For me the most interesting thing about a solitary life,and mine has been that for the last twenty years,is that it becomes increasingly rewarding.When I can wake up and watch the sun rise over the ocean, as I domost days, and know that I have an entire day ahead,uninterrupted, in which to write a few pages, take a walk with my dog,lie down in the afternoon for a think (Why does one think better in a horizontal position?), read and listen to music, I am flooded with happiness.

 

I am lonely only when I am overtired, when I have worked too long without a break, when for the time beingI feel empty and need filling up.And I am lonely sometimes when I come back home after a lecture trip, when I have seen a lot of people and talked a lot,and am full to the brim with experience that needs to be sorted out.

 

Then for a little while the house feels huge and empty, and I wonder where myself is hiding.It has been recaptured slowly by watering the plants, perhaps, and looking again at each one as though it were a person,by feeding the two cats, by cooking a meal.

 

It takes a while, as I watch the surf blowing up in fountains at the end of the field,but the moment when the world falls away,and the self emerges again from the deep unconsciousness,bringing back all I have recently experienced to be explored and slowly understood,when I can converse again with my hidden powers,andso grow, and so be rewarded, till death do us part.