“From our 30th-floor aerie, I looked down at the Dakota, far below, where people lived who were richer and more important; yet somehow, perhaps easily deluded, I felt superior.”
– Owen Edwards
Mystical heroes have always found virtue and self-realization in solitude. Saint Simeon Stylites sat on top of a pillar for 37 years, to escape the turmoil of the masses.
For some, isolation is no choice. Five Omar Mualimm-ak spent more than five years in solitary confinement:
“An avid comic book reader, I often imagined being invisible. I never thought I would actually experience it, but I did.”
no touch . no space . paranoia . whispers . darkness
Isolated, our world loses reality. And we disappear with it, because no one sees us. We are no ‘there’ for anyone.
We are nowhere.
“The very essence of life, I came to learn during those seemingly endless days, is human contact, and the affirmation of existence that comes with it. Losing that contact … you become nothing.”
– Five Omar Mualimm-ak
solitude . loneliness
finding / losing the self
Rapunzel grew up to be too beautiful to be free
protected fom male desire
virginity . experience . comfort zone
we retreat from the big bad world
to hide, or just breathe
we built ivory towers to see further
forgetting the world below
“Rapunzel, let down your hair. Make of it a rope for your own descent from the tower to the earth; from the house, to the world; from isolation to community; from bondage to freedom. … And for the empowerment of us all.”
– Michele Russell
towers collapse