The year of living alone officially ended on May 4th, and about which and who will follow in coming blogs. Earlier, in March of this year, a friend asked if I’d ever allow myself to be with someone again. ”You don’t have to feel it as a betrayal of Carolyn, you know.”

The scenery west of Denver is breathtaking in the figurative sense. The track conditions west of Denver are also breathtaking, but more in the literal sense of having it knocked out of you by a sudden lurch of the carriage, during which you’d swear the wheels had left the rails.

I didn’t set my expectations too high, as I boarded Amtrak’s Empire Builder at Seattle’s King St. Station bound for Chicago. I’d already gotten an email informing me there’d be a one hour delay due to track work. Hey, that happens. Generally, you don’t learn of airline delays until shortly after you’ve already left for the airport, and you wait out what becomes rolling further delays from the comfort of a straight-backed gate seat, landscaped with squalling children and families traveling with a small petting zoo.

    What if loneliness is just a bad friend, you know, one you hang around with but know isn’t good for you. I had a visual cue of this idea in the hotel outside of Venice. At dinner I sat next to a man also dining alone. My immediate thought of seeing him, face downward toward his plate, was that he was not dining but eating. And that’s what I’d be doing as I took the empty table next to him. Why not engage him in conversation? (I have the stupidest better angels; they don’t know me at all.) So we both sat across from one another and ate alone.