Norman Weeks

Loneliness Norman Weeks

If you want to find out what loneliness is, go off by yourself; not to pout in that nearby corner, but into a transoceanic expatriation. To Rome, then!

Once there, you immerse yourself in culture and the past, you savor loneliness at leisure. Settling in, getting a job, you pursue vocation.

That vocation is writing. As for loneliness, it has nothing to do with writing. Literary solitude is a work discipline, not an affliction of the self.

Inspired by an ideal, the writer masters technique, burns with ambition.

Meanwhile, life in Rome is tedium and boredom, so loneliness intensifies.

As the solution we look to others, only to suffer indifference, rejection, and estrangement. Where can one find happiness and fulfillment?

There is always suicide to consider and insomnia to suffer.

But the morning of a new day arrives. Our rescue and redemption from loneliness can be found in attunement to Nature, the experience of love, and the transcendent joy of music.

Loneliness is volume one of Roman Ruminations, the psychology of the human as enculturated animal.