Cubby of Solitude

“I hope to add some measure of grace to the world.” — Don Quixote

As a kid I was obsessed with Superman’s Fortress of Solitude… this place where The Man of Steel stored all of his most precious things, hidden away. A place for those things that were the most HIM as he wandered through a world that he struggled to be a part of. There was an awkwardness to Clark Kent that many took for Kal-El overcompensating in his human cover identity and David Carradine’s warlord character Bill characterized as Superman’s critique of the human race.

Being a sickly kid — I was diagnosed with chronic severe asthma when I was 5 and had been in the hospital at least 3 times I remember before that because of constant misdiagnoses — Superman’s invulnerability appealed, I think. I dreamed of being indestructible. I dreamed of being able to run without my throat closing up. I wanted to fly. As I got older and my own awkwardness set in, I dreamed of being strong enough to deflect the small town school yard bullies that at first tormented me and then eventually got bored with my lack of either fear or acquiescence in spite of being physically bested. It didn’t help that I was also uncoordinated and not great at sports, which gave the bullies fodder and made me a gym class laughing stock, even to most of the teachers.

I wanted to be That Strong. And I understood that being That Strong came with a price.

Secrecy.

Solitude.

Living in a constant cover story.

Is it any wonder I turned out a poet? Poets need solitude and the nature of the thing, no matter how I might try to illuminate it, is cast in a shroud of secrecy. And unless you’re one of Those Few who get to make a living as a poet, you’re stuck living in a constant cover story.

My writing space… this basement, this cubby, my fortress of solitude … is full of artifacts. I haven’t kept them all over the years. Travel and a certain reticence have kept me from having a complete Fortress. The things I don’t currently have tangibly still exist in a sort of memory palace that I visit when the urge hits.

My work schedule lately — my cover story — means I don’t get spend as much time here. And sometimes I avoid it, even though I’m still writing, just because I don’t want to get swept in by the closest thing I feel to nostalgia. But there is a regenerative quality to this space surrounded by books and music instruments, various artifacts and memories, rocks and presents from my daughter, my niece, and other family members. Pictures. Pieces of art. Memorabilia.

I suppose it’s been fashionable and again unfashionable to talk about a “man cave.” This isn’t that. I don’t need a place to hide from my wife. If anything, I think she sometimes needs me to have a place where I can hold the things I haven’t yet let go of or that haven’t let go of me.

And that was always the genius of the Fortress of Solitude. It was real but more so. Memory but more tangible. Full of wonder and bitterness where the things that haven’t cast me off wait and whisper ceaselessly like ghosts.