NTLT Strategy #14: Call Someone You Don't Know

Guest blogger Casey ( caseyalexander921@hotmail.com ) submitted this piece of advice. She's recreating a life for herself in Barcelona while the rest of her family members are back in the States.

When I'm feeling alone, I place a call to the girl who has everything.  She and I recently met and I was taken with her--a bright and lively person who I could see sharing a walk with.  If only she weren't so busy.  I hesitate before I dial her number.  Certainly she is already doing something today.  After all, it is Friday, a time slot booked months in advance, awarded to top-level friends and dance partners. 

I'm aspiring to become one of the many around her.  This is a girl who dares to wear red lipstick in daylight, who has a snappy short haircut and speaks with a British accent.  Surely there is always a place for a person like this.  I imagine she's on somebody's boat as we speak.  Most days, in fact, she's in close proximity to water--diving into it, a blur of vitality, mirth and red straps; gazing at it through a hotel window.  At the very least, it sits in a cool glass beside her; she's extracting more fun from lunch at a restaurant than I've ever been able to find.  She has any number of earrings and stylishly splashy outfits--not clothes you would wear to sit home and watch Wheel of Fortune. 

I do call, and her voice brightens: I have nothing to do either, she says.  We meet, and walk, and I see her.  In the coming weeks I learn that I overestimated the size of her army, that she dives off an admirer's yacht about as often as I do.  That she is open to me, that the role of closest friend is still going should anyone want to try out. 

This has happened to me many times.  I believe that loneliness is a state I invented, but come to find that virtually everyone lives there.  Have you ever been invited to an acquaintance's birthday and expected to get lost in a crowd?  Once there, you occupy one of three or four seats.  I am often alarmed by this, by the sense that I am a large part of what little somebody has.  Instinctively I try to look like more--to fill the space in a more fabulous manner, to make the evening count as a pleasure (a night out by anyone's standards).  From then on I'm careful with what I say, with the advice I offer whenever her problems come up.  Because she might actually take it.  I am surprised and happy to be here; it's a post that I wanted but didn't expect.  I thought I was being taken on as an auxiliary friend, someone to help hang the piñata and laugh at light jokes around a big table.  It turns out I'm the real thing.  

When I'm lonely, I call someone who doesn't need me--who could never be lonely because she smiles a lot and her clothes fit better than mine do.  Usually she's happy to talk some.  She might even have called me, but I was dancing on somebody's rooftop in a fantastic, ill-fitting dress...  

NTLT Strategy #13 on the 13th . . . Take the wrong bus!

It was July 13th when I wrote this and decided to make NTLT Strategy #13 be about more travel blindness and how that led me to have an unexpected adventure. And now it's August and I'm back in Boston but still wanted to post this.

I was all set to visit the historic tiny town of Atri and see these medieval frescos. Wikipedia says, "The first certain historical notice of Adria is the establishment of a Roman colony there about 282 BCE. In the early part of the Second Punic War (217 BCE) its territory was ravaged by Hannibal; but notwithstanding this calamity, it was one of the 18 Latin colonies which, in 209 BCE, were faithful to the cause of Rome, and willing to continue their contributions both of men and money."

Two Italian people from the hotel who seemed know the area well told me where to stand to catch the bus that goes there. Marcozzi was the name of the bus line but the bus stop had a different name "Arpa." I had a print out of the schedule, and rushed to the stop to catch the 11:33 a.m. bus. I waited and could feel some anxiety for the unknown welling up. Three teenage boys came by and I showed them the schedule and asked if I was in the right spot. They said yes, that the buses were sometimes late and I should wait for the 12:33 bus. Shifted my mind, slowed my pulse and studied the wreck of a house across the street enjoying its good "bones."

I took some deep breaths, sat down on the bench, wrote in my journal, was grateful that in the heat I was wearing a hat.

Finally, around 12:25 a bus pulled up, I got on, fumbled with the ticket box. A lovely Signora sold me her extra ticket for 1.20€ and I sat down. When I noticed the bus passed the first sign to Atri I knew I was on yet another unplanned adventure. It took me through Pineto, a very elegant beachside resort town, then on to Roseto del Abruzzo and ending in the town of Giulianova. I stayed on the bus circling back to my original position.

So how is taking the wrong bus a strategy for the Not-so-lonesome-traveler? No one gets mad at you that you didn't get the information right. 

NTLT Strategy #12: Zentangle your way to stillness and calm

I started with four pencil points, connected them into a loosely drawn square, then broke the square into shapes by scribbling a light abstract line inside it. Then I started to fill in the spaces with patterns, turning my sketchbook as I worked. In the process, I forgot how hot it was, or that just a few minutes before I started I was confused
 and a bit anxious about what I was going to do next for the day. After an hour I was calm, cool, and collected.

Most people think of meditation as sitting still, often with the eyes closed, or repeating a mantra out loud or silently, but zentangling (drawing repetitive patterns very slowly with pen inside abstract forms contained within the four points of a square) is another way to bring you back to center while traveling or any time of day or night. I have found that if I zentangle at night before bed, I sleep more soundly. Also, it's an activity that allows me to listen to music while I'm doing it. I did this one today while sitting in the lobby of the hotel. The act of slowly repeating patterns or "tangles" (an infinite number are on Pinterest, YouTube, and anywhere you look in your world. Everything is made up of patterns!) without trying to make something beautiful or artistic is the meditation itself. There are no mistakes. No erasures. Turning your work as you go, guarantees the zentangle will be abstract. This is a meditation practice open to anyone who can hold a pen. Slowing down is always the fastest way to get centered. Try it. Check out their website. Started by an artist and her zen monk partner, this method of meditation is happening all over the world.

