I now recognize the solo wanderers of Portland, Maine. They’re like me--the healed, okay me who doesn’t mind solitude, a short chat, passing smile, or taking up a cause on a weekend march as long as I can return to my aloneness. Of course, these wanderers all have different degrees of solitude and some need more of it than others, but they are all the same in how they evoke it: easy strides, easy breathing, and faraway looks as if instead of walking they're soaring like the seagulls above.
Here are descriptions of some of Portland’s wanderers:
The Cuban man who’s always riding his bicycle once told me he intended to end up in Miami, but he never got the fare together for the Greyhound, so he stayed in Maine instead. He’s always layered in flannel shirts and baggy pants because the weather is constantly changing. He hangs out at local food places where servers like and feed him. He’s in his mid-60’s, and he sleeps at the shelter, yet he looks healthy with his ruddy coloring and stoutness even though his life situation isn’t all that fine. Sometimes he grunts at others. He might be a bit mad, but he always has a smile on his face that makes his chubby cheeks collide into his squinting black eyes as if just heard a dirty joke he isn’t sharing with anyone.
The “sea captain” always wears worn hats--baseball cap, stormy kromer cap, ski hat, wool packer, Cossack, bomber hat--and worn boots—trench, hiking, work. His style is reminiscent of tough characters in novels or short stories by London, Dreiser, Crane, the ones who took on the system and lost, and his faraway look seems to be taken up by the memory of some past adventure. He’s a small man with a pointy nose and chin, and long auburn beard, but when he stops at the end of the sidewalk to take a puff on his cigarette, he looks beyond passerbys and tourists and seems as colossal as a sea captain navigating stormy waters in order to guide his crew safely back to shore.
The Beautiful woman does jumping jacks at the gym. She exercises alone, has her coffee at the Starbucks alone, and does her canvassing, for favorite causes like drug addiction programs, alone. Her beauty type is New England, Katherine Hepburn “I don’t give damn what you think about me.” She’s petite with white delicate features. She never wears perfume and dabs only some clear gloss on her lips. She walks around the city with purpose and smiles at those who get her attention. When I overhear the men ask her out for a date at the gym she says she’s seeing someone even though her constant aloneness proves otherwise.
The other day I was talking to my sister on my cellphone, so I stopped at a bus bench on Congress Street and proceeded with my conversation when a man stopped by and shook his head at my faux paus. I was going to tell him to “fuck off” with his rules, but then I thought about the unspoken oath I took to keep Maine’s silence alive so that I could continue having clarity to find myself and give others the same spacious silence to find themselves too, even if in finding themselves they realized they preferred to be left alone.
Like anything else, the beast of solitude needed taming, befriending, and embracing. At first, I refused any such relationship with it. Because I was raised on my parents' toxic, violent "milk," I've always craved distractions, gossip, problems. At first, I resented solitude's constant presence, like a nagging parent who points out wrongs in hopes a child corrects them. In my case thoughts, desires, anxieties, imperfections abounded, especially as the sun set and darkness happened. To curve it all, I drank too much beer but it made my ankles swell and body lethargic; then I befriended a gay men who invited me for drinks every so often so that we could criticize past relationships and those who sat around us. Then I called old friends from Miami and gossiped about their lives, which I no longer knew about or fit in with. My old life was done, and the silent present kept banging on my heart and soul while I adamantly refused it; instead, cutting away at the precious hands of time and throwing away its hours.
It's taken me seven years to surrender to solitude--to sit my ass down and keep my mouth shut--so that I could welcome in my version of heaven on earth and know what fits in it, like the hundreds of movies I've watched by silent, old classic, foreign, art-house, science fiction, and anime directors who have pushed limits on my views of the world and others; like the eight books I read daily and carry around in my tote bag to keep close and to read when I find even more extra time; like signing up for Burlesque classes here in town; like dreaming of traveling to Lake Como, Italy, in the winter to see how solitude, minus peak season tourists, feels like there; and like finding God, or a little tweeny weeny bit of the majestic, in my meditation. The most valuable lesson solitude has taught me is that time is precious, and I'm the only who can determine what's precious about it.
Recently, when my newly found friend Irene came rushing into my life, she brought lots of noise. At first, I thought my days as a lone wanderer were over, and I was heartbroken, so for an entire month I ate all the delicious food she made me, including blueberry crisps and crepes with fresh strawberry jam (Irene is an excellent chef who caters to people around town), and I accepted all her invitations to shop and drive around town. By the end of month, I was ten pounds overweight and muddled. When I told Irene I could not see her during the week because I had to work on my online classes and complete personal projects, she brushed away my requests and continued calling, bringing food, and insisting I drive around the city with her. most of the day Then I told her that I was going to stay with my sister in New York City for the rest of year, even though I lied. I have not seen Irene since I told her I was leaving and have now returned to my beautiful aloneness.
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