I think I probably wrote this somewhere else before, but I always find the month of May filled with possibilities. I have always identified it with the end of the academic year, with graduations, with confirmations, with Pentecost. The point of transition, the time when the old order slows down, and the hint of new beginnings tantalizes.

Much to my dismay, I found that this became completely literal when I wandered off to the Midwest, where apparently it’s fair game for snow until around the end of April. The weather really wouldn’t start feeling spring-like until sometime in mid-May, for all of five to seven days, and then all of the sudden it was summer, sticky and sweltering, with calamitous thunderstorms and tornado watches alternating every twenty minutes with pure, glorious sunlight.

So while I know that May is the Anglicized form of Latin Maia, and that it is frequently identified with Mary the mother of Jesus (which reminds me of the daily ceremonies in elementary school that we would have venerating the Blessed Mother), I can’t help but ponder the fact that “may” also means “to be able.” It is the modal auxillary verb that denotes the subjunctive mood in Modern English, which expresses conjecture, possibility, hypothesis. Maybe something good, maybe something bad. We just don’t know.

One of my favorite 10,000 Maniacs song “These are Days” has a line that forever haunts me: “When May comes rushing over you / with desire / to be part of the miracles you see / in every hour.”

I remember too many Mays where I was filled with hope, with that hope soon dashed, never coming to fruition.

Then again, one of my favorite songs by the Police “Message in a Bottle” has a line that has become something of a mantra for me: “Only hope can keep me together / Love can mend your life but love can break your heart.”

In a world full of nothing true, hope is the only thing that keeps me going. That faint silver thread leading from the center of my soul off into the great unknown. Into destiny itself.

It is always important to acknowledge the gifts given to you, however. C at last made me realize the beauty of solitude. There is something comforting knowing that there is at least one other person like me who actually likes spending time by themself. That idea is sort of transforming the way I look at my own narrative. In a burst of synchronicity, I had decided to finally pick up the book entitled Party of One: The Loners’ Manifesto a couple of days ago, and came to realize that maybe that really is me. Exploration, by it’s nature, frequently requires solitude. It’s easier to just wander around looking for inspiration when you don’t have to worry about other people’s timetables and agenda. When you don’t have to deal with their lack of interest, when you don’t have to cajole someone else into going with you to take that path less taken. Apparently I’m in good company: Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Franz Kafka, to name a few cited by Anneli Rufus. It is interesting how their official biographies revolve around the other people involved in their lives. Much is made about Einstein’s marriages and the implicit support that Mileva Maric and Elsa Einstein must have provided. Lennon was part of one of the most famous bands in rock-and-roll history, and his legendary marriage with Yoko Ono has become a solidified part of his mystique. But I can’t help but wonder, perhaps projecting my own life onto their narratives, when Einstein pondered the entire universe and the vast forces that move the stars and galaxies, when he imagined how matter causes space to curve, and how light follows these twisted paths, could he really take either of them with him on his flights of fancy? Could they relish in his sense of discovery? While Mileva Maric was also an aspiring physicist (and some hypothesize that she contributed in a concrete manner to Einstein’s theories), I can’t help but wonder if the dissolution of his marriage didn’t start when Einstein went off on his explorations of the workings of the universe.

In the same vein, Lennon’s anti-social personality is not often discussed, and I imagine that when he wrote his music, he would do it by himself, much to the chagrin of his bandmates who would prefer a more collaborative endeavor.

I suppose I have fallen prey to the idea that being alone is pathological. I have succumbed to sentiment that experiences that aren’t shared aren’t real. But, for good or for ill, the majority of my life has been spent in solitude. In retrospect, I realize that I have had difficulties juggling my solitary interests with social events and obligations. In my few extant relationships, there have always been concepts, thoughts, ideas that I have found difficult to share. Not just because of the fear of being misunderstood, although that is certainly there, but there is the basic problem of frequently not even being able to articulate what goes through my mind at times.

There was a time, perhaps, that I could lose myself in my work, in my thoughts and musings, in the hidden and secret paths that I would find myself treading, never worrying that someone would demand of me the question of, “What have you been doing with your life?” There was a time when the activity itself would provide me with satisfaction, and I didn’t need to please anyone else, I didn’t need to inspire other people’s interest, in order to be happy with what I’ve done.

For people like me, society’s disdain of loners is poisonous.

For the longest time, I have known that I am an introvert, even before Meyers-Briggs confirmed it for me. What I didn’t know until relatively recently is that introverts are a minority. I had imagined a world that was roughly 50-50, but in reality, it’s more like every 1 in 3. Society is all about extroverts, about making friends easily, about continuous conversation and sharing of thoughts. This is the generative engine that makes most of the world go round.

I am suddenly struck by a metaphor drawn from imagery from China Miéville’s The Scar which describes the fictional city of Armada, which is a tangle of decommissioned seacraft of various shapes and sizes from different parts of the world clumped up together to form the foundation of a city that is at least one square mile in area. Upon this floating artificial island are roads and buildings, markets and libraries, much like any other city. For the most part, the city will drift listlessly on the endless sea, but sometimes the rulers of the city will have the tugboats at the periphery pull them in a certain direction. But in addition to these, there are singular pirate ships that leave the city and scout the surrounding area, obtaining raw materials and prisoners.

The extroverts are the core of the city, the ships that make up the foundation. The introverts are both the tugboats and the pirate ships, responsible for actually giving the city direction. Not all introverts are necessarily loners, however—these are the tugboats, who sit on the periphery of society and gaze out into the dark unknown of the sea, but who are still exist as integral parts of the city. The loners are the pirate ships who go their own way, occasionally making port at the city, but never becoming a permanent part of it.

Clearly, civilization as we know it need both the core and the periphery.

It is telling that in college, I was part of a loosely associated group (that really wasn’t a group, which is very symptomatic of people who like to go their own way) which we sardonically named POPS, which stands for Pilipinos on the Periphery. Kasama-sama feels like an integral part of Filipino and Filipino American culture, something that repelled me on a visceral level, and college was no different. The sanctioned culture-based student groups were primarily of a social nature (which was a far cry from their origins of political activism well esconced within the tumult of the Free Speech Movement which erupted out of Berkeley amidst the general unrest embodied by the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-war movement.) Being Berkeley, there were sops and scraps of meat thrown to the militant, but the function of the Pilipino American Alliance was pretty clear in retrospect.

Then there are those who simply didn’t identify at all with their ethnic subculture, truly going their own way.

I’ve always thought of myself as a minority embedded within a minority embedded within a minority. In some ways, I do think of myself as a subculture that has exactly one member. Oh, I have my close friendships (many of them extant for more than a decade, and a few surpassing a full score of years) and I have my alliances to various groups, but I begin to see clearly that many of the most momentous moments of my life have occurred in solitude. True, at times, it is that curious solitude that one can feel even while embedded within a clamorous throng, but it is solitude nonetheless.

I have forgotten who it was exactly who once told me that I just see things differently, which was a trait that they found valuable. At the time I fretted that this ability was the source of my constant sense of alienation, but in the end I see the true value of it.

I have often had this fantasy, this vision, that despite being alone most of the time, I still walk among this shadow company of people who wander the world following their own bliss, finding their own niches and caches filled with wonder. Some of their finds will rarely filter through the discourse of general society, transforming it in subtle, though at times revolutionary, ways, and maybe for the most part I will never share in their specific awe and joy, but it is a good feeling that despite being by myself, there are others out there like me.