The orange trees are at the peak of their aromatic blossoming as I hang out with my increasing reluctance to surrender my cherished "alone time" in order to be or to have a house guest.
The Ojai Valley hums from sun up to sun down. Billions of bees are at work busily pollinating the orange groves, now at the absolute peak of their overwhelmingly fragrant, sweet and spicy blossoming. In the past weeks cricket sounds have increased geometrically as tree frog sounds have receded into the background. The roses in my containers and in my landlords’ rose garden are beginning to bloom with such exuberance. In the mountains the monkey flower, lupine, wild hyacinth, wild peony, mallow, nightshade, scotch broome and poppy are in bloom. The sycamores here and in the mountains are filling out with leaves. So, too, the great black walnut tree under which I’ve napped and read in my hammock all day today.
I’m just back this week from a weekend visit with one of my closest friends. I drove up to spend a last time together in the sweet, beautiful home just north of San Francisco from which she is about to move. Her space is one that, like my own, cradles and holds me safely and in beauty. I roost in a tiny womb-like room separate from the main living area. As one might in an old-fashioned inn, I choose to do my morning toilette with a thermos/pitcher of hot water in a large washing bowl. I use a modern version of a chamber pot during the night just as I do at home in my tent. I love the self-contained ness of having all my things in this dear little space rather than sharing the bathroom upstairs in the main house and having my “stuff” all over the place.
Over the years as we’ve visited back and forth, I’ve always appreciated having this really separated physical space for the nights and early mornings. Whether I’m away from home visiting, or when I have a friend visiting here, I always have an incredibly strong need to have “break-time” during our visit: real physical/psychic space in which to retreat completely into my own energy field. When she or other friends visit here, they have my studio at night while I cocoon in my tent. When I’ve visited other friends’ spaces, over these years in California, I’ve usually slept in the womb-like nests I’d make first in my van (in the early days) and later on in my little station wagon.
Despite how much conscious care I bring to the process and despite how very dear and similar in nature and preferences my women friends are to me, it seems to be getting harder and harder lately for me either to visit or be visited if it’s for more than just several hours of a day and/or evening. Despite the sweetness of the times we share hiking out in nature, laughing, telling stories, savoring good food, hanging out, so much of me prefers to stay home, to be just with myself.
When I’m visiting or being visited, I can and do readily surrender into the sharing of time/space/energies, to the unfolding of the “being with” experience. I usually have a delightful time, as I certainly did this last weekend. Yet, it seems to take enormous psychic energy for me to make the transition, to give up the being alone in order to move into the “being with” space. And, I’m always enormously relieved to come back into my aloneness no matter what joys there have been in the shared time.
There’s no way to know whether this intensification is merely a passing season in my life or whether I’m on some trajectory in which it will only become more so. I watch with some considerable curiosity and interest. I give myself permission to honor that this is what’s so for me now. And, I give myself permission to consider very carefully what visiting plans I make.
I notice that I’m still perfectly happy most of the time to keep in close and frequent contact with long phone “visits.” I often really love having my dear friends as “phone company” while I meander about puttering with this or that in my space. I seem much more comfortable with the easy in/easy out of phone contact! These days it seems so much less energy-expensive than long periods of in-person sharing. And, it seems to provide just the right amount of contact just when I’m wanting some sharing.
What sense I can make of all of this, when I incline to making sense of it at all, has to do with the extraordinary need I seem to have to be free to float in time, to have as many degrees of freedom as possible moment to moment. It’s difficult for me to feel the press to coordinate with another being over more than one day. Sleeping, waking, eating, gathering the escape velocity to leave the house, being connected /communicating, being inward and spaced out, figuring out what one wants to do with oneself and with another. How people who live together manage all this coordinating is beyond my comprehension! Even the thought of it all feels stifling and somewhat claustrophobic for me. Clearly that’s why I find living alone so incredibly spacious and delicious! And, it’s why I feel so blessed that I somehow knew early on that I should never consider birthing or parenting children.
Originally published in April 2002
