#solitude

#solitude

There is just a beautiful layer of snow on the ground deep in the woods. And it is still and cold. I'm starting early, climbing a mountain called Wright Peak. That means moving through near darkness in the hour before sunrise. There's just enough light in the woods. I can see, but there's no color. It's just like I'm walking through this black and white world of snow and charcoal lines of the hemlock trees, the boughs already really heavy with snow.

Under skies heavy with storm-gray clouds, the architectural ruins in Lee Madgwick's paintings seem to exist somewhere between reality and imagination. His works are not just landscapes but psychological portraits-of solitude, fragility, and the strange poetry found in decay. With a style that merges surrealism and realism in equal measure, Madgwick transforms the familiar English countryside into a dreamlike world that's quietly charged with tension.

As a lifelong proponent of close friends and tight circles, I saw this as my opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and meet new people, whether that was in my Shakespeare class or at random cafés around the city. I'd lived in the Midwestern suburbs my whole life before moving to Syracuse (a place that didn't feel much different) for school. So, in London, I was looking forward to making friends in a new kind of cityscape.

I've also been reading more. Actual books, that is. And buying way too many. But there is something to looking at those piles stacked around the rooms of my house. All that knowledge and history and art right there at my fingertips. And recently I picked up a magazine, a physical, paper magazine, and have occasionally again started sitting with a newspaper in the mornings. There's something about spreading it out on a table with a nice cup of coffee. Oh, the solitude...

She set a match to the candle wick. It casts a circular glow in the room. The glasses sparkle, the silver cutlery glimmers. Everything is in its place, but she can't help straightening a fork, adjusting a champagne flute. Her stomach flutters with a year's-worth of expectation. she glance in the mirror, its tarnish softened by the light, How many years? She can't believe 100. She takes her seat at the head of the table. "Is everybody here?" "Then let's begin." She says. She raises her champagne glass to the empty room.

The sea brought small treasures back to the shore that The Girl scours every day. She finds little things buried in the wet sand, she fills her pockets with them and walks back home. She lays the little treasures around the house. She wanders around, from one room to the other ; one is dark and cold. The AC works but the light doesn't when she flicks the switch.

"The summer rain in Mexico City has been driving Meme del Real crazy. "This season of permanent torrential downpour gets to a point where you're like, ' Enough,' he says with a sigh. "There's people who really enjoy it, but I'm done. It's too much introspection to be in here all day, to not be able to go outside. It forces you to try other things, to find a conversation within that rather than a resistance."

The smell of the Paris Metro is a blend of sweet, rubbery, and industrial, evoking memories of solitude and independence experienced during a summer in the city.

‘Living alone can be great, especially if the only alternative is to play the weaker sex to someone who needs to feel superior.’