in solitude, "contemplate the size of my small courage"

“One receives as a reward for much ennui, despondency, boredom—such as a solitude without friends, books, duties, passions must bring with it—those quarter-hours of profoundest contemplation within oneself and nature. He who completely entrenches himself against boredom also entrenches himself against himself: he will never get to drink the strongest refreshing draught from his own innermost fountain.” – Nietzche

The loneliest day of the week, to be sure. Part of the problem was definitely waking up late and blowing off swim practice this morning. I made it through, but not feeling very courageous today.

“There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows.” Thoreau

Read Chapter V of Walden here: http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/chapter05.html

The kids went back to Mom this morning, and I’m facing a long four-day weekend. I’ve got some plans, but there’s no question there will be plenty of time to be alone. I’m gearing up for it, and hopefully I can get through it with the courage required for affirmation and happiness.

On a business trip in Boston. Went for a long swim in the hotel pool, took my time showering, and then had a beer at the hotel bar while waiting for a friend to show for dinner. Enjoyed the beer immensely. Still, I miss my children.

...because the line was too long at 30th Street Station. So I walked home along the river. It was dark, the wind was chilly, but the walk was quiet and nice. I felt happy to be alone, to have time on my hands, and for those precious thirty minutes there were no distractions.

“You can live a lifetime, and at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make the alphabet, nor to have fashioned words of what were only animal sounds, not to have crossed continents-each man to see what the other looked like.”

Being alone in an aeroplane for even so short a time as a night and a day, irrevocably alone, with nothing to observe but your instruments and your own hands in semi-darkness, nothing to contemplate but the size of your small courage, nothing to wonder about the beliefs, the faces, and the hopes rooted in your mind-such an experience can be as startling as the first awareness of a stranger walking by your side at night.” Beryl Markham