I spent a few hours at Barnes & Noble last night pouring over art books and actually choose a new watercolor book. The tables at the coffee shop were full so I wandered upstairs and found an empty chair at a table in the FAU section to spread the books out on.
Interesting chatter as people around me were studying different subjects together. Real estate talk at one table, algebra tutoring at another and a group of girls studying child development at the table directly in back of me. Sometimes being in the midst of a crowd, makes me feel less alone, but not last night.
After I looked through about a dozen books to find one to bring home with me, I picked up a book off the top of a pile that someone before me left on the table. The book was called "On My Own, The Art Of Being A Woman Alone by Florence Faulk. After reading the paragraph below, I decided to buy the book, I'll let you know how it goes.
In as much as all of us find ourselves alone, not once but many times during our lives, I use the term " Woman Alone" to refer to all women. By default, choice or necessity, we all experience our own particular life crossings that set us apart. Whether we prefer it or not, feel shame or pride in being there, this means that we may be separated, divorced, widowed, homeless, unmarried, never married, between partners, a gay woman, a welfare mother, a single mother, an aborting or miscarrying woman, childless, sick, old or dying, a jilted woman, a depressed woman, or alone in a loveless or troubled relationship. A woman may feel alone when she finds herself a seat in a crowded movie theater, waits in a hospital corridor for radiation treatment, or makes love with her partner in dull silence. For among the species of aloneness, one of the most painful to endure is to be in the presence of someone who arouses a need but does not satisfy it; another is the unblinking stare of indifference, which repels the the exchange of concern, love or compassion between people. A woman- any woman- is alone when she feels emotionally or spiritually separate and apart from others and herself
Sort of sums up the way I was feeling, by myself in a crowd in a bookstore on a Friday night.
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