solo-vino.

There is a place here I like to go. It's close to my house, within walking distance, and it houses many bottles of wine. Relaxing is its atmosphere, deep and vibrant burgundy are its walls, and at ease am I when sitting on one of the full of character antique couches, or outside, under the sun or stars, sipping a glass of wine.

Last Sunday evening, this delightful place is where I wanted to be. I was not in the mood to be at home alone. Some evenings that's fine, and lovely. This past Sunday, it wouldn't have been. Wanting to be at the delightful establishment was somewhat of an issue, because I had no one to go along. I have felt this feeling before. This desire to go there, with no friends available, and I have always just given up on the idea, and settled for Pei Wei take-out or a rented flick.

I started to wonder why I had an aversion to going alone. I go all kinds of places alone; Movies, out to eat, to coffee shops, thrift stores, department stores, farmers' markets, grocery stores. Some of these places, I am in and out, but others, I linger and stay. I started to imagine myself within those bright burgundy walls, with a book, sipping wine, and I liked the image enough to wade through the abnormal anxiety and just do it.

I hopped on my bicycle, with my wallet and my book, and began my journey. On the short trip there, I began to think about how similar I was probably looking to the stereotypical lonely old man. You know, the one who goes places, by himself, and sips whiskey or beer, and stares.

At that point, my journey became as much an experiment as a journey, and we all know how much I love experiments. I was going to see, as much as I could, what it would feel like to fill the weathered boots of this world's lonesome character. I arrived and ordered my glass, and thought of the phantom following me, and imagined him staring at the wall, regretful of all of the women that have left him, his children he never knew, the friends that have grown tired of him, and for all of the decisions, selfish decisions, that paved the way for his solitary misery, amplified with each sip. Perhaps he had never loved himself enough to let others love him too.

The funny difference about the old lonely man and myself is that I have been under the impression that my life's decisions haven't been inherently selfish, and as I sat there and stared at the candle flicker, and sipped sipped sipped on my Ben Marco Malbec, I was, quite honestly, puzzled at why I was watching it flicker alone.

And that made me wonder if the old man, the one that stared instead at walls, was puzzled by the same thing.