***

Since arriving in Chicago a little more than twenty years ago, I’ve been going to school in The Loop—to study or to teach—surrounded by some of the world’s tallest buildings and close to the world’s first skyscraper. One of my friends, with whom I used to ride the school bus to and from our homes in the desert, lives in Boulder and thinks riding a train to The Loop every day exciting. She likes the idea of anonymity, of watching different people and being free to read and daydream. She sees the advantage of being close to museums, restaurants, theatres, parks and train lines fanning out through the city. And I do too. But truth be told, I’ve grown tired of it. Tired of noise, crowds, being smashed together with strangers and not seeing the sun properly set. Sometimes, I tell my friend, I stand with a bag of books and papers on my bad back for at least half an hour before I can get a seat. Other times, I insert a book between my face and the crotch just inches from my face.

If Chicago is a different beast in summer than winter, in a pandemic it’s a different city altogether. One that shrinks down to a handful of ‘The 77’ while the other areas seemingly recede into the burbs. I’m fortunate. I like my neighborhood and my neighbors. And had I been in my 20s, hormones alone would’ve propelled me into the pandemic. But now, I think I could easily become a shut-in if not for my beagle. We stroll through streets, parks and along nearby trails. A few others meet up with us to walk together-in-distance. We have play dates in backyards and courtyards and soon, this becomes a sort of happy hour for us as well.

Some bosses are sending employees working from home boxes of wine and people are joining wine clubs so, in our building, there’s no shortage of vino. Only one young person is desperate to go to the bar so she can paint her nails and flirt. The rest of us don’t ever want to wear a bra again and are happy to hang out on our back decks, sharing a bottle of La Fin Du Monde and homemade fries. We discover the list of what can’t be delivered to our hood within the hour is short and local delivery services that bring popcorn, chips and frozen pizza sell things like vibrators, lube, and edible underwear. Not an egg to be had, but by God, you can be getting your candy pants kink on before the latest episode of Dateline ends.

My diet reverts to arroz y frijoles, what I ate college. Rice and legumes, the same meal I ate twice a day when I lived in India. Whenever my neighbors venture out into the world, which mostly means to a grocery store, they leave oranges, chocolate, tulips and, one day, six eggs at my door. I’m so touched by the huevos I don’t know what to do other than start slicing potatoes and heating the oil.

One evening I soak in a bathtub with lavender and Epsom salts and listen once again to MLK’s 1967 Christmas Eve Sermon on Peace, on his dream deferred. The sermon transports me from D.C. to Birmingham to impoverished black ghettos and riots on the street. I think of shootings all across Chicago, the riots, the looting and the BLM protests where we mask up and try to distance ourselves while raising our collective voices. I think of people who’ve lost their jobs and insurance, those who never had the latter, essential workers who work in fear and confusion and all the people in my family who’ve perished during Covid, almost all of them because of it. A cousin my age had to decide when to disconnect her mom and brother from ventilators, when to say goodbye via Zoom. I meditate on the dream of life deferred. And I try to figure out exactly what King meant by ‘cosmic companionship.’ 

It’s not hard to see all life is interrelated—we’re reminded every time someone coughs without a mask. Beyond that, I’m searching for something to do with faith, in the interconnectedness of our current struggles and in the struggle with the self in and out of isolation. Over the long run, how will isolation affect the balancing act of ‘peace within and peace without’?

***

When I was young, I believed I had to go out into the world to understand the cosmic. I didn’t think it was accessible in my small desert purview. So, after college, quiero action​ prompted me to strap on a rucksack and hit the road. Alone.

While hitchhiking through Portugal’s southern beaches I befriended some Algerians. We’d hang out for hours, passing around a joint and eating ice cream. After a couple of days, they began inviting me back to their place, where they lived communally, for home-cooked meals doled out of enormous pots and pans. They admitted they found traveling unaccompanied peculiar and thought Americans living alone mentally unhealthy. I confessed that after living with others my entire life, I found living alone a luxury to be savored. They asked if I ever got lonely and I blithely replied, “I long to feel as free with another as I do in solitude.”

Today, I imagine my Algerian friends would find it hard to believe that, after two months seeped in solitude, I haven’t experienced boredom or loneliness. When not reading, writing, popping in and out of dog pose or walking the dog, I bounce back and forth between the piano and the get-to-someday projects. After nearly a decade in the same place it’s time to go through shelves, cabinets, clothes, a VHS collection, and boxes of correspondence. While playing CDs, I organize photo albums, recycle unbelievable amounts of paper and contemplate closet space, space between houses, buildings, bars, cars. I fantasize about returning to the desert or a spot insulated by Fourteeners, where cucurucú ​would wake me instead of trains, sirens, leaf blowers and those whose floors neighbor my ceilings. And I imagine children playing in spacious desertscapes instead of sneaking beneath yellow caution tape at playgrounds.

As kids we spent hours playing where the sidewalk ended and the desert continued, by ourselves and with others. We had no problem spreading out in the prairies. And we didn’t worry about coughs, germs, or serial killers. Our parents rarely reminded us to watch for snakes, scorpions, and coyotes. We knew they were there, sharing the space with us. We knew we were interconnected.

Who knows when I’ll be back to my desert, or at what point I’ll grow tired of being alone. Admittedly, I miss hugs, kisses, massages, movie theatres…and I’m often tired of myself, which is what booze is for. Solitude is a kind of spaciousness. And though it may not guarantee attention to the relationship with the cosmic or the self, isolation encourages it. So, in isolation, I try to look at what’s behind being tired of self and how deeply it’s tied to loss, grief, space, and place.

 Though no one asks directly about the relationship with the self, everyone asks: How are you doing in seclusion? I explain how I’ve been picking at May Sarton’s Journal​ of a Solitude​, savoring it because it’s bound to end. Todo se acaba en este mundo​, said my abuelita, whose name was Soledad, which means solitude. So, I add, “I come from Soledad. And, like Sarton, for years I’ve found the return to soledad​ something to look forward to after obligatorily—or even after happily—spending time with others.” 

In my journal I write: We make sense of being in relation by being alone.