Enola-->alonE

I grew up next to this small and kind of rough-around-the-edges town called Enola where my parents owned rental properties and where I would thereby be a frequent and unwilling visitor in the back seat of a car, staring dazedly out the window in thought while they performed tedious managerial tasks in summertime, weekend days, or evening hours. It was some time making these trips before I realized (or was told) that "Enola" spelled backwards is "Alone". But I remember, and still strikingly feel, the change in my entire impression of Enola, knowing it had this secret meaning or ironic parallelism. The association drained the joy straight from the town. In the back seat of automobiles my imagination created this swirling story about the founder and nam-er of this town "Enola"- his life, his history, and his obvious staggering alonE-ness.

I distinctly remember the first time I felt the incapacitatingly empty feeling of being alone...not just alone like "no one was there" but the kind of alone where you are acutely aware that even if someone could be there, you have no one to call upon. I had just cracked my noggin on a shelf at work and was gushing blood everywhere. Now, head wounds bleed a lot so it sounds worse than it probably really was. But nonetheless my supervisor immediately phoned the New York City ambulance to come and sweep and whisk me and my bleeding skull straight to the emergency room. It was the first and hopefully only time I will see the back of an ambulance.

Because my wound was minimal I sat upright in the back rather than laying on the cot, talking to the EMT as we sped past NYC traffic in my "emergency". It was winter. It was afternoon. It was already dark outside. I was crying faintly...more because of the empty feeling that fell upon me as I rode by myself holding gobs of quickly-crimsoning gauze to my head than from the injury itself.

Upon arrival the EMT delivered me to through the sliding doors in wheelchair & blanket and smiled as he turned and walked away. As I continued to be shuffled from waiting space to waiting space, tv room to tv room, I grew progressively more weakened by "alone". Others sat with their families or generous and patient friends awaiting their turn for treatment. I sat alone. I went into the exam room alone. I got anesthetized, sterilized, and stitched together alone. These were all okay because I had someone there to distract the hollow alone-pit from growing ever deeper; kids in the lobby, fellow wounded, the kind and funny doctor.

But then I was sewn, wrapped and patted on the back and it was time to go. Almost robotically I stepped out onto the New York street and headed toward the subway stop in my usual New York stride...as if it were just any other day traipsing around the city. And that's when the growing pit of alone became a bottomless hole. Here I was injured and bleeding, whisked, shuffled, assessed, stitched and released and no one even knew about it. No one ever would either, if I chose not to mention it. That felt awful.
I cried hard, wet.

(art about 'alonE'.)

Since that day I've been more inclined to moments where this feeling seeps back in...the most recent of these being last night. Because I can see the Alone train approaching from a greater distance now, I'm more cautious and more aware...but defenseless nonetheless. I sense the 'gutted out feeling of dropping a pebble into the empty well of my self' growing ever more frequent and more intense. I can hear the plink and the resonating echo. The bottomless hole somehow gets deeper.

In my pursuit to find the road to travel on in this life and someone to share the journey, I've begun to face the sad and melancholic music; its a windy one, steep and narrow maybe , not laid out flat and smooth before me like mid-western savannah lands...I have no idea what lie ahead or if anyone else is even out there feeling their way through the dark like I, because I can't even see the view on the horizon.

In limited-language-summary format I suppose alone is seeking the comfort of someone to hold your hand, to give a hug or to say 'hey, its going to be okay' or 'I understand, I'm making the trip too'. Alone is simply craving someone who will just be there to call and come when you split your head, mend your heart, lose your way, or otherwise get lost on the trippy road; and the paralyzing fear that despite all concerted efforts you'll end up in a metaphorical crummy town you've named after your own solitary sorrow.