In 1987, I finished the first year of law school and was working in Santa Barbara for a law firm. I’d been home a year after college at Chico, and decided it was time to strike out on my own, to live as a grownup and in solitude. So as of August 15, 1987, I was the proud renter of a guest house apartment with a patio and a yard, in the middle of Carpinteria. I didn’t figure the solitude part would last too long. But interestingly, it has.

I lived there 13 years, until fall 2000, when I bought my condo. So it’ll be 7 years here soon. You see my point, yes? Twenty years, I’ve suddenly realized. The big 2-0, almost a month ago. Twenty years of living by myself. Well, that’s not entirely true. For 14 years, 1991 – 2005, I had a dog.

What is there to say about such a feat, especially when allowed to subsume one’s middle years? Homeric! Right? I mean, my dishes could be sophomores in college.

The question is this, from a literary standpoint: If, say, a character in a story you’re writing willingly – often happily – lives by himself for 20 years, what can we say about him? Is this heroic, or a cop-out on the potential of his life? A fearful avoidance and isolation? Or is it simply que sera sera, life on life’s terms?

“ … So in the afternoon, when the rain comes early, with big fat drops falling slowly in the dust of his yard, on his house and barn and the living desperate desert, he shoves aside his workbench and makes a place on the wooden floor to dance. Shuffling around the room in his Mexican boots, the thunder when it comes is like a ten piece band. Guitars and fiddles, silver coronets.

He dances as long as he can, until he has to sit in his old spindle chair in the open barn door and watch the rain. And he talks to God, tells Him it’s not good for a man to be so lonely, so far from town, without a horse or a dog to keep him company. God listens, and suggests a dog would be good.

Later there is lightning, and the power goes out for a while. It doesn’t matter, because he is asleep when his fan stops idling back and forth. …”

– from Miles from Town, © 2006 by Kyle Kimberlin

Me (in the blue-billed cap) with T and Bro at the Solstice parade last month. A good time was had by all, and I just felt like sharing. Mom took the picture.

Click it to really enlarge it.