Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Alicia Kenworthy's avatar

This is so good, Joshua! I'd bookmarked it and am just sitting down to read now. Your metaphors with academia are beautiful. We do love a good survivalist mentality in America, don't we? Perhaps the influence of religion and a Protestant work ethic, the land bringing us closer to God etc etc. And there is so much healing to be found in the wilderness... But yes, loneliness kills. That $500k is tempting but I wouldn't last two days on that show.

Expand full comment
<Mary L. Tabor>'s avatar

Super essay. I offer Auden (Stanza breaks won't show in comments.):

Alone

Each lover has a theory of his own

About the difference between the ache

Of being with his love, and being alone:

Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone

That really stirs the senses, when awake,

Appears a simulacrum of his own.

Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;

He cannot join his image in the lake

So long as he assumes he is alone.

The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone.

Are always up to mischief, though, and take

The universe for granted as their own.

The elderly, like Proust, are always prone

To think of love as a subjective fake;

The more they love, the more they feel alone.

Whatever view we hold, it must be shown

Why every lover has a wish to make

Some other kind of otherness his own:

Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

--W.H. Auden

Expand full comment
10 more comments...

No posts