A SOLITARY SECRET

I'm sitting in the brown light of a small dusty lamp that sits on my desk. This is
where the magic happens. The keyboard. My writing piano. There's a poster of Jack
Kerouac and Neal Cassady hanging to my right. To my left is a signed photo of Charles
Bukowski, framed. They insure the well never runs dry. The Living insure that it does.

I don't mind being alone. I prefer it. Here's a quote I think best explains my feel-
ings about it:

          I find It wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.
          To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome
          and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the
          companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Know who said that? Thoreau. I agree with him.

Many great minds, the best writers and thinkers mankind has ever known, would
probably, agree with Thoreau's sentiment. Not that I'm comparing myself to such lumi-
naries, I'm Just saying I understand. It's good to be alone. It's good.

So why write? What is this need to communicate? To be understood? To be
heard by the very public I avoid? I'm a misanthrope but then I contradict myself by
making attempts to be sociable.

I hear them talking about me when I'm not looking. Sometimes I catch them in
the corner of my eye, whispering. I turn to catch them and they plaster toothy grins on
their pasty mugs. They look me dead in the eye. To be pointed at and whispered about
all your life is one thing. But I know something they don't.

There's not many friends in my life. I meet people, yes, I do meet new people.
They immediately find me interesting, then I watch them dissipate like so many clouds
in the atmosphere. A month later I'll pass them on the sidewalk, wcitch them cast their
eyes to their feet after they recognize me. It's horribly shallow but such is the nature of
the common man. Nevertheless, it does cause one to think after a while. What have I
done, what is it that I consistently do, to create such behavior?

Ah, life is too short to ponder such banalities. One such as myselff must write. It's
the only act that provides lasting meaning to life. And life is my passion. It's my only
shot. I came, I saw, I wrote.

I never knew my father. He died before that could happen. And unfortunately the
most lasting memory I have of him is seeing him sitting on the couch wearing a white
t-shirt and blue jeans, unresponsive, catatonic. Placed in front of him was a black
garbage bag that contained all his belongings. My grandfather told me, "Steve's going
to the hospital again." It took me five years to understand that "hospital" was a code
word.

Of course, it was finding out why, that planted the seed. And I've been waiting
for it ever since.

Sometimes it happens in the shower. I turn the water off and listen. Sometimes
it happens when I'm driving. Sometimes it happens when I'm with someone and I ask
them to repeat themselves. Sometimes it happens when I'm alone. It happened just
now.

Maybe it's the fear. The fear is tricking me. But it's the fear that has made me
appreciate my life. It's the fear that has made me not take it for granted. But some-
times the fear seems to be the reality and that's what gets me. What's worse, the fear
of it or the actual...

So I write because of the fear. I know it's something they don't understand.
They've read about it in books, they've studied it in their universities, they find it to be
a tragically romantic trait in an artist, but when they're face to face with it, it's some-
thing else entirely. But that's okay. I prefer to be alone. And I know something they
don't.