Solo

Lately, I've been into words that mean one thing in one language, and with the same spelling, mean something different in another. Take "once". In English, it implies one time, a singular occurence In Spanish, it is the number eleven. The title of this entry is also in the singular, more often than not describing a person away from everyone else. In Spanish, while it implies one thing apart from other, it is also an expression of "only" or "just", as in "this and nothing more".

Commercial airplanes encounter air turbulence, its pilots never being able to predict where and when it'll happen because, of course, air is invisible and different currents at high altitudes are moving in different speeds and directions. They fly cautiously, holding on and trying to gently move with each bump and push on the fuselage of the plane. Suddenly, from one section of deceivingly clear sky to the next, the pockets of rogue wind fade and the plane slices through the air smoothly and effortlessly. The pilots and passengers who paid attention could look back at a rough patch and ask "what was that?"

That's kind of where I'm at now.

Sometimes I let people in because the timing feels right and for the moment, people are on their thoughtful best behavior. People forget themselves and "I" becomes "We" for - all too often - a short time. Once "We" becomes a fragmented collection of "Me", "You", and "Them", I start struggling with a comfortable place to be, and then suddenly...

...well, this time I've found myself alone in a deceivingly clear section of sky. I found myself in that turbulence, tried to either work against the push of other peoples actions and intentions or try to flow with them into pain and rejection, and then took a step back. I was invested. I was stuck on hope and optimism that things could go back to "we" in a few places, but it just wasn't meant to be. In the past, I held on for years - once for five years, once for eleven - because I valued time and commitment. Never one to say that it was time wasted, I did learn a lesson. With that recent step back, I also revoked investment. On one hand, that means that I'm back to going at some things alone, but on the other hand, I'm doing things on my own terms, and that makes me happy. With solitude comes an opportunity to be creative again and not just pass the time with company. I can keep looking for collaborators, people who are in the same place and time as I am. I can find people who believe in the "we", and the only thing outside ourselves is the thing we create together, be it a song, a story, a funny moment, or a great idea.

My lunches alone have become productive again, filled with writing and seeking, something like the days when I used to know Nons and started writing poetry on the way to creating the musical and huge movements in my creative world. It's kind of funny; In Spanish, if I describe you eating, I use the word "come". It comes from the word "comer". In English, if I want you to meet me here, and in this particular case, I'm talking about being here in this moment of understanding each other, of knowing what both you and I bring to this sentence, to this weird little self-indulgent page on the net, I use the same word. Come.