Living Alone

I have been compiling my short stories into a book. Re-reading them, it occurred to me that most of my characters are people who live a ‘solitary life’, or who have found themselves alone at the end of their lives.

I felt quite sad when I realised this, but I guess it’s a situation I can empathise with, having spent most of my life alone - not from choice, I hasten to add. At least, not every time.

While many of us at some stage in our lives seek ‘a room of one’s own’ as Virginia Woolf wrote, thousands of years’ of traditional communal living is now, apparently, giving way to those who choose to ‘go solo’.

(Read Hamish McKenzie’s article, ‘Lone Rangers’, New Zealand Listener March 24-30 2012).

I was particularly taken with this quote by Eric Klinenberg:

‘We have to make a very clean distinction between living alone, being alone and feeling lonely. These are three very different things and we often times confuse them. People who live alone don’t want to be alone. They want to be in the world.’

It was an interesting observation and it made me think.

After my husband died I remember that I could last about three days on my own without seeing or speaking to another person, but then I found myself seeking out even the slightest connection with another human being, even if it was only a polite  ‘good morning’ while I was out for my morning walk.

I had always thought I was the kind of person who could easily live in a lighthouse.

This need for the contact with others – which literally drove me to temporally put aside my grief – made me realise that I would not dwell well in a light house.

It was quite an awakening.

I am content most of the time living alone, but it did make me realise that I do need people in my life, that I do want to be ‘in this world’ that I am not such a ‘Lone Ranger’ after all.

Everywhere this summer the pohutukawa trees – New Zealand’s Christmas trees – have been spectacular. 
Some years the blossom is sparse, but this year every tree has been ‘dressed in its best’.
Up close, or from a distance, the trees with their rich dark green leaves and glorious red blossom are truly something to behold. The clusters of flower heads, before they burst forth into bloom, are a soft silky silver grey, as is the underside of the leaves. The bark is thick and ridged in mottled shades of greys, browns, and reds; and warm to the touch in the summer sun.
These gracious trees line beach fronts and streets, parks and bush.
I’ve taken so many photographs.
Prediction states that if the pohutukawa flowers early and prolifically, it will be a long hot summer. This year the trees bloomed late and were still blooming long into January.
Here in the North Island, we are having a cooler, rainy, windy summer so far – I’ve only been for one swim.
I recall past summers swimming beneath the overhanging branches of the trees, the sea richly red with fallen blossom. What fun it was to swim through that dense red mat, feeling the brush of the soft needle-like flower bracts brush against my skin.
I was lucky enough to have two wonderful old pohutukawa trees at the back of a property I once owned. Their giant grey branches reached out over the river in graceful embrace. I loved to stand on a huge trunk with my back braced against another, and watch the tuis dip and dive among the branches above, and sip the honey-sweet blossom nectar.
Their song would wake me early, but I didn’t mind. I would lie and listen to them, knowing that soon it would be morning and high in the pohutukawa trees the bees would be at work gathering pollen, and that when the sun’s rays touched the trees, the red flowers would shine like rubies. 

LIPSTICKS!

Cleaning out drawers has become my latest ‘fascinating thing to do’. What an adventure! I’ve come across things I can’t identify. My dressing-table drawer is the lastest to come under scrutiny. Much to my horror, I counted ten lipsticks! Some still unopened. And yet I keep buying them. What is this? A collection? An addiction? A memory fade every time I leaf through a brochure or walk past a make-up counter?
And the colours! I tried one. Talk about vermillion! Why would I choose such a colour in the first place?
Perhaps one of my New Year’s resolutions should be ‘no more lipsticks until I use up what I have’. (I’m sure there are at least three lipsticks in my handbag).
Can anyone else identify with this conundrum?
I recall buying three lipsticks before Christmas – when I was supposed to be buying presents for my grandchildren. ‘You’ll want all three’, the brochure assured me. And I did!
I find myself eagerly anticipating every brochure that arrives in my letterbox. The first thing I check out is the lipsticks. Never mind revolutionary skin creams claiming to reduce or make vanish altogether wrinkles and age spots. I flip past those pages quickly – too late for me to start worrying about those.
No, it’s lipsticks I’m after!
Whether they come in shiny gold cases – a definite touch of luxury – or sleek aerodynamic shapes, I simply have to have them.
Now, the question is, should I stop this ridiculous obsession, or carry on regardless?
I’ll keep you posted.
Mean time, on to the next drawer!