Summer of solitude

Enjoy your beach picnics this long weekend, I'll be bird-spotting by a lake

Glyfada Beach, Corfu

Happy Memorial Day from the Greek island of Corfu, where I’m staying with some Angeleno friends who bought a place here a couple of years ago. As I write, I am swaddled in a high, soft bed in a cottage on a small, green lake populated by herons and other waterfowl whose names I don’t know but feel freshly compelled to learn. Were birds always this fascinating, or am I just in my fifties?

I woke up this morning with this thought on my mind: We are all characters of ambiguous virtue and unreliable narrators, even to ourselves.

I may be able to admit my character flaws, even describe them in florid detail, but that doesn’t cure my personality of them.

“I am prone to monopolizing the conversation” sounds like self-awareness, the kind that might be able to avoid the error in future. But it might just mean I’m a person who makes a statement about their tendency to monopolize a conversation, in addition to being a person who monopolizes conversations.

A seemingly humble confession can be a way to bounce off an unpalatable truth, to blunt its fangs instead of doing the hard, humbling work of sitting with it.

So how do I write honestly—be a reliable narrator—about my own character? Is it even possible to write honestly about the person (I think) I am today? Maybe I can only write about a version of myself that (I think) I have moved beyond.

Anyway. That’s what got me up today.

This little cottage is a damn near perfect setup. I have a bathroom with a shower, I have internet, a desk, a mini fridge and an electric kettle, a workbench to fix myself coffee and snacks, and two folding wooden chairs on a little deck that looks out over the water. At night I have a chorus of frogs to sing me to sleep.

What a way to wake up.

Best of all, I have privacy and solitude. My friends Ron and Chris live in the main house thirty paces away up a garden path, which means I also have companionship, but not more of it than any of us want. We can have coffee together, a midday walk if we feel like it, a shared dinner, maybe a late-night drive into Corfu town for gelato. In between, we do our own thing.

Yesterday, they took me to their friends’ place for a barbecue. Three couples and me—the biggest party I’ve been to in ages. It was fun. The food was great. Laughs were had. But after a couple of hours I was all talked out, and when we got home I fairly ran back to my little sanctuary, back to the herons and frogs.

Laid back social fun with new and old friends.

My inbox and IG feed this weekend are full of content about the unofficial start of summer. Lots of sunscreen and sandals. References to pool parties and picnics. Recipes for the grill, salads that travel well and please a crowd.

I used to live for big, outdoor summer parties. They were my favorite part of my social life in my thirties and into my forties. Picnics at a beachside park. The aroma of sizzling fat. Kids running around like maniacs; now our kids, one day it will be the kids of our kids. Somebody’s dog getting into the snacks. The pleasure of standing around barefoot in the grass with friends, passing words around and weaving our bond ever tighter.

I always thought my “mature adult life” would carry on like that, with a small but sturdy family at its center, surrounded by a constellation of friends and friends-of-friends that would keep expanding from one summer to the next.

How is that group get-togethers are no longer a regular feature of my life? Me, planner of parties and picnics and potlucks, group-hug enthusiast, pleaser of crowds?

Now that kind of bright, noisy summer fun is not just in my past, it is also yesterday’s idea of my future.

If I look ahead from where I sit now, the future looks quite different, though the details are as murky as lake water. I don’t know where I’m headed, I only know that I am craving solitude and more solitude. My idea of a perfect summer day now is a largely unpeopled one, in which animals outnumber humans and there is ample space for daydreaming, for writing. Silence.

Watching the gang’s-all-here version of summer kick off on social media and on TV, I feel a mild pang of nostalgia. I loved it when I had it. I’m not living that way right now. I don’t have a busy social life, and building one is not even a goal of mine.

If a caterpillar goes into its cocoon to become a butterfly, what sort of chrysalis does a once-social butterfly go into? And to transform into what?

I hope I don’t turn into too much of a hermit. But for today and the foreseeable tomorrows, I want to spend most of my hours solo, close to nature, with basic creature comforts, and a good spot to write in. Preferably a spot with a view of, say, a lake.

Where’s Maggie?

Now: Corfu, Greece, May 21—June 10

Next: UK, June 10—July 29

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