"The worst is my being alone...," Don Chaffer, album: "You were at the Time for Love"

I feel comfortable coming out of nowhere with an idea on Facebook, but somehow blogging seems so much more formal, as though anything published here ought to be finished and complete, properly set, and ended. Publishing here is different from publishing there, and it trips me.

So now for the set-up.

I'm reading this book my Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford. I saw it on the new releases shelf in the library at least half a year ago, and was drawn by the title, but didn't pick it up then. Later, through Goodreads perhaps, it emerged into my consciousness again, as the reviews led me to believe that despite my caution at approaching another spiritual memoir, one evoking my favorite author, no less, it would be a book worth reading.

It's a good book, but something about it scares me.

It isn't an alarming book, by any means, and it doesn't bring up any entirely new ideas that I have not considered before, but I am unsettled by it, unsettled being quite the appropriate word.

Is Oxford really like what she describes? Are there people in the world like what she describes, not just at Oxford?

I take back what I said about being unsettled by Weber's book. I was already unsettled before reading it.

And now I'm probably going to cry. Self-pity, you know. Or maybe you don't. Or maybe it isn't even self-pity.

What I came on here to say was this:

She makes me wonder if this part of the South, the part I live in, is a particularly uncomfortable place to be an introvert.

Among other, weightier things, and this is only a minor detail in a book about something else entirely, she mentions this man, this man who became so important in her life, his discomfort with small talk, and how he entered into deep conversation with her sister upon first meeting. It's like they recognized one another immediately.

For you this comes out of nowhere. For me it comes after many a conversation that has made me wonder about my geographical place in the world.

What scares me about this book is that Weber makes me want to escape to a place like Oxford, England. Not because it is a perfect place. No place is perfect. No people are perfect. There must be harshness and cruelty there just as there is here, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. There must be apathy there, just as there is here. There really is no reason to think that I might be nurtured there anymore than I am here in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

What scares me about this book is that it makes me want to hope for something I must be completely naive to hope for. Of course the problem I have must be me and not my surroundings, right? Community is there for the joining, is it not? If I'm lacking in community, in intellectual nurturing here, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, it must be my own fault, right, because I haven't adapted properly, wanted it enough, etc. Because I'm too intimidated by those I must approach.

If I feel isolated it is because of me, not you. At least that's what I've believed for a long, long time. Or else not believed it, and therein lies the problem.

Does any of this make sense?

My internal dialog says, "Buck up, girl. Your geographical location has nothing to do with it. There's something wrong with you, not the topography." I don't trust that internal dialog, any more than I trust in some kind of utopian, pie-in-the-sky dream.

This is raw and exposed and it's the only way I know to write. Someday I hope to grow up out of it.

I think I need some British friends.

By the way, Carolyn Weber's book isn't about this, but it is making me think new thoughts.