What an awful word L O N E L I N E S S is! An illness of one, the words ‘illness’ and ‘one’ literally in it, along with ‘lone’ and ‘ill’. The word is most potently representative of its meaning when written in upper case letters spaced far apart, as I saw it on television this morning. Ten letters equal in height, spelling out the bleakest emotional landscape of all. L O N E L I N E S S. ‘I am so lonely, I need somebody’: loneliness is the desire for company and warmth, a shivering stranger pining for that phantom hut in the snow, glowing hearth ‘neath thatched roof under starry sky, the hearth an earthly star to the crescent moon formed by a semicircle of friends conversing jovially in its fiery berth. What warmth; what company. But the word we are discussing here is one of coldness; it even looks cold to the eye. ‘i’ is almost in the middle of the word (L O N E L I N E S S), the smallest letter, taking the least space. I suppose existence becomes faint when one cannot put oneself in relation to others. If there is no-one to recognise you for who and what you are, how and why do you exist? There is no ‘u’ in loneliness. Loneliness is an illness of one.
S O L I T U D E, on the other hand, trumps soldier with attitude, the word S O L D I E R almost entirely in it. There is an ‘i’ and a ‘u’, an ‘ode’ and a ‘soul’: an ode to your soul. Unlike its pneumonic cousin above (L O N E L I N E S S), it is stoic and unwavering in appearance. It does not cry out for company. Instead, S O L I T U D E celebrates the strength and freedom wielded by a company of one. Even far apart and in upper case the letters look sturdy and well-defined, rooted in confidence. S O L I T U D E commands not attention but admiration, self-admiration: ‘I am my own person, large and full of multitudes’. It is the friend of quiet contemplation and artistic expression—one reads, paints, writes, composes best when alone. ‘I am a complete, wholesome soul all by myself, my existence needs no reassurance for I am sure of myself,’ the word announces, proud on a podium.
Solitude is a closed fist punching the air, loneliness is a limp hand begging to be held. I punch the air. I march to the beat of my own drums. To the steady beat of my heart I say to myself: ‘I am, I am, I am’.
When I was younger I wrote a poem about tangerine dreams that filled the sky, and this one lemon tree atop a hill where lovers liked to meet. When I was younger still, but old enough to know, I filled several blank sheets back-to-back with an essay on the circle of life, having just watched The Lion King for the first time. When I was even younger, while walking in a mall with my family in Hong Kong, our humid stopover before reaching our new life Down Under, I lamented (rather melodramatically for a nine-year-old) 
Went to bed last night with the realisation that all the world’s a sham, except maybe the art of bread-making. Supplying fresh wholesome handmade loaves to the local community, donating what’s left at the end of the day to charity. Betty’s Bakery. No! That means 
I loathed to leave the gallery. In the darkening light of dusk its magnificence expanded outwards, casting an enchanted aura over its surroundings. Even the parklands opposite where I walked became magic at its touch. Still I walked, stopping every so often to glance backwards, whereupon I beheld with marvellous longing the architecture to which I could return time and again. The consequence of my backward glances, I am happy to announce, was that I was simply very late for supper. Had I been a hero in a love story and the art gallery my deceased beloved—I am sure you have all heard of the poor chap—it would have been lost to me forever.
