One Hundred and Sixty Five

All my life I’ve dreamed of travelling.  Up north.  To the city.  To places I’ve never been except in imagination.  Anywhere but here, wherever ‘here’ happened to be.  I’ve never been at home anywhere except in my imagination.

All my life I’ve dreamed of losing my way.  But not in the forest, like Dante.  It’s in the city that I lose my way, and in buildings like the Tower of Babel or Vanity Fair.  I’ve always been at home in the forest, an animal among other animals.  In the city I get lost among the featherless bipeds, alone in the crowd.

I’ve always been alone.  We all are, but the others don’t seem to know it.  Don’t want to know it.

We can’t know each other, or ourselves, unless we know that we’re always alone with ourselves, with our own thoughts.

What do the others think?  Do they think?  To think is to be made aware of how we differ, if they’re our own thoughts.

Most people don’t think for themselves.  Not because they’re stupid, but because they don’t want to be alone.

Fear of being alone makes them think what they imagine are other people’s thoughts, which gives them the comforting feeling of belonging to the crowd.  But it’s an illusion.

Thinking they’re part of a crowd, all of whose members think the same, are the same, prevents us from knowing who we really are.  One is always alone in a crowd.

I still weep for them, even now, because lost though I am, they don’t even know they’re lost.