Under the big night sky: why we all feel so alone in the age of Trump

There are all kinds of reasons we feel alone in our lives. Some of them are practical, even factual, if you will. I live alone. I spend most of every day alone in my house. I just finished driving about 4,500 miles around the country, about 3,000 of which were done alone in the car. Every once in a while I walk down to a park on the harbor or out on the pier and find a bench and sit alone and watch the water. I don’t do it because it’s relaxing, to calm my nerves. I do it because a bench on the water is a change of scene. The water does all the stuff it’s supposed to do, with the breeze riffling its surface, the sailboats bobbing at their moorings. It can be indescribably beautiful when the light is right and the water sparkles or turns crimson and orange and violet at sunset, but the harbor is just another place to be alone.

I never thought I’d be living like this when I was in my 20s, but I had my suspicions. I used to spend a lot of time driving around the country in a 1968 Dodge camper van writing stories for the Village Voice and various magazines. I made a point of driving through Aspen in the fall to visit an old friend of mine who was a ski bum waitress out there. Her name was Cherry. We were school kids together in Oberammergau, Germany in

Article source: http://www.salon.com/2017/07/26/under-the-big-night-sky-why-we-all-feel-so-alone-in-the-age-of-trump/