carolonely

tonight i feel lonely.  not the kind of "please-feel-bad-for-me" lonely, or the kind of "where-are-all-my-friends" lonely.  more like the "here i am, trying to decide what to give up for lent and there are so many things i should choose" kind of lonely.  the kind where you realize that you can't do things like set goals with another person.  the kind where you realize the path you're setting out on to achieve the kind of dreams you're having is one that no matter how similar your friends and roommates and lovers are, it will still be a path you'll have to travel alone// and you alone must muster the courage to say, "forget what other people think!  forget safety nets!  i'm living my dreams, okay!!"  //and it's you alone who has to stare at tom phillips' book and hiroshi watanabe & max wanger photographs and think, "why. didn't. I. think. to do. that."

roget's thesaurus lists the following under "lonely":
by oneself
solitary
companionless
friendless
forlorn
hermitic
depressed by solitude
isolated
secluded
desolate
unpopulated
uninhabited

i feel none of those except for uninhabited.  if i am a country i'm aching for railroad tracks and houses and frank gehry buildings to be put up.

on a separate note but related theme, i do think the word lonelily is lovely
(yes, like the damien rice song.),
as is this quote from "the tree of life": UNLESS YOU LOVE, YOUR LIFE WILL FLASH BY.
and lastly a video (courtesy of des), of the sorts that makes me want to move to a pond and build a cabin and grow rows and rows of beans.