Alienation

A man sits by the window of his hut and looks out.  Dense green forest surrounds him, stifling the outside world.  A soft breeze brings distant bird calls and the slow swishing of leaves to his ears.

He lives alone.  He has lanterns for the dark and a river nearby to wash, and this is sufficient.  He grows beans and corn and potatoes in the clearing surrounding his hut.  He thinks to himself about joy and fear, and the unpredictable nature of emotion.  He travels through the forest often, and once in a while he plays a small wooden harp.

Never has anyone visited him here.

Did he lose his friends?  Where are his family?  Where are his connections to the human cycle?  These answers are buried in his past, buried by choice, in a heart-breaking life riddled with mistakes.  Is he a hermit?

He wonders about his own solitude.

Is he a hermit?

He knows and accepts that he is alone, and seeks to be alone, and seeks to remain forever alone.  But in his heart his craving is to lose himself entirely in another who would accept him.  Then he would know that love and death are the same.