I remember la chanson the birds sang that day. The fallen leaves and all.

I remember people talking about their days. the flight instructors who struck me the most, at least, were mostly talking non-sense, and that is if they were talking at all.

but beneath all that non-sense, or perhaps amongst or through it, there were mentions. mentions of things I did not even know how much I desired. I guess I never questioned if such things could actually be sensible.

one Turkish post-modernist, even if he did not talk about it, wrote about a phenomenon, a concept that I dub “the sired loneliness”. he naturally wrote about other stuff too, but one of his novels’ characters is still fresh in my memory. the title is “Aylak Adam”, the loiterer.

The loiterer’s skill that caught me is as follows: “a modern-man, in a crowded street, walks into a restaurant and does what every modern-man does: abstracts (perhaps de-reifies) himself from the crowd.” I did not know that a modern man could do such a thing!

it was not the case that our character in question wanted to be left alone. quite on the contrary, once you think about it. I would not recommend dwelling on such topics, though.

for what it’s worth, I could tell that the character did not “desire loneliness”. in effect, he could not desire it even if he wanted to do so. he was a rockstar, for mary’s sake! a low-life on that matter, but a rockstar. Now, time for some real unnecessary probings about our character:

was the loiterer, at any given point, feeling lonely, feeling the blues? was it nothing more than the case that he was never left alone, as some sort of a star of his own, never being able to feel alone? and, let us, for a split second here, assume that he somehow wanted to be alone.

what happened when he craved it the most?

one funny thing about life here. you think you want to want something? desire one thing the most; and watch it disappear before your eyes. where is my mind?

do you have the need to tell me that this is not the case about life, or at least that it is not a funny thing at all? I’ll be longing for you the most.

let us, for another split second, turn back to those – mostly and sadly underground – post-modernists. perhaps they wanted to be left alone, but life did not permit so. boo-hoo. but then, what did they do?

they unlocked one hell-of-a-skill, is what they did do. More on that later.

if somehow you are reading these lines; i believe you do know what it feels like: the blues in crowded streets. which street of which city, does not really matter. the problem here is not that everybody seems blue, grey, or whichever color you like those days. it is just that you want to be blue, pink, or green, doing whatever it is that you do, but people are not letting you.

At the height of time, whence the time is neigh, just when you do not want them to let you anymore, they will let you. that’s what we do.

no need to tell ourselves tales at this point. We live in a messed up society. We have been living in a messed up society for a long time now. you know this, they know it, and if you don’t want to think of it this way, no one can push you to think of it that way.

the skill that was unlocked?

simply put, it is accepting the fact that you are never alone. it is not easier to do when you are all by yourself, sure.

they somehow did manage to accept it though. now, whom are we to listen to? French chanteurs?

One old-friend’s reminder would be of good use here: do not take any part in any play which you do not wish to foretell.

there are many places where we know as a matter of fact that we are alone. maybe even more milieus, where we know to be left alone. The latter one applies specifically to the ascending fume of the pavements of the rowdiest and the sultriest of the places.

if you have a second stomach to go thoroughly through with this writing that is before your eyes, there is a fact: crowded streets, as it seems for the day being, happen to be all around-the-world!

henceforth, I find it absurd to name (or better yet, dub) those “crowded” streets. there are just un(e)-numerable amounts of such places!

alas, these are the hardest places for you to stumble upon to see the sea of sensible writings.

have you ever unlocked the skill mentioned? I guess asking this makes me a “writer” who somehow obliges you to follow their writings. I ain’t pas-désolé par that shortcoming of mine, as every word is totalitarian in itself. regard-less, let me help you with that.

and if you are somewhat not able to add the said ability to your might-full skill-belt, it is still okay. we are not in a frenzy of rushing anywhere.

however, let me not-so-kindly remind you of the following: accepting, if not fathoming, the fact that you are not alone is easier in not-so-spacious places. you can feel the sense of company wherever, making you understand that you are not alone. you could (let us further assume we have five of them sensations – not senses) hear that you are not alone. you could see that you are not alone. you can taste (especially if you are not eating nor drinking, dear) that you are not. The rest of these possible sensory experiences are left for the prospective readers to have fun with the senses senselessly left behind. Have fun!

the True misery begins once you start experiencing similar senses, yelping at you, whispering that you are not alone, when it is absolutely the case that you are alone. is it the paranoid-schizoid-fool-proof personality of thine? sadly enough, the diagnosis you crave does not lie here. try some AI tools or whatever after your doctor’s appointment, and honey usually is of help.

The secret here, and you better know that this is not really a secret anymore, is that you have to go through with the aforementioned misery. no, it is not a shenanigan. if something is really one-true misery, there is no escaping it, because it is True. (The “capital/big T” here, if fact-checking is in order, comes from the ostensibly-mystique-logician Frege. He was as mystic as any other mystic since he “truly” believed in the Truth). The only way out of such an agony would be to experience the agony-in-question to its fullest and furthest, and be gone with it. My not-so-humble experience never failed to remind me that being gone is easier than being done. easier said than done!