learning loneliness

Today has been spent in flannel, waiting for snow, finishing "Gilead," which I lovedlovedloved. The prose is so lonely and it makes me, as so many things do, want to tunnel myself away from this world, far away from the facebook message sent to me asking if I got the e-mail about getting the phone call they made three minutes ago. It's cliche to teeter on existential edges, but despite the glorious Nepalese restaurants and the conversation over wine in Jackson Heights and jazz clubs in Harlem, I find myself gravitating toward that old need for all that is lonely: the mountains, the motel based in the harsh glare of neon lights, the corner in a bar in New Mexico where you wonder just how much hope oozes out from the heavily bearded clientele and makes its way to the green linoleum floor.