The Cave

[NoJo]

Sometimes the loneliness in here is unbearable. In the Cave. Plato’s Cave. You know, from The Republic. You don’t know? Well, Google it, then let me know if you get it, let me know if you then can say to me I feel your pain, man. (The parable of the Cave is basically about the mind. And how we’re trapped inside our minds. And how reality... but no – no talk of reality and unreality now. Too close to the edge for that).

So, about this loneliness. In my case it stems from being on the edge of the bell curve, mentally. I trust that you, here, authors on Literotica, probably can get what I’m saying, won’t misinterpret my words as arrogance. Because I daresay you’re pretty weird inside too.

Most lonely people are lonely because of their physical isolation – widowed, divorced, new in town or in school... but I’ve always been lonely because I’ve always been mental.

I’ve adopted various behaviours, routines and rituals over the years to regulate the loneliness of the Cave. By the way, it’s not so much a cave but a Black Grotto under a thousand miles of mountain. And unlike Plato’s cave, there’s no fire to cast flickering shadows on the walls, just a wan phosphorescence.

What was I saying... oh yes, I’ve adopted various behaviours... most of which are attempts to summon the Hum.

The Hum, as I call it, is a “zoned out” trance state, where I feel safe and good about things. Repetitive, modal Jazz Music works for me. There has to be a kaleidoscopic aspect to the music, a gradual variation over time, as well as a crystalline complexity within each bar -- Music that’s too simple doesn’t work. Besides music, long runs across London bring on the Hum. Like the music, there’s enough variation in street running to get me into the trance – but running on a treadmill – too monotonous.

All this running and music and Hum nonsense can probably be phrased more scientifically, in terms of endorphins and oxytocin. Or perhaps it’s to do with going back to the safety of the womb. Whatever, the Hum helps.

Drugs like cannabis made things worse for me. Cocaine and speed certainly used to make me feel better temporarily, but the reaction, the after-effect, was hideous and clearly could threaten to tip me into psychosis.

But aren’t I overlooking the obvious cure for the loneliness of the Cave? How about all those myriad Other Minds out there, all trapped in their own little caves? How about You? Surely, if you know what I’m talking about, that you feel this loneliness too, then we can form a bond? Isn’t that basically how Literotica and Facebook and all this social networking stuff works? A coming together of people with a Common deviance, a common suffering, or a common oppression, common obsession, or a just common isolation?

Well maybe I’m being a little picky here, but sharing an interest is all very well. But I actually want someone to come with me, come visit me – I want someone to come inside my head.

Now I’ve been married for a long time to a very fine woman, loving and keen-witted. We share a lot of tastes and ideas, opinions and experiences. But we are oh so different in temperament. Basically she’s not impulsive, frustrated and wild-tempered like me. She hates to lose her head by getting drunk, where I relish it – because it gives me a vacation from the Cave. . Basically she’s not fucked up and trapped in her head. And the sad thing about people who aren’t fucked up in and stuck inside their heads is that they’re also unable to get in MY head. Or any cave-dweller's head. Sure, they can empathise, understand, agree, pity, like a pychiatrist, but they can’t mentally teleport from cave to cave.

So I met Helene here a few years ago. She’s mental. She has lucid dreams. She lives way the fuck out in British Columbia, 6,000 miles from me. We have a lot less in common than I do with my wife or my close friends here. Helene is weird and very moody. An extremely “difficult” person. But she and I have a connection. The connection is that we’re both mental troglodytes. And this is our bond, even though we don’t really talk all that much at the moment. And she knows how to make me laugh. Oh yes, that’s it. She makes me really laugh. And fuck it, when she does, she’s right there in my cave. Or I’m in hers, I guess it’s the same thing.

 

[amicus]

Interpreting "The Cave" existentially, interesting.

I am a 'do gooder', in a way, ( I can hear the moans already), I have been a member of a poetry site and story site for nearly ten years and over that time I have come to appreciate the very young writers, male and female, who cry out on their pages of the abject lonliness and isolation they feel and...think...

