Fragile Equilibrium

A poet friend (Meg Macleod) and I some time ago discussed the difference between solitude and isolation.  Then it was a passing curiosity; now it is no longer academic. Our conversation came back to mind when she posted this poem, which she kindly let me put here.

this is painful

this space

I always knew as solitude

and loved

because one step away

there was touch

Michaelangelo

painted it

infinite space

inflicted

in the moment of separation

not of our choosing

 --Meg Macleod, 2020

I have a friend who chooses to go on a silent retreat once a year. She goes into the desert and lives alone and without speaking for a week. It's called Our Lady of Solitude, but I redubbed it Our Lady of Perpetual Solitude.  For me, an extrovert,  going into a place without words for a week would be an eternity. My world, which is shaped by the words I see and hear and imagine and write would collapse in on itself.

At the end of a fortnight away from the things that shaped my everyday life, I am beginning to find a new rhythm. The first few days were painful. The unknowingness conjured bad memories of childhood fears and a hypervigilance that has outlived its usefulness returned with a vengeance and would not let me settle. My mind swam with images: the curve remembered from math class with its sword-like sharp rise--exponential growth; charts of people as ping pongs on a screen changing colour as they sickened and died; and statistics of infection rate and death rate. The data was everywhere and relentless, but there was no information. Data are points on a graph; information is meaning.  There was no meaning to be had in all this.

The uncertainty is oppressive. Dwelling on the consequences is worse. I choose not to stand on the edge of cliffs, but now that choice has been taken from me. Not for the first or, hopefully, the last time will I think how foolish the folks in charge are. How limited. They didn't pay attention in math class and apparently all they learned in school was to bully the 'smart ones.' They should have listened then, but on this precipice there is no looking back or looking forward. There is just now.

I can walk in isolation up over the hill to the loch where the swans and the geese still follow their own rhythms. I pass by the newly ploughed fields and stop to admire the careful, patient rows.