My partner Y left late last night (I had to drive him to SFO well past our usual bedtime) for a three-week trip to China. (Partly business, partly family.) We’ve been together some 23 years, and this will be the longest time he’s been away, leaving me alone in the house with the cats. I like being alone, but will never have been home alone in quite such circumstances ever before. So I’m wondering what I will do, or should do.
He’s been gone for a couple weeks at a time, several times. Including a couple times in the past decade, since I’d ‘retired’ from the job and spent time at home, even if some of the time I was working remotely as a contractor, not to mention continued incidental support for Locus every week. His trips earlier than that, one 17 days, weren’t quite the same, because I still had work to go to every day.
So now I will be alone for three weeks, without having to go to work, or do much of anything. There were several years before I meant Y that I lived alone, without a roommate or partner, but again in those days I went to work every day. The only comparable periods I can think of, to these next three weeks, are those summers I spent in Apple Valley (see the section “Third Apple Valley: Seven Summers in the Seventies” on this page), when I would at times spend up to six weeks staying on the high desert in the house where I grew up and where my grandmother then lived. I read books, rode my bicycle, fiddled on her piano. And she made the meals.
For the next three weeks I do have to take care of the cats, and the house, and I still have my regular Locus chores. (Next up: format Paul Di Filippo’s three September reviews.) So it’s not quite as if I’m removing myself to a remote mountain cabin away from all contact with the outer world.
So what will I do these three weeks? One: read a lot of books, without interruption, or disapproving glances. Two: spend a couple three uninterrupted entire days working my essay, and sfadb. Three: watch a few old movies that I think Y wouldn’t like (like Stalker) and that I’ve never seen before, all the way through. Four: perhaps wander, either by foot or by car. Five: straighten up the house, go through more old family photographs; on the former point, some rearrangements, where it’s easier to apologize and reverse later than to ask permission beforehand.
And yet, it’s a bit creepy leaving my life up to me. When you live with someone, you’re forced to channel your personal energies into the time allotments given you, and you’re forced to prioritize. Without the constraint of schedules and obligations, you can lounge around and do nothing, or anything, and you have to apply a personal discipline to see if you can get more done while alone.
I still have lots of ambition. I haven’t written a personal diary or journal in years, but I did for a while 50 and 40 and 30 years ago (they gave way to my various blogs), and this afternoon I pulled out my journal from 1974. Summer 1974. What was I doing then? Sitting in Apple Valley and reading lots of books. But in retrospect, lots of incidental books. I wasn’t focused the way I am now, 50 years later.
I am steadily learning to focus on my long-term goals. Partly due to dealing with the estate of my old friend Larry Kramer. Cleaning out his house. Did he have any thought of disposing of his personal effects — photo albums and personal journals — before he died? Because he didn’t. Perhaps I should, and that’s something I’ll work on these next three weeks. (Because, after you die, no one cares. Even if they pretended to, when you were alive.)
A late afternoon maundering. I’ll probably edit and revise in the morning.
Now: to feed the cats. Five cats, currently.
