flâneur

The weight of aloneness - Tommy Dixon

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I remember standing on the stony shore of Lake Ontario last January, a mean-spirited wind ripping across the water, the cold slicing through my coat, staring blankly, taking in everything and nothing at once, and realizing that it would be the loneliest year of my life. ~~~ Part of adulthood, I think, is realizing our aloneness as humans. That we belong to that aloneness, as much as we belong to anything. That it's woven into the fabric of being. After all, life is punishingly solitary. I'll never walk around in your brain and you'll never walk around in mine. No one else will ever experience the contours of your consciousness, but you. And as much as I listen to you, I'll never fully truly transparently understand. As much as you explain, I'll never know you half as well as I'd like to. I have all this inside me but, to you, it's just words. Don’t get me wrong, I love words but they're clumsy and confining and fail when it comes to understanding anything important. As close as we can

The Dinner At The Ball (Adolph Menzel, 1878) I remember standing on the stony shore of Lake Ontario last January, a mean-spirited wind ripping across the water, the cold slicing through my coat, staring blankly, taking in everything and nothing at once, and realizing that it would be the loneliest year of my life. ~~~ Part of adulthood, I think, is realizing our aloneness as humans. That we belong to that aloneness, as much as we belong to anything. That it's woven into the fabric of being. After all, life is punishingly solitary. I'll never walk around in your brain and you'll never…

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