The Solitary Girl

The girl in the corner is small, inconspicuous. She sits with her legs pulled tight to her body, embracing herself with skinny arms, hands clasped in front of bruised shins, her cheek resting on top of her knees. She looks forlorn and isolated. Her long, unkempt hair is the color of red brick, concealing her dark little face like a curtain. Sometimes, when people walk by, she looks up and a sudden anxious expression crosses her otherwise unmoved face, her eyes timid like those of a cornered animal. Her lips open slightly, as if to say something, but she never breathes a single word, silently watching the passersby, before sinking back into her own world, away from the noise and the hustle surrounding her. She's dirty and her threadbare clothes are way too big for her thin body. When she shuffles her feet on the blanket you can see her tiny bare toes, grey with dust. She sits motionless, dispassionately staring into space with tired eyes which seem to have seen it all. She is nine, maybe ten years old.

Raising her head now, she puts a finger to her mouth, biting a nail. Her eyes follow a clumsy little dog sniffing at a garbage can in the alley next to her. For a moment her face becomes almost lively, child-like joy brightens her eyes. „Doggie..." she whispers. When the dog owner spots her, he pulls the puppy away, shooting her a disdainful look. Her smile fades away, devoid of passion she drops her arms and persists in the corner until night falls.

When it's dark, she walks over to the dustbin by the street light, searching the discarded carry out bags from the nearby fast food restaurant for leftovers. She takes what she finds back into the corner with her and leaning against the wall, snarfs down half a cold, rubbery cheeseburger and some french fries. Then she lets her tiny body slip down the wall and cloaking herself with the ragged blanket, falls asleep in the dirt. In her sleep she is happy sometimes, her dreams conjuring up vague pictures of the child she used to be, experiencing a joy that has long ceased to extend into the daylight.

She hardly recollects the time when she had a home, a family, a name. The only reality she knows these days is the hunger — and the fear. The fear of humans, of being beaten up, being laughed at and ridiculed. She can not remember what there was before the fear, before alternately being chased after and being chased away, fleeing and hiding like a hunted deer.

Tomorrow, when she wakes, she will move on. Some days she is lucky and people give her a little money, sometimes even enough coins to buy some chocolate. She loves chocolate. She'll scour about until noon, begging in front of the mall, always on the lookout for the police, avoiding to be caught and brought back to that terrible place she fears more than the cold, more than the dirt and loneliness, more than the hunger even. If she can't get enough money for food, she'll hang around the street market at closing time, hoping for the merchants to let her have some of the rotten fruits they can not sell.

In the late afternoon she'll be looking for another dark corner, another place to protect her from the wind, hiding from the world for one more night. Sheltered from the looks of disdainful strangers she'll fall asleep — hungry or not — dreaming the dream of the child she has once been, until waking to another morning, leaving the hope behind with the dream.


(this has been written a long time ago, living in Ireland, inspired by a homeless little girl in the streets of Dublin. After so many years, I dreamt of her the other night and remembered this story from almost twenty years ago, that I wrote after coming across her again and again, sighting her in different places, always on her own, quite unlike the other street kids. I've never been homeless ... and yet I could see myself in her for different reasons ... I have often wondered what may have become of her ... that silent, solitary little street girl with the red hair and sad eyes that I've never been quite able to forget.)

Looking for clues ...

... so it's one of those days that has me sitting pondering ... my diverse health problems, money problems, family and relationship problems, they bring up so many questions, so much emotion ... thought that is thought yet no thought, it comes without analysis, without attempt ... considerations, meditations ... whatever I call them, the questions remain:

Just why is it that one day we can be happy in the moment, joyful and content while the next day the same facts, the same situation – completely unaltered, unchanged – has us all sorrowful, quarreling with the very facts that couldn't disturb us the day before? It doesn't make sense, does it?

What is the process that leads from acceptance back to resistance? Is it chemistry, hormones? Is it something we can control? Or is it beyond our will-power? Can thought bring us any closer to the root of it? Or is thought the very evil that leads us there? As the I Ching says: "thinking only makes the heart sore."

How can it be that one day I feel so strong and equanimous, serenely dealing with everything there is ... and the next morning I wake with a lump in my belly, caused by too many swallowed tears, swallowed disappointments, swallowed pain ... my chest heavy with a hurt that I found so easy to deal with just yesterday ... not today though ... and yet none of the facts seem to have changed ...

If the change is not to be found on the outside, it must surely be sought for on the inside – looking at my perception of those facts. But if the change is there even before I'm quite awake, before there has been any time for thought, creating sorrow, where does the change in my perception come from? What's happening to our psyche from one day to the next, from one moment to another?

