A Neighbor

A neighbor walks quickly passed me at the entrance of our apartment building. He greets me with a minimal statement, no welcome this day, and holds the door open so we go in opposite directions. A missed opportunity? He is a man of extreme self- possession. His solitude, I sense, is peopled with vibrant thoughts, it's never an aloneness. He can surely think his way out of moods: they may descend upon him or well up within with the force of animal instinct, but his mind's keenness resists that surge, whether from outside or inside. His thoughts, I assume, are Hamlet-like: they not only occupy time so its shadows vanish but dull its duration, so his mind floats freely above immediate sensation and twists thoughts into patterns that carry more weight than routine thinking. Still solitude is his house, firmly built, sturdy, a refuge from cant and the false machinery of the world. With Hamlet's godlike reason, looking before and after, he grasps the whole of things. Someday I will insist we two talk through that pattern.