catkins, Kathryne

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Kathryne jumped off the ice-encrusted bridge before her students’ final papers were graded, December 2010. So, I guess her impulse to give up wasn’t premeditated. She dearly loved her kitty cat, but didn’t leave instructions about that (I was told). Virginia Woolf had a rather deliberate approach to the option. I don’t know whether she loved cats. November 2009, Janna’s approach was elaborate, methodic, including a note to be e-mailed after her death to everyone who loved her and directions about what to do with her cats.

sunrise, sunset, winter, spring

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I’m forever haunted by Kathryne’s suicide.

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springularity

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I’m no hermit, but I sympathize with the monkish way of life: highly away from chaotic city life below.

Love of solitude may have mystique, but it’s mostly cause for being forgotten—which is OK: Sought aloneness isn’t lonely.

Coincidently, when I went to bed last night, I realized again
(as I do sometimes) that I’m glad no one’s in bed with me.
I cherish the silence, reverie fading to sleep. So it goes when everyone you’ve loved is dead.

Daily, I cherish the hours at my desk, my keyboard, my tens of open-ended writing projects. As I “told” Jacques, I’m “never lonely, you know, just so singular, solitudinous by now.”

And I’m alone with “you,” whomever I keep near to mind.