Isolation
Here, have a thing I wrote a week ago. It's vaguely based on a prompt from my creative writing textbook. Go go bad creative nonfiction. (Here on spring break and back in Ohio, the last one awake in this house, I'd give anything for the opposite of isolation right now. Sigh.)
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It’s been one of those days, I’m afraid. Work, lack of sleep, and a swarm of small annoyances have reached a critical mass like so much emotional uranium, and it’s got me thinking about the desert again.
Lately my favorite daydream has been jumping into the first car I find and driving west until I hit Arizona, somewhere in the bleached high empty space between Flagstaff and Sedona. I’d buy an Airstream trailer - one of those sleek aluminum models that look like spaceships or silver bullets - and park it on a flat plain, then simply stay there for a time, alone.
I’m an introvert by nature, but even I know that extended periods of isolation, while comforting to think about, aren’t good for the heart or mind. I’ve read enough adventure stories to know that, without others, people start to slip. Just watch Survivorman. Bear Grylls, the British one, is fine because he has his camera crew, but the other guy who ventures into jungles by himself starts acting odd, especially at night. Talking to the camera is his job, but in the dark, eyes shining in the amplified green light, his voice takes on a desperate tone. “It’s cold,” he tells the lens across from him, “and I’m hungry and need sleep. There’s not another human being within a hundred miles.” He says it like he wishes the camera would respond. I wonder about the parts of these one-sided conversations that end up on the cutting-room floor.
The Airstream life would be lovely for a while. I’d stay up late, stargaze in the silent crystal air, and write, sleeping through the hot parts of the day. After a while, the emptiness of the surrounding land would start to get to me. High desert is gorgeous in a vicious way; all fields of sparse pale grass, dark scrub, and mountains in the distance sharp as teeth. Aside from wary animals, it’s empty as the moon. I doubt I’d go full Castaway, but I might start lecturing the houseplants and electronics, or playing music at all times just to hear another human voice. I would be bored within a week and miserable within a month. I don’t even want to think about the consequences of a year. What seemed like an escape at first would turn out to be a self-inflicted prison.
Although I live vicariously through my survival books and shows, a life of isolation isn’t meant for me. Sitting at my desk, mind mostly occupied out west, I can still hear laughter down the hall, and the quiet click of keys as my roommate writes a paper of her own. It’s comforting to know that any solitude I seek is far from permanent, at least for now.
___
It’s been one of those days, I’m afraid. Work, lack of sleep, and a swarm of small annoyances have reached a critical mass like so much emotional uranium, and it’s got me thinking about the desert again.
Lately my favorite daydream has been jumping into the first car I find and driving west until I hit Arizona, somewhere in the bleached high empty space between Flagstaff and Sedona. I’d buy an Airstream trailer - one of those sleek aluminum models that look like spaceships or silver bullets - and park it on a flat plain, then simply stay there for a time, alone.
I’m an introvert by nature, but even I know that extended periods of isolation, while comforting to think about, aren’t good for the heart or mind. I’ve read enough adventure stories to know that, without others, people start to slip. Just watch Survivorman. Bear Grylls, the British one, is fine because he has his camera crew, but the other guy who ventures into jungles by himself starts acting odd, especially at night. Talking to the camera is his job, but in the dark, eyes shining in the amplified green light, his voice takes on a desperate tone. “It’s cold,” he tells the lens across from him, “and I’m hungry and need sleep. There’s not another human being within a hundred miles.” He says it like he wishes the camera would respond. I wonder about the parts of these one-sided conversations that end up on the cutting-room floor.
The Airstream life would be lovely for a while. I’d stay up late, stargaze in the silent crystal air, and write, sleeping through the hot parts of the day. After a while, the emptiness of the surrounding land would start to get to me. High desert is gorgeous in a vicious way; all fields of sparse pale grass, dark scrub, and mountains in the distance sharp as teeth. Aside from wary animals, it’s empty as the moon. I doubt I’d go full Castaway, but I might start lecturing the houseplants and electronics, or playing music at all times just to hear another human voice. I would be bored within a week and miserable within a month. I don’t even want to think about the consequences of a year. What seemed like an escape at first would turn out to be a self-inflicted prison.
Although I live vicariously through my survival books and shows, a life of isolation isn’t meant for me. Sitting at my desk, mind mostly occupied out west, I can still hear laughter down the hall, and the quiet click of keys as my roommate writes a paper of her own. It’s comforting to know that any solitude I seek is far from permanent, at least for now.