In the Eye

Side One

I’ll admit, perhaps, that I’ve gone a little stir-crazy these past few days. I truly thought I could handle this, that I’d enjoy being so thoroughly and utterly alone. For that’s always been the hardest thing about life to me; the amount of social interaction required to live with other people.

Some of it is simply inevitable. You have to talk to your parents, growing up. You have to talk to your teachers, your classmates, your friends, if you have any. You have to talk to the cashier in the store and the doctor when you go for appointments and even the dentist requires you to mumble out answers to questions he has no right to ask with his hands in your mouth.

But beyond all that, beyond the absolute necessary interactions, I’ve always preferred to be alone. I can do small talk when I must and I can even hang out, go out, enjoy my time when I’m invited somewhere that I actually want to go. But when given the chance, usually I stay home, or go out on my own. I’ve heard that some people are afraid to go to movies by themselves. They’re worried about how they’ll look to others if they eat at a restaurant alone, or if they go to a museum and ponder paintings for hours without uttering a single word. I don’t have that problem. I don’t care what I look like to others. I care about my thoughts, and what I see, feel, hear. I am my own company.

So when this opportunity presented itself – the aforementioned one, that drove me sort of stir-crazy – I didn’t even think about it. Surely, if anyone could handle months alone on the coast, with only the old lighthouse and the seagulls and the waves for company, surely I could. Surely I would love it. The only interruptions to my dreaming would be the fortnightly supply dump and mail run by a lovely silent man named Dennis. How marvelous, to have no one at all to speak to, except every-so-often Dennis. To have no one try to speak to me, including Dennis.

It has been two months, now. Two months alone. Four visits from Silent Dennis. Twelve words spoken aloud in the presence of another human being. Many more spoken to myself, to the gulls, to the ocean and the winds. An absolute tumultuous multitude of words spat at the lighthouse in which I reside, begging it to shout back. It does not, and I have no reason to assume it would.

As a child I read about cabin fever, and how the deep sea fishermen and intrepid frontier families and daring astronauts would have to prepare themselves for it so as not to succumb. I did not prepare myself. I thought, cabin fever only matters if you’re a social creature, which I am not. I prefer my own thoughts. They would not turn on me. They never have. Why should they start now? When I’m finally getting what I’ve always dreamt of, the perverse pleasure of no company but my own? This is my desire! My wish! I love my silence and my thoughts! They are not difficult, nor evil, nor demanding. They are me. I love me.

Don’t I?

As an adult I read about intrusive thoughts. They latch onto all of us, even the mentally healthy. They tell us to do things we don’t want to do. Dangerous things, disgusting things. They sneak in when you’re having a good day and say, “What would happen if you stepped off this bridge? Do you think the fall is high enough to kill you? Or merely break your legs?” and then you must spend the rest of your time on that bridge fighting the urge to lean over the rails and examine the distance below.

I have never been suicidal. I’m not suicidal now.

But I am alone, oh so very alone, and Dennis is not set to visit for another 6 days. I will sit here, in my lighthouse, and imagine that there is no one left in the world but me. I am alone, in my fortress, forevermore. I hear not the gulls crying, nor do I see any fins of dolphins breaking the surface as I gaze out across the whitecaps. There are only rough waters now, and stormy seas, and wind whipping through the skies. I see yellow, and white, and gray, and brown. I see green.

I see nothing.

Side Two

The first reports of a hurricane off the coast came quickly, suddenly, and without much alarm. Those in charge of noticing such things passed along their reports of the imminent change in weather conditions to the higher authorities, but this storm barely merited a few mentions on the local news stations. Few people lived that far south – fishermen, mostly. There were a couple of oil rigs, some run-down summer homes that no one bothered to visit anymore, an abandoned shopping center ravaged by previous storms. Anyone who did live there knew the signs of an oncoming hurricane well enough without needing to be told.

A single lighthouse stood on the shore, far beyond the limits of any inhabited city. Most of the year it sat empty, its light darkened and the attached house bare of food and furnishings. Every winter, when the waters got rough and the winds picked up, an elderly couple would arrive and live out the cold months in the small house. Every evening the couple would together light the bright, shining bulb that kept the lone fishing boats away from the rocks. And every spring, they would leave again, together.

This year, the couple never arrived. Instead, a single young man with wild, loose hair and an intense gaze strode up to the lighthouse, weeks before the weather turned cold. He brought with him the clothes on his back and a small bag of books and a single leather-bound journal. He settled in the house and, as soon as night fell, the lighthouse shone for miles around.

Every two weeks a man showed up in an all-terrain vehicle with mail and supplies, just as he had for years. The mail comprised mostly of magazines and junk letters, nothing of personal import. The supplies were always the same: clean water, milk, bread, eggs, non-perishable cans of soup and beans and vegetables.

For two months this kept up, the silent man visiting, the lighthouse shining, the weather growing colder and colder. When the hurricane began to gather off the coast, the silent man brought word to the lighthouse. He broke his silence and offered to take its keeper far away from the danger. The hurricane could hit any day. It might not hit this far south. It was predicted to, but sometimes they’re wrong. Sometimes it’s not so bad. Sometimes it is.

The fishermen have all gone, he said. They know when to leave. The fish leave too, and so should you.

No, said the lighthouse keeper. No. I will stay.

So the man fell silent again and left the lighthouse. He might not return in two weeks, if the roads were too bad. He might not return at all.

In the eye of the hurricane there is quiet, but you must live long enough to hear it. The lighthouse remained standing, through this hurricane and the last and through many more. It saw many keepers, old and young, male and female, some who returned and some who didn’t. It saw the silent man, bringing supplies to the brave souls who stayed. It saw the fishermen and the seagulls and felt the winds as they battered and broke everything else around.

And it stood silent and still, much like the eye, as this particular keeper left the safety of the house and fought the wind and rain all the way up to the edge of the cliff. The man held his ground as he stared into the whirlpool of water, faced the torrential downpour and, with a cry, fell once more unto the breach.