NTLT Strategy #11: Use your mental magnifying class to draw what you see and get into the moment.

While I'm traveling solo, one way to stay in the moment and leave my ambulatory neurotic thoughts behind,  is to draw a picture of whatever is right in my face? Like beautiful beach umbrellas. Sure, I could have left off with a photo, but drawing them on the paper tablecloth provided, I was able to study them in much greater detail. How the drawing looks is of little consequence. What counts is the act of careful observation as a meditation on the moment while the sea breeze blows my cares away.

Most beachside restaurants offer a new paper tablecloth to each guest 

It helps to have a decent pen. I love the Staedler Triplus Fineliner

NTLT Strategy #10: When solitude slips in and out of loneliness, love in the air can help.

A long sunny corridor leads to my tiny room on the 11th floor in this high-rise hotel in the small beachside town of Silvi in Abruzzo.

I chose it because it seemed free of distraction so I would hunker down and concentrate on my writing. It's a family hotel, filled to the brim with loving parents and grandparents and their offspring: from tiny infants to gangly adolescents.

Some long-time friends live about 30 minutes away and my weekly outings with them have kept me from total isolation. My writing has taken the form of journaling more than anything else.


I try to keep it all in perspective as the outside world is exploding in violence: Turkey, Orlando, Bangladesh, Dallas...and the European Union about to redraw its borders—all since I left town.

And why would I do such a thing? Cut myself off from my friends and family at this time? Because I can. In a year or two or five, I may not be able to. I have exactly what I sought, a retreat to be productive. But loneliness is a psychic sludge in the body that brings physical exhaustion and triggers a need for escape. And yet, I'm not willing to repack and move on, so each day I crawl a little bit closer to a place of balance.

Gone are the days of hoping to meet "someone" the way I did when traveling Italy for the first time at the age of 19. Now, surrounded by uninhibited babies and toddlers with all their endearing and sometimes irritating squeals and screams, I feel I can ride on the wave of their family harmonies and disharmonies the way a surfer might ride a wave. Surrounded by all that new life around me, and the cradle of love by parents who clearly cherish their children, the loneliness shifts and sweet solitude reenters.

Attentive Italian dads in every corner of this hotel
pick up the slack for their bikini clad wives

NTLT Strategy #9: Get lost in a foreign country

Here's a picture of a not-so-good toilet. 
I had to pay 65 Euro cents to have 
the privilege of using in a Tiburtina,
Rome bus terminal.

On a recent trip to Italy traveling solo most of the 30 days I was there, I learned a lot about what I call "travel blindness." I define it as not seeing something that's staring you in the face because it's foreign and you've never seen it before. I experienced that in Palermo trying to take a pee. The cost to enter was 80 euro cents. I needed change. There was a brightly colored change machine right there but I did not see it, did not realize what it was until I exited the W.C. (an English term for Water Closet! What the hell is it doing in an Italian train station?) area and found a station employee who refused to change my Euro and instead marched me back to the WC and pointed to the change machine. I made change. I made pee. And I was exhausted. But I was educated at least in that Palermo train station on how to find a decent toilet. And I define "decent" as there is a door you can lock, a toilet bowl AND a toilet seat cover, and enough toilet paper to do the job. This was the day I coined the phrase travel blindness—a condition I realized was going to be with me every step of my trip as I struggled to master simple actions that are second nature to the locals or second nature to me when I'm a local in my own country.....as long as I'm doing something familiar. I can be travel blind, too, in my own country as I was the first time I took the Marin Airporter from SFO to Marin county and struggled in darkness to write in my journal only to realize half-way there that there was—on this plush bus—an overhead light.

I know it's been over a year since posting on this blog but I've decided to get it going again to document some of the things I've learned as a solo traveler on my recent trip to Italy. Travel Blindness is a good thing. It keeps me awake and alert. It keeps my brain cells firing and it does build confidence, but at a price: exhaustion and sometimes a good deal of embarrassment. But as they say in certain circles, "It's all good!" More to Come!

NTLT Strategy #8: Jangled nerves? Tune in to Jango.com and chill.

Music can get you out and walking away from your empty apartment, but if there's no time to get out or if the weather prevents it, you can tune out and tune in to any kind of music you crave—or discover music you never knew existed—at jango.com. High tech for the low tech listener, Jango makes it easy since there's nothing to download and very little to figure out. All you do is go to Jango.com and type in an artist's name. Instantly, you'll hear that artist's music; not just a sampling of a song, but whole albums and that artist's music becomes one of your streaming radio jango stations. You can see who around the world is listening to the same artist. This is another way of connecting not only to music, but to others who share your tastes, or to others whose taste is totally different from your own. This music exchange can make being home alone a lot friendlier. Hey, most folks need and love solitude. Those that dread it are rare. It's a question of balance—too much of a good thing can get you stir crazy. And jango's FREE! Loneliness distraction rating: as short as one song, as long as an evening of listening.

And if you want to play a song over and over and over again, you can always download something like this Dylan song from YouTube. I'm learning how to play the guitar as a further device for sharpening the brain cells and getting out of my own way. Here's the first song I'm struggling with. Enjoy.