Why is being alone not excruciatingly painful, not a dread voyage of discovery of my unsuspected inner reaches, I brood? ... The truth eventually dawns on me that this absence of painful confrontation with the shadow interior is, in fact, my moment of self-discovery. I find nothing more monstrous, chimerical, interesting, or elaborate than solipsism; certainly nothing substantial, just the echoing vacancy of a shallow vessel, an empty container ... I hankered ... for long periods of solitude 'in which to think', uninterrupted time when, at last reliably alone, I could 'be myself'. My agony is not what I find in the stillness of being alone, but what I do not find.

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