BlueKobo

::: THE SHELTERING RETREAT OF SOLITUDE :::

Socializing can be exhausting; I’m happiest sharing solitude with that one companion who prefers a cozy fireside over a grand dinner party, a good book and pajamas above any mixer. Children instinctively know this: they love to be alone because that’s where they can really know themselves…and where their dreams take flight. Healthy introversions are radically good for the soul...

Seriously now: I tire of excessive travel, of ambition, of competition, of all the various posing required by the rat race. Sometimes I wonder why people trot the globe looking for populations to serve when within seven miles of where they sit there's more humanity in need than they could spend a lifetime fulfilling.

Oftentimes I feel like living like Thoreau (or Henry Beston, or Ann LaBastille). Preferably with a nearby companion. To live quietly, simply, frugally, spiritually...with an aim to perfect each other's highest self, to help heal the planet, and to reduce the suffering of others. I have long served the very young and the very old, and I will continue this service. My cabin could be in the woods, in a small town or medium-sized city, anywhere where tranquility reigns, or can be created.

I am not bound by geography: I own an enterprise that can be practiced in any location. For more than two decades I taught at several top-shelf colleges, and now run my own therapeutic clinic. I also have a thriving consulting practice and so am free to pick up stakes anytime I choose and plant them anywhere I wish. Tumbleweed is my favorite flower.

You’ll see the geography of my desires shuffle a bit as I explore. Kismet and I are trying to bond as we hunch over the big oak refractory table, spreading out old-fashioned maps and cutting up lengths of string as distance-markers to the Indispensable Places.

I have the good fortune to be in a position (not well-heeled, just considerably flexible) to continue my work, as a writer, teacher, and now a clinical therapist, wherever I land. But I want to land in a place that welcomes me...a town that comes to know my name. Or not. A place where I meet someone selling midnight oil and together we burn it.

Or perhaps one day I will greet the train carrying this new ally, this co-chosen confederate, and welcome her to my cabin. Or we may occupy a pair of tepees, side by side, or a duplex tree house, maybe an abandoned caboose on the fringe of a ghost town. Maybe a cozy radial of caves on the mountaintop. Maybe adjoining suites on the 14th floor of the thin but snug Rhyzler Building. No matter which, we will still be able to view the sunrise and hear the birds and walk around, unimpeded, in our slippers.