Art of Solitude

You close the door. Now you're alone in a room, and your face goes slack. No one is there to hold it for you. Your body sits differently when it is not being read.

Alone long enough and the telling stops. Not the thinking, which continues. The running account of yourself that needs a listener, even an imagined one. This doesn't require a desert or a mountain. A closed door will do.

Zen master Dogen said you can go out and decide what the world is, or you can let the world come forward and show you what you are. He called the second one realization. Alone, with no story running, it happens by itself.

I can only paint alone. The brush moves freely when there is no one left to satisfy, including me. Ink goes down, gets wiped back, and flows where it wants. None of that survives an audience.

Alone, you are finally in company.