiness with another. I’m also struck by the sense of shame that is attached to loneliness. I happened to watch a few episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore show last night and one featured Mary and Rhoda joining a club for divorced people and a long discussion about how both of them felt defective for being alone.3 I think that feeling is down at the bottom of a lot of alcoholics, it certainly was at the bottom of this one.
I treasure my time alone now, maybe too much. But I don’t find any shame anymore in my solo meanderings around the city, my solo meanderings through life. Like the book says, there are no accidents and believe I’ve been placed exactly where I’m supposed to be. So, maybe it’s not exactly by choice. I’m cool with that.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Of course, I buy most of my books at bookstores.
The chapter on Edward Hopper is really fascinating and of course, there’s a big show coming to the Whitney at the end of this month—so that will be cool.
I have always maintained that there is a glimpse of my grandmother (who lived in Minnesota, and whose sister and daughter lived in the “Cities.”) towards the end of the opening credits, between the “And” and the “James” in the producer credits right after she throws her hat in the air in front of the IDS Center. I watched a lot of Mary Tyler Moore.