Those swallowed tears, turned into stone, how does one turn them back into water, making them flow again, healing and easing the heart? When the rock in the chest starts dragging one down, making it hard to walk upright and look ahead ... when the heart feels like bursting with countless salty clumps which years and years of unbeweept pain have stored there, more than one heart should ever have to hold ... when one feels as if that rock starts turning into a mountain range, a mountain range of ache and anguish, chagrin and disenchantment, how does one remove that weight?

The weight of sorrow seems equal to the weight of the world at times, impossible to carry ... and yet we all do, we all have to ... we try and keep trying ... and we all fail, again and again ... tossing and turning, trying this way and that. But we walk on and on, don't we? Some manage to still walk upright, others bent. Some break and crack under the pressure. We all struggle, we all fight. If surrender is the answer, how do we get there without a feeling of defeat? What does it take to do so with complete acceptance? Why is acceptance so fugitive, so elusive?

Would all sorrow end if we could just stop anticipating? If we didn't expect anything at all, just lived – and dreamt – without expectations, unconditionally ... would we be free from hurt then? Could we enjoy our dreams simply for the joy and hope they convey? But ... is there hope without expectation? Is it possible to hope in a more open-minded way, not focused on just one certain result? Living our lives the way we might read a book – focused but open for whatever is going to happen? And if it is possible, does there necessarily have to be pain where there is hope? What is the opposite of hope? Abandoning? Resignation? Can there be faith where there is no hope? Can there be hope where there is no faith?

Can our dreams and desires become too big for us? Or is it ourselves being not big enough for our desires and dreams? Not complete enough maybe, not whole enough?

What causes us to hurt when we hurt? Disappointed expectations? Fear of loss? And what is it we fear to lose – ourselves? And what exactly does that mean ... losing ourselves? Maybe it's true we have to lose ourselves first in order to finally find ourselves. Our "real" selfs ... for how can we lose what we've never had ... how can we understand what we've never known? Do we really know who we are, somewhere beyond the images of ourselves?

How many of us are completely content with themselves, without looking upon another for recognition or acknowledgment? For most of us it is difficult to see ourselves at all if not perceived through the eyes of another ... our well-being depending to a large degree on that outside perception of ourselves being in harmony with our own perception of who we think we are. Of how we want or even need to be seen. If we do not get the attention we think we deserve, if the outside image is not in accordance with our own images of ourselves, that causes conflict – we often find that hard to accept. We think we need that recognition ... I think we need it because we are not whole – it's a feeling of incompleteness that causes need.

Need ... more conflict, more pain. When what we think is a need can not be satisfied, we find that hard to deal with. But what is that need? What is need in general, somewhere beyond the elementary needs, like food or shelter or basic clothing or the necessities of everyday life? Is not every need that goes beyond that just a desperate attempt to fill the emptiness inside us? If we were completely content with who we are or what we are, comfortable with and by ourselves ... would we really need all that we tend to think we need, trying to stuff the emptiness inside us with all kind of things? Relationships are used for that as much as drugs or shopping or food or fun-seeking of any kind.

We do not feel complete the way we are, we seek completion and fulfilment on the outside instead of within ... but it's a very vulnerable, a very evanescent kind of "completeness", only ever temporary ... as soon as the outside component falls away, when a partner leaves us, when we lose what we cling to – property, relationships, whatever – we are left feeling empty and incomplete again ... hurt, pain, sorrow ... they just wait for us to come running back into their arms – arms that do not bring any comfort – it's an evil circle.

Knowing the answers in the abstract still doesn't bring me any closer to permanently integrating them with 'what is', with reality ... it's not like I understood with my head only ... I can feel the truth of having to look inside myself, I understand it somewhere beyond intellect, beyond reason or rationality, with my heart and soul and every cell of my body at times ... I can see it lying there, that one answer to all these questions ... so close, so seemingly easy to reach ... and yet as if secured behind a wall of armoured glass ... just a few inches away, still impossible to grasp ... somewhat inaccessible.

All I can do, again and again, is fall back onto faith and the belief that the answers will expose themselves once I am ready for them. Until then ... there is nothing to do but live ... and maybe stop trying so hard ...

Ira Progoff: Wisdom of Life

"If I did not believe
That the wisdom of life
Is greater than my own wisdom,
I could not have survived,
But having survived,
It is more than a faith now,
A knowledge.
I know, that,
Great as my wisdom is,
– Almost as great as my will and my desire –
Yet the wisdom of life is greater.
And, as I could not float upon water when I tried to,
Now I can float upon life
Without trying.
In this is my wisdom
And the wisdom of anyone
To know that I know not
How to carry the weight of my existence.
But the waters of life will carry it for me
In their wisdom.
That is the wisdom of life
From which comes all power
And the ultimate glory.
And the greatness of my wisdom lies
In letting life be wise."

Rilke ... speaking from my heart ...

"I am too alone in the world,
and not alone enough to make every moment holy.
I am too tiny in this world,
and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone."

(Rilke)