Sumnonrabidus's Blog

. . . . I don’t know. I keep thinking about – and sometimes writing about – what it means to be alone. That has probably been a theme song in my inner world for most of my life.

(Note: This is not a “poor me” bit of writing.)

When I was in junior high school – 1957-1959 – after I finished my classes, almost every day I walked the mile or so from school to the church where my dad was pastor. Alone. I was learning to play the organ, and the church, of course, was the only place to practice. (It had a Baldwin model 5 electronic instrument.) Besides, they were paying me about 10¢ an hour to play for some of the services. When I finished practicing, I walked about a mile in the other direction to get home. Alone.

I actually liked being alone, except when it was snowing (Far West Nebraska). I had many adventures in my mind. If I timed it right, after my practice I could walk up Sixteenth Street to the main street of the town and say “hello” to the cowboy man – you know, western style boots, 501 Levis, and a cowboy hat – who very often walked there headed my way. I suppose I could say I was in love with him.

And when I got to the end of the  main street (Broadway), I turned west (due west in the small Nebraska city, streets laid out along the acre lines of the surrounding farms) and walked to our street about half a mile away. Just before I turned up our street, I passed a large John Deere tractor store. Another man, dressed like the cowboy except for the hat, was always behind the counter there, and I could wave at him through the large storefront window. I guess I was in love with him, too.

This is not a pornographic story about a fourteen-year-old gay boy. Of course I never got closer to those men than walking by, and I’m sure they would have been horrified if they had known what I was thinking. No, I know they would have been.

I say all of that to try to give some indication of my experience of being alone. It’s not about feelings that I did not understand. It’s about my sense that there was something that made me feel disconnected from the world, that whatever I was feeling or experiencing was not real, that I was somehow an observer, not a participant.

Suppose that feeling is universal. Suppose everyone in their heart of hearts lives that way. Suppose we all – all of us – search constantly for connection. Suppose that’s the basis of – shall we say, for example – our political associations. We vote for someone who seems to make us feel not alone.  Even if they are as distant and unreal and confusing as those two men were to me. Even if, by all criteria, they are – in their own ways – willing and able to do ANYTHING that will make them feel connected. Or at least in control.

Last night I wrote what I thought I would post here today. It was an introspective piece contemplating my current situation and trying to make sense of it for myself – or for the two or three folks who might stumble upon it. When I read it this morning, I realized that it was simply too personal, that it shared too much information about my trying to understand and cope with my “disease”.

Disease: “When it comes to disease [early 14th century, from old French – literally ‘a lack of ease’] science often moves faster than language, and the words we assign to the things which make us sick are often stranger – and more revealing – than we realise” (https://www.gavi.org/).

It is “dis” ease. “Dis” is an ancient Greek word meaning “apart from”. So a person who has a “disease” is one who is “standing apart from ease”. I am standing apart from ease. It is not easy to stand where I am. I am (as we all are) “apart” from ease. I know, I know, if one of my university “rhetoric” students from years ago had repeated a thought so many times in one paragraph, they would have been invited to a private conference in my office or earned a grade that would not have helped them get into graduate school. (That grade would not, of course, have prevented them from working for ImmigrantMusky.)

You see, I cannot stand apart from my (probably absurdly incorrect) understanding of the world/society we’re living in these days. There is a great parting between ease and me. That parting does not bother me. However, I would like to be at ease when I consider, for example, the destructive instincts of ImmigrantMusky. But who could be at ease watching and waiting for the (at least attempted) destruction of the way of life they have experienced for eight decades?

This is not a political diatribe (“continued discourse, critical dissertation”  https://www.etymonline.com/word/diatribe). If folks want the world they have known from their births to disappear, that’s their business.  Along with approximately 6,000,000 others in this county, I will eventually be unaware of the drastic changes. Dr. Alzheimer discovered some time ago that we are the lucky ones. I do, of course, have to make a decision. Do I want to have that grand medical school continue to give me the new medication that will slow down my brain’s wandering away from memory, or should I just let the next few years in America recede from my awareness?