mastering the art of french loneliness

I spent the entire day entirely alone. I didn't want to, which made it less enjoyable than it would have been had I planned it based on one of my not uncommon introvert time cravings. However, I think I made the best of it. I did laundry, vacuumed, cut fresh herbs from the garden to put in my lunchtime soup, read Herzl in the sun, played some Bach and Brahms and Rimsky-Korsakov, and watched Julie & Julia (on an actual tv, I should add, not on my laptop- extra points!).

These days, I'm proud of myself when I do anything that isn't lamely habitual. I'm in the process of preparing for a new direction, but I have no idea how long I will be kept in this holding area, this prep school of the soul and bank account. I'm not very adept at waiting, and absolutely inept at waiting patiently, so it's a miracle when I can do more than lull myself into a state of near-unconsciousness on a day like today that is all about patience.

Maybe this miracle is due to the fantastic few hours I spent with a semi-estranged friend on Thursday. I think that time really helped me come face to face with all the issues I've been suppressing since coming back. I talk about the Middle East and my new direction every chance I get, I'm well aware of that. But rarely do I get to talk right down to the core of the trip, to those ideas and inklings and experiences and observations that burrowed under my skin like happy, soulful parasites. Smoking white grape shisha and making hummus and re-opening an old connection made my hidden heart feel real again, and I was grateful for that today as I acknowledged the new stage of separation that I am beginning. It is the stage during which the experience begins to feel like a dream in the way its big images fade away and all that is left is the emotional residue of its many small moments. Memories now become memories of memories, cousins of memories, but their fragmentation allows them access to the numerous tiny recesses of my mind that manage to touch every thought eventually. Then the memories are like cousins not in the Western sense of the word (don't marry these unless you're royalty, but cultivate awkward, ill-defined friendships with them instead), but in its Middle Eastern sense (these can be found anywhere, in anyone you grow to love in any way).

And so that is how I explain why I cried today while watching what critics called "the feel-good movie of the year". Everything, absolutely everything, comes back to my desperate yearning for that something I cannot possibly name in that place that bears so many names.