When Michael Leunig wrote of "solitude, a simple den, a piece of paper and a pen, a cup of tea, a piece of toast, a window and the holy ghost; some calm, a table and a chair; the mind is free, the soul is bare", he must have had "Melbourne" in mind.
For most of my life I've walked the fine line between solitude and loneliness, each of which has its price tag. As Charles Bukowski asked, "When nobody wakes you up in the morning, when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want, what do you call it, Freedom or Loneliness?"
With loneliness no longer an option, I crave for the occasional solitude, that untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak, to go within and meet no one else for hours, because, as Henry David Thoreau wrote in "Walden", "To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."
A century after Virginia Woolf made her case for the importance of having "A Room of One’s Own", I have a room of my own in "Melbourne", far away from the main house and tugged away among the gum trees.
There, in that simple den, with a piece of paper and pen, and a cup of tea from the thermos, I dream and I read and I write, and occasionally simply fall asleep, to emerge several hours later a different creature.
"The ancient tiny thread of gold that runs through all the joy and gloom is found inside this little room."
The sun is out, the day is warming up, the river looks like something out of "On Golden Pond", and I might go to "Melbourne" right now for a few hours of solitude. "Padma, if the phone rings, tell 'em I'm in Melbourne!"
