Alone in Galicia: Solitude is my default setting.
In Manila it takes a certain fortitude to insist on being alone, but this solitude must be calibrated carefully lest it lead to depression and drink. Death is counterproductive.
17 May 2019
The natives warn me that it rains 180 days a year in La Coruña, as if that were a bad thing. Where I come from this rain they talk about is no more than a drizzle. The weather is especially bipolar today. I woke up to gloom, gray skies, umbrellas—perfect walking weather if you have the right shoes. And then the sun came out, umbrellas were put away, coats shrugged out of. Five minutes later the skies are dark again. No wonder it takes people so long to order in restaurants: even the weather can’t make up its mind.
On one hand I have to do everything myself, on the other hand everything is so much easier here. It’s cold and I can walk everywhere. It’s clean so I don’t feel like boiling myself all the time. Food is cheap. There are many cultural events, many of them with free admission. This morning I googled places connected to the actress Maria Casares (Carne’s Children of Paradise, Bresson’s The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne, Cocteau’s Orpheus), whom I just found out was born in La Coruña. By 11 I was on my way to the shops to buy tights (legs freezing), only to find that all the stores are closed for Galician Literature Day. A holiday to celebrate literature!
Boca Negra across the street is in the Gastrotourism guide, and I was determined to dine there on my third try. Again I was too early for lunch, but I had a coffee until they started serving. Estofado gallego: stewed beef jaw with mashed pumpkin. It was as good as I had hoped. Then in the trendy industrial-style washroom I got my right thumb stuck in the heavy metal sliding door. I ran cold water on my throbbing thumb, then walked to FNAC, which Google said was open, to browse books in English. It was closed. So much for Friday.
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I have no trouble making conversation with strangers. If anything I have to avoid getting chatted up by random pedestrians. You might say I am a professional talker. Solitude is my choice.
It is possible to be alone anywhere, but in Manila it takes effort. It is too noisy. It is too hot. The people are too sociable: they drag you out of yourself and force you to laugh. The less they have to be cheerful about, the more cheerful they become. It takes a certain fortitude to insist on being alone, but this solitude must be calibrated carefully lest it lead to depression and drink. Death is counterproductive.
Solitude is my default setting. I was an only child until I was 12. My parents were married 8 years before they had me, and by the time I was born they were staying together mostly to annoy each other (and blaming me for it—the classic “We’re staying together for you” guilt inducer.) They competed for my allegiance so strenuously that I preferred to be alone. The happiest time of my childhood was when I was a latchkey child. Both my parents worked, and the housemaids always left because they never got paid on time. Every afternoon the schoolbus would deliver me to an empty house. I would let myself in, make myself a sandwich, and watch Sesame Street. After that, movies.
Jerry Lewis comedies like Visit To A Small Planet; Woody Allen’s Take The Money And Run; that camp masterpiece The Oscar with Stephen Boyd and Tony Bennett; and movies that should have required adult supervision. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, my first Scorsese. Dog Day Afternoon, in which Al Pacino robs a bank to get money for his lover’s sex-change operation. Deliverance, about the worst canoeing trip ever. Straw Dogs, in which a math nerd is set upon by the nasty locals. I watched them all. I talked to my stuffed toys. There was always a sharp pang of disappoinment when the latch on the front gate clicked, announcing the arrival of a parent. I preferred solitude to their strained attempts at conversation.
My parents worried that I was a loner, which in the Philippines is the worst thing you can be. Murderous demagogues are excused if they’re friendly, but keeping to yourself is a crime. So my parents embarked on a campaign to make me socialize with other children. I never liked children, not even when I was a child. The summer I was 9, I was foisted on my maternal cousins, a rambunctious crew who ran around the house with no pants on. The one my age was half-blind and spent most of the day sitting in a corner with his head lolling. He had a perpetual calendar in his head, so if you gave him a random date, say 17 May 2019, he would tell you what day it fell on. It was only much later, when I found a book by Oliver Sacks in a bargain bin, that I realized I had been in the presence of a neurological phenomenon.
While my pants-less cousins rolled in the dirt and ate boogers, I scoured their parents’ bookshelves for something to read. Reading: a suspicious activity. It signifies a lack of interest in the external world. The only bookshelf contained dusty lawbooks and old textbooks, but salvation appeared in the form of a ratty paperback of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. It may have been a little early to process the sexual exploits of the gods of Olympus, basically a bunch of petty, shape-shifting rapists, but that book kept me from plucking out my hair from sheer boredom.
I must’ve been 6 or 7 when I began pulling out my own hair. Much later I discovered the word for it: trichotillomania. I would be reading a book, watching TV, or doing my homework when my hand would start feeling strands of my hair, and if they were not perfectly smooth and straight, yank them out. Before long there would be a clump of hairs on the table. At one point I had a little tonsure right where my hair was parted. It did not occur to my ancients that this uncontrollable urge to pull out hair was a symptom of some psychological issue. They assumed that it was something I did to annoy them, like getting 99 on an exam when I coul’ve gotten 100.
Some conversations I’ve been having with myself these days.
“Is it bad to shampoo your hair everyday?”
“Everyone says it dries out your hair, but how can you not wash your hair everyday in Manila? It’s humid, it’s dirty, you sweat so much.”
“It’s clean here, and cold, so maybe I’ll just shampoo every other day.”
“If you can control your disgust at your own scalp.”
I think a lot about my hair for someone who used to pull it out. Ironically I have very healthy, thick hair. The secret is to leave it alone.