It’s time for my favorite Tanya Davis poem, the one I should probably make an attempt to memorize so I don’t forget it.
I love this poem, because it is how I want to be – happy, in myself. Whatever the physics of a body alone, and a tree falling in the forest, unheard, there is also the physics of a thing freezing, releasing heat. Within these antithetical ideas, too, is the crowdedness of aloneness. Aloneness doesn’t have to be alone, really. I think… I think this is one of the best truths. Too many people greet solitude with grief. Instead, I want to be, in my self, happy.
Happy in my head.
Happy.
by Tanya Davis ©2009, all rights reserved
Society is afraid of alone though. Like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements. Like people must have problems if after a while nobody is dating them.
But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless, and lonely is healing if you make it.
You can stand swathed by groups and mobs or hands with your partner, look both further and farther in the endless quest for company.
But no one is in your head. And by the time you translate your thoughts an essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those “sappy slogans” from pre-school over to high school groaning, we’re tokens for holding the lonely at bay.
Cause if you’re happy in your head, then solitude is blessed, and alone is okay.
It’s okay if no one believes like you, all experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can’t think like you, for this be relieved, keeps things interesting, life’s magic things in reach, and it doesn’t mean you aren’t connected, and the community is not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it.
Take silence and respect it.
If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it, if your family doesn’t get you or a religious sect is not meant for you, don’t obsess about it.
You could be in an instant surrounded if you need it.
If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it.
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.
from “How To Be Alone,” by Tanya Davis
Poetry Friday is at Carol’s Corner. Whether alone today, or diving into crowds to continue shopping for Christmas and Hanukkah, may you find a moment to be —