If you have love in your life, you have life.
Bernard Goetz
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'Lo.
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Most of my life I knew nothing about love. I still don't, but I'm beginning to get an inkling. It takes being alone for a long time to teach you how important other people are in your life. I've been essentially alone now for about 15 years. For 5 or 6 of those years I was in New York City, so there was plenty of human contact, but no one to come home to. For the past 9 years I've been living here where if I don't go to the market I see no one at all. Sometimes I sit downstairs and wait for the mailman just so I can say hello to somebody.
I maybe feel capable of loving someone now, but I don't feel capable of doing anything about it. Living alone also makes one self-centered and habitual in so many ways. I don't think I could seriously change my behavior to suit anyone, nor do I suppose anyone would put up with me, I have lapsed into eccentricities, ideosyncracies and stasis. My enthusiasm for life is tempered by having to rest up after every single task.
But I'm slowly beginning to learn about care, compassion, comradeship, sharing, thinking about someone and including them in my life. That's all theoretical, of course, because there's no one else here.
It was suggested that I go down to the senior center and make friends. I went there and watched the same old women play bingo and listened to the same old men tell the same old stories of what they did in the great war. I may be a senior citizen, but I'm not an old man. Oh, alright, I'm an old man.
Someone said I should get a pet. I signed a no pet lease. Even so, a dog won't do. Being on the 3rd floor there's no easy access for taking it out. It would probably poop on the carpet before I got my clothes on. A cat could get out but it would no doubt fight with the feral cats that rumble over the roof at night. I thought of getting a giraffe. She could chew on the leaves of the trees outside the window. But she'd probably go and get pregnant and then what would I do. I thought of a platypus, they're cool. But I hear they like water and I don't have a bath tub. I could get an iguana but I really don't care for reptiles all that much. I'll just have to settle for the fly that whispers in my ear and kisses my face.
"To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone" wrote Suzanne Gordon. I might as well face it, I'm a misfit. I belong with the misfits, wherever you are. Maybe there I can discover love.
DB
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Sing a summer song.
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4 comments:
Well, they say that love is blind, so you never know who you might just bump into. How about a bird for a pet? There's plenty over here that like to sing their lovely songs all day long and into the night.
Sometimes it finds us when we least expect it. Some might call that stalking. I call it dedication. ;) Hugs, Beth
Hi DB, Love stinks. I never knew love nor do I wish to know what it is, but I know compassion. My wife never even uttered the word in fact she hardly ever called me by name. Just "hey you" would do. I think I loved my dog and it prettended love me, so that I would feed it. Good luck my friend.
I think a cat is a great idea. We love ours, and he never goes outside. He is a great companion and a source of laughter and joy.
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