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solitude

A confinement in body …not in soul by Monique Lucy Weberink

in My own creations by
At Dusk – Emma Justine Farnsworth, 1894
Emma Justine Farnsworth ~ At Dusk, 1894

 

A confinement in body …not in soul.

What started 5 weeks ago as a horrible time for me due to the Coronavirus and being in confinement turned out to be a useful period I really needed without even knowing it. 

Of course the reason for this lockdown is awful and I feel really sad thinking about all the victims who lost their lives, in solitude even.   I feel scared about the economical consequences as well.

However personally, this period of solitude has given me the opportunity to step back and think about the meaning of my own life. Who am I really, what do I want and what is important to me?  

Unquestionably I love to eat in restaurants but now I cook wonderful meals and sit for hours at the table with my husband and son, having interesting conversations.  Really listening to each other.

I like to travel, but actually I was a bit tired of all the traveling lately. Now I sit on the sofa with masterpieces by Tolstoy, Dostojevsky and Proust and I travel to all these places I have never been with them as my guides. I am not just traveling geographically but as well in time. How wonderful this is! 

Now I have the time to play with my cats (and with my husband!) I do not forget to water all my plants, I sit on my balcony and I really enjoy the rays of sunshine. I look through photo albums and I relive my youth.

Actually I start to feel more relaxed and when the lockdown is over, I am not going to shop or dine outside, I will go to the beach with my husband and son, to see the sun fall into the sea.

Just the three of us. 

 

Las Palmas, April 21th 2020

TOGETHER IN OUR ENDLESS SOLITUDE ~ PAUL ELUARD

in Poetry of Art by
Nuchs and Paul Eluard by Man Ray

 A poem by Paul Eluard

“I cannot be known
Better than you know me

Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man’s gleam
A better fate than for the common nights

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude

Are no longer what they thought themselves to be

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.”

― Paul Éluard

Keep Reading

VIRGINIA WOOLF ~ SOLITUDE

in The words that make sense... brilliant writings by writers... by

“To love makes one solitary, she thought.”
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)

ANNA AKHMATOVA ~ IN THE EVENING

in Poetry of Art by

IN THE EVENING  BY ANNA AKHMATOVA

The garden rang with music
Of inexpressible despair.
A dish of oysters spread on ice
Smelled like the ocean, fresh and sharp.

He told me: “I’m a faithful friend!”-
And lightly touched my dress.
How different from embraces
The touch of those two hands.

That’s how one strokes a cat or bird
Or looks at slender lady riders…
Just laughter in his quiet eyes,
Beneath his light gold lashes.

And the despondent voices of the violins
Sing out beyond the hanging smoke:
“Give blessings to heaven above
At last you’re alone with your beloved.”

March 1913

SYLVIA PLATH ~ ON LONELINESS

in The words that make sense... brilliant writings by writers... by

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath

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