Solitude - Part I

I used to intern at cshl which is a 15 mins drive from my home in Long Island (LI). However, since we had just migrated to the US and didn't have a car yet, I used to catch a bus from home to the railroad station, hop on the train for 2 stops and then ride on cshl's shuttle. 1 hour but no big deal. However, public transport on LI isn't that great and the buses run on an hourly basis at night (this route is also not bike friendly). On my way back from lab, the schedules worked out such that I always ended up at the bus stop ~10 mins after a bus had left. Following a long day, that was like a 'can-wait-for-the-food-to-be-cooked, but-can't-wait-for-it-cool-down' moment. 45-50 mins for 3 months amidst the hustle and bustle of a station.

I spent last summer in the UK. Friends traveling with me on the same program were mostly US citizens or had applied for a Schengen Visa (neither was true in my case) and could travel across Europe w/o any restrictions. Of course there is so much to explore in the UK itself that I had no regrets about not being able to travel outside. On one of the few days I had to myself when they were on their Euro tour - I managed to finish labwork by mid day, spent most of my afternoon walking up and down Oxford street*, then walked (1.5hrs) to the Thames/London Bridge where I spent the rest of my evening. ~9 hours at one of the busiest cities in the world. 

Spring Break 2011. I had spent spring break '09 visiting relatives, the next on a Habitat for Humanity project in Erie, PA and the third...? Quit guessing, nothing exotic. For a while I thought I would spend it showing my parents around Rochester but those plans didn't materialize. I worked long hours at the lab and studied for the GRE until Thurs when I finally decided to dedicate the day to all the other things I had been putting off. I boarded the first bus to campus and worked at a table in Starbucks till the last bus I could catch to return home. One full day at an on-campus cafe that is bustling even during college breaks.

So, why these anecdotes? This post is not about the 16 year old who spent the first several days counting down 45 mins trying not to cry at the bus stop, eventually learning that she just had to wait, or about all the people she would watch pacing down the station stairs who knew exactly where they had to go... several had a car parked under the bridge, someone regularly fetched a taxi across the street, someone unlocked their bike, someone else had friends/family pick them up, a few others walked, but no one waited alone staring through the glass window of a cafe over the pages of a novel failing to engage them; this is not about all the hundreds of people I walked past on Oxford street or the couples sipping wine and kissing by the Thames or the scores of tourists taking pictures by the magnificent site of London bridge or the large groups of families and friends dining in the  moonlight or the cheer from downtown London's sports bars; It is not about the inexhaustible search engines I tried to exhaust hunting for postgrad plans and cold-calling backups or the pages of diary I wrote in a days time at Starbucks. As vivid as those memories are and as much as I have grown from them, this is not an attempt to paint the emotions they evoke. It is just not possible. 
The purpose of narrating these is to highlight a state common to all three incidences - solitude. You don't need to go to the edge of the world to look for it. You end up finding yourself alone in the busiest and noisiest of places, whether a few bus stops away from home or in a different continent altogether, as long as you stop and and have the time and courage to peep inside... 


*This has nothing to do with the town/Uni of Oxford. It is the busiest shopping street in central London (think 5th Avenue, NYC).