Waiting

Solitude itself is a way of waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt. And that is why solitude is never static and never hopeless

May Sarton

That’s why I felt an affinity with the lone man – looking out to a turbulent sea, perched on a rock, palms raised, quite still – who appeared to be at one with his surroundings.

Sometimes mental solitude suffices for me. But what May Sarton describes as ‘waiting for the inaudible and the invisible to make itself felt’ is every day as necessary to me as sleep and food and water – perhaps because, as departing Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi said as he conceded referendum defeat, ‘non siamo dei robot’ – ‘we are not robots.’