I go to the "New stories and Poems" category and search for that kind of writing. When I find it...I attempt to encourage the author that all is not as dire as one might think. That they, as they trundle through those terrible teens, as the hormonal rush subsides, they will find the world a different place.

I could hear you sigh and think, nope Ami, you didn't get it....maybe...

Some of these kids I have stayed with for several years, through high school, relationships, college, drop out, art school, on the road, drugs of every imaginable depth and variety and....they are still....all alone.

I just mentioned this film on another thread, but still, it is apropo, I think. Near the end, when the lead character played by Jody Foster, "Contacts' an alien race. If you have seen and remember the film, you know where I am going; I paraphrase, "After billions of years and millions of other species, the only thing we have found to alleviate our feeling alone, was...each other.

Now I am not selling that as an answer...

There is a Doistoiyevsky short story about a Priest in cave (of all things) living frugally to meditate who was set upon by a village lovely to tempt him to cease meditation and indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. He cut his own finger off to quell his passion.

Some chided me of late of being in the October of my life...more like December, but departing this existence is surely not all that far in my limited future. I accept no concept of supreme being or cause and effect in the Universe. No imaginary or fantasy creatures to wallpaper my world, just me, myself and I. My children are grown and gone, my grandchildren distant and rare, I no longer care to tolerate the fair sex as a foil in life, yet....I am not alone and do not feel that terrible lonliness that I did as a younger man.

Since this is subjective take it for that, a personal opinion. I concluded that I have reached a stable state of mind by accepting that life is what it is and is what we make of it.

I digressed from an earlier point about the young, sometimes very young poets and poetess's I met on line. One of several concepts I try to present them in their misery, is that along with high, fringe of the bell curve intelligence, is the almost supernal ability to perceive above and beyond 99 percent of humanity.

I remind them that most of the artistic genius's oftimes live a short and miserable life and express their dismay through their art.

And you will hate this, but Ayn Rand, when she wrote the Virtue of Selfishness, did not specifically identify what I feel is the fundamental characteristic of that concept; that of devoting one's time to one's self in pursuing that which one enjoys.

Now, I fully realize that could end in Hedonism, which is not my vision and besides the word and the concept are thousands of years old.

No, I mean a 'rational pursuit of selfishness', which I define as a search for knowledge, for 'truth', if you will.

It gives me the greatest pleasures I have even know, the joy some feel in mathematic formulae, or an eureka moment in physics or some other science.

If you think I am a raving idiot, please feel free to launch an attack.

If you understand me, you need say nothing at all. I would like that.

Amicus...

 

[Xelebes]

The cave, as you describe it, is not a lonely place. It is only lonely if you desire to not be there.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You're lonely, Joe. We're all lonely. Get over it.

 

[NoJo]

You're lonely, Joe. We're all lonely. Get over it.

I never said I wanted to

I'll tell who IS lonely. Norman. Norman is an island.

I have a brother who I talk to when this shit happens. He and I have emotional disfunctionailites and mindsets, except he doesn't suffer mood swings to the same extent as me. So he's a good guy to talk to. Also he's taken tons and tons of drugs and knows all about having a "low reality coefficient", as I call this.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

I can relate, Joe. I don't really think of my loneliness in terms of the cave metaphor, but I certainly understand it. Your thoughts put me in mind of Tennyson's poems. In many of them, he writes about the isolation of the artist in some fashion or other. I am reminded of his poem, "The Lady of Shalott," who sits by her window all the day weaving and spinning a magical web. She watches life go by; she watches beautiful Lancelot ride forth on his fine horse and longs for him, but when she goes out into the world, when she leaves her weaving and her room where she is safe and creative, though isolated and alone, she dies. She floats down the river in a boat and dies singing a song.

I have felt like her before. I prefer to sit in my room weaving my creative web and each time I've gone down into the market place, I have lost a part of myself and figuratively died.