Island Man

I have been awake since three A.M.. I am not happy about it. Lately I have been having wonderful dreams and feel cheated when I awaken from them and try to get back to sleep and back into the dream. It doesn't happen. I have learned that the same thing is true of the wakeful world. A very wise man once told me "You can never recapture a rapture.".
Caffeine, nicotine, and moonlight seem to put me into a pensive mood. I was reading the blog of my eldest daughter and I started to analyze myself, (funny how the first four letters of that process seem to define it). Why am I so comfortable being alone? It can't be genetic, although my Father was the same way. My Father was idolized by his peers and regarded as a genuine hero by the community but was always more comfortable with his family and avoided groups. My youngest daughter will probably explain my solo approach to life as "That way you can watch Jeopardy and be the only one in the room with the answer.". My brother once made me leave the room when Jeopardy was on.
It is not that I don't like people, it is just that I am more comfortable with myself. I like to sit and read. I like to sit and think. When will someone invent a stove whose top is low enough so that I can sit and cook? Hmmm, I think I see a pattern evolving here. No wonder I am so fond of cooking over a campfire. I had a Dutch oven once, the old fashioned kind with the ridge around the lid to put coals on, but someone who thought that the smoke alarm was a timer evidently needed it more than I did. I still think of the sourdough bread and stews that it could make.
Since 1972 I have had a dream. The dream is no longer relevant but tendrils of the dream still occasionally waft through my mind. It is the same dream that every new Father has. Buy a farm, move your family in, fill the cellar full of food, plow up the driveway, and keep your family from the perils of the world. The problem would be that farmers never sit. In farming, the work is not hard, it just never stops.
Most people have as heir heroes John Wayne or Chance Vought Jr. or David Beckham. My hero is Walt Whitman. Despite his gender confusion, I admire the way he lived his life. He had mastery over words and used them as Michaelangelo used a chisel. He lived alone on the prairie with his words. He composed no soliliquies to peas but was of a similar frame of mind. He broke down in tears over the death of Lincoln and resolved to get away from a world that would do that to such a man. He could use words to convey a thought and deliver another thought under those words. I still remember one of his dual messages. "There once was a man that lived alone, with his wife.".
In answer to a comment posted by the family seer of reality, I don't stand on the town common with a sign. I did that in 1967 on the town common in Orangeburg, South Carolina, protesting the way that some of my fellow Americans were being treated. I came very close to death that day and vowed to keep those feelings for display in Massachusetts only. I am ashamed of that vow but that was one of the few times in my life when I can remember being afraid.
I am at peace with myself. The tensions and self criticism of youth and parenthood are behind me. I will sit by the side of the road and........ I have come to like myself. No one else does but I have never been part of a group.

P.S. I really liked Whitman's hat.