Invisibility - March 15 2023

 

Invisibility

March 15 2023

In the big city

surrounded by people

l was truly alone.

Jostled on the sidewalk

crushed in the subway

lost in rush hour crowds,

I felt invisible;

not just anonymous

but expendable.

The thing is

I kind of liked ghosting through the busy streets

travelling incognito

feeling unseen.

I am a private person;

my hermetic tendencies are strong,

the protective bubble

I've deliberately constructed

is a real comfort to me,

even if

I'm only imagining

its impregnable glass walls.

So I made myself small.

But day after day

smaller and smaller

until I felt myself

start to disappear;

oppressed

by this feeling of unreality,

of drifting off unmoored.

And now

here, in this northern wilderness

I'm feeling much restored.

If this is paradoxical, so be it:

alone in the crowd

but not by myself.

Like the prophets

who journeyed into the desert

and led monastic lives,

spent years in the wilderness

searching within themselves,

there is much to be said for solitude.

Except that when they returned

their followers

hung on every word.

While I have none

and it seems no one's listening.

But still

I search.

Hardly ascetic

and not exactly monastic

but mostly by myself.

For sure, sometimes lonely;

but still, so much preferred

to ghosting through the city streets

where people see right through me

if they even bother to look.