It's snowing outside. I have a window seat, and my cafe is wondrously empty. I have consumed the best oatmeal (fluff-tastic!) with dried cranberries and I don't plan on leaving until well after dark, to spend the day in the solitude (amid people - my urban addiction) of my own thoughts and putting those thoughts to paper (or screen rather - my technology addiction). I spent yesterday evening with friends and there was a sense of insincerity, a boredom, penetrating the entire evening, as if we all felt we needed to be there, as if we were avoiding an emptiness of which we did not want to speak of, but that emptiness was all the more obviated by the awkwardness of each other's company. I felt it in each of us but I am unsure if they all felt it within themselves.
The End of Solitude (my oatmeal morning read):
"Under those circumstances, the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing. We should never forget that. It has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another and marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent can stay in touch with far-flung friends. The gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as the Internet's dimensionality has grown, it has quickly become too much of a good thing. Ten years ago we were writing e-mail messages on desktop computers and transmitting them over dial-up connections. Now we are sending text messages on our cellphones, posting pictures on our Facebook pages, and following complete strangers on Twitter. A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone.
"As a result, we are losing both sides of the Romantic dialectic. What does friendship mean when you have 532 'friends'? How does it enhance my sense of closeness when my Facebook News Feed tells me that Sally Smith (whom I haven't seen since high school, and wasn't all that friendly with even then) 'is making coffee and staring off into space'? My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude."
"Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television."
I rarely ever feel bored when alone; whenever panic does strike it is only in the sense that I am wasting my time frivolously. Is this pole any better of an affliction? Is its cause not of the same source? I can't breathe without a heavy dose of solitude but I don't think that condemns me to be alone; the distinction is crucial.
This could be an interesting read.
There is a class at Wash. U. this semester on Joyce's Ulysses and I am surrounded by five or so people reading it at different tables. For some reason I find this to be a comforting addition to the ambiance here. The pair at the table adjacent to me breaks their individual work so that the man (who has already read the novel) can ask his friend (who's reading the novel) that if she ever figures out who the man in the macintosh coat is that she has to tell him, as he's been dying to figure that one out. This somehow shifts to a conversation on the works Henry James.
I keep to myself, enjoying the momentary drift of eavesdropping, but hoping that the conversation doesn't last too long so I can get back to my own work.
And I see this man's name all the time yet never get around to reading anything by or about him to a great enough extent that I actually retain it.
I recently (and finally!) bought a collection of Emerson essays. I sleep with it but I've yet to crack it open. I'm waiting until my feet dangle upon the edge, as they inevitably tend to do, looking downward upon a desperate end. Only then will I open it up and feel my center of gravity shift gently backwards, and I will fall away from harm to marvel upon a warm blue sky.
The End of Solitude (my oatmeal morning read):
"Under those circumstances, the Internet arrived as an incalculable blessing. We should never forget that. It has allowed isolated people to communicate with one another and marginalized people to find one another. The busy parent can stay in touch with far-flung friends. The gay teenager no longer has to feel like a freak. But as the Internet's dimensionality has grown, it has quickly become too much of a good thing. Ten years ago we were writing e-mail messages on desktop computers and transmitting them over dial-up connections. Now we are sending text messages on our cellphones, posting pictures on our Facebook pages, and following complete strangers on Twitter. A constant stream of mediated contact, virtual, notional, or simulated, keeps us wired in to the electronic hive — though contact, or at least two-way contact, seems increasingly beside the point. The goal now, it seems, is simply to become known, to turn oneself into a sort of miniature celebrity. How many friends do I have on Facebook? How many people are reading my blog? How many Google hits does my name generate? Visibility secures our self-esteem, becoming a substitute, twice removed, for genuine connection. Not long ago, it was easy to feel lonely. Now, it is impossible to be alone.
"As a result, we are losing both sides of the Romantic dialectic. What does friendship mean when you have 532 'friends'? How does it enhance my sense of closeness when my Facebook News Feed tells me that Sally Smith (whom I haven't seen since high school, and wasn't all that friendly with even then) 'is making coffee and staring off into space'? My students told me they have little time for intimacy. And of course, they have no time at all for solitude."
"Boredom is not a necessary consequence of having nothing to do, it is only the negative experience of that state. Television, by obviating the need to learn how to make use of one's lack of occupation, precludes one from ever discovering how to enjoy it. In fact, it renders that condition fearsome, its prospect intolerable. You are terrified of being bored — so you turn on the television."
I rarely ever feel bored when alone; whenever panic does strike it is only in the sense that I am wasting my time frivolously. Is this pole any better of an affliction? Is its cause not of the same source? I can't breathe without a heavy dose of solitude but I don't think that condemns me to be alone; the distinction is crucial.
This could be an interesting read.
There is a class at Wash. U. this semester on Joyce's Ulysses and I am surrounded by five or so people reading it at different tables. For some reason I find this to be a comforting addition to the ambiance here. The pair at the table adjacent to me breaks their individual work so that the man (who has already read the novel) can ask his friend (who's reading the novel) that if she ever figures out who the man in the macintosh coat is that she has to tell him, as he's been dying to figure that one out. This somehow shifts to a conversation on the works Henry James.
I keep to myself, enjoying the momentary drift of eavesdropping, but hoping that the conversation doesn't last too long so I can get back to my own work.
And I see this man's name all the time yet never get around to reading anything by or about him to a great enough extent that I actually retain it.
I recently (and finally!) bought a collection of Emerson essays. I sleep with it but I've yet to crack it open. I'm waiting until my feet dangle upon the edge, as they inevitably tend to do, looking downward upon a desperate end. Only then will I open it up and feel my center of gravity shift gently backwards, and I will fall away from harm to marvel upon a warm blue sky.
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