What a ravishing meditation on loneliness, and the fierce, fragile ways we try to bridge it. Samuelson, that mad Swede with a hammer and a hunger, belongs in a lineage of accidental philosophers — those who don’t write books, but boulders, who don’t seek followers, but witnesses. His chiseled creed — Nature is God. Evolution is the Mother and Father of Mankind. The Key to Life is Contact.— reads like the distilled echo of a mind too raw to lie, too alone to pretend.
And how modern, indeed. Before Instagram captions and Substack essays, he was microblogging in stone, sending dispatches into the desert wind like digital flares before the digital existed. He wasn’t a nobody, he was the original poster. The OG influencer, minus the filters.
But here’s my take: contact is not the key to life. It’s the wound through which life leaks in. That ache for contact — relentless, maddening, sacred — is what animates us, what keeps poets scribbling, prophets howling, and a man talking to a volleyball. It’s not the connection that defines us, but the reaching for it. The longing is the thing. Ask Rilke. Ask Orpheus. Ask the desert wind.
You are right to invoke Shakespeare and Thoreau and that terrible, holy cry from the Cross. All of them naming, in their own lexicons, the fundamental human predicament: we are with and yet without. Proximity is not intimacy. Noise is not communion. We are loneliest in rooms full of people, scrolling through a thousand faces we will never touch.
But perhaps we should stop treating the Void like a failure. Maybe it’s a condition. A necessary haunting. The sand-blasted silence in which the truth of a self is revealed—not as an endpoint, but as a frequency we can finally hear. And from that frequency, real contact is possible. Not mass-produced. Not algorithmic. But slow. Singular. Like your sonnet in the handlebars. Like a post that inexplicably catches fire in a stranger’s soul.
So here’s to Samuelson. And to Wilson. And to Shakespeare and the Kansas wind. Here’s to the nobodies writing into the Void. Not because they’ll be heard, but because they must speak. Because that, too, is contact: the act of making a mark —even if the rock never replies.
Jeeze, Tamara. You really do dig your fingers deep into words. What can a writer say to this, but thank you--for hearing it, translating it, reworking it in your way. It is generous of you, this patience to inhabit the words of others. I see you do it time and time again, and I admire it. Did you say you were a Ph.D. candidate in English?
I don’t enter any work category but I do different things, investing time, energy, creativity, and money in projects that either make my heart race or my brain stretch — ideally both. Some are visible, some deliberately not. Let’s just say I’ve made a career out of curiosity and a habit of staying slightly out of frame.
I don’t clock in or wear a badge, unless curiosity counts as a uniform. I live in the space between deadlines and daydreams, where the hours are slippery and the job description is mostly “make it look effortless.” Some days I’m untangling threads no one else sees, other days I’m vanishing entirely. I suppose you could call it work — if you squint.
…the rock…or the man who reads the rock…or the man who writes on the rock…so many interesting thoughts Chris and I compel myself into and out of voids redundantly…a wordless world wouldn’t be worthless but it would be needlessly difficult this day and age…that said the glut described, this online world where these words will disappear in less than a week’s window…is it as lonely as the rock…or the man who reads the rock…or the man who writes on the rock…how rapt and together and lost and lonely we are all at once…stars and stones…all that we see and we don’t…
Chris-I enjoyed that a lot. Every sentence hit some component of my being that feels personal. I CRAvE solitude, time w nature, carve rocks, aim to condense my beliefs into small statements, have done many bike tours, have memorized sonnets, certainly feel the weird loneliness of posting things online where, as you say, they compete w too many other voices and just feel lost. That may be the only time I ever have any real sense of loneliness. Everything else feels intentional, controllable, by design.
Thanks, Lou. We're pretty much the same in these ways. Sometimes I think I just make contact harder than it needs to be, exaggerating the distance between people. I am a hopeless idealist, and it trips me up.
The answers are always found in the damn paradoxes....
Beautiful as usual. ❤️❤️
Yeah, it really is ANNOYING! Can't any truths just be simple and straightforward?!!!
What a ravishing meditation on loneliness, and the fierce, fragile ways we try to bridge it. Samuelson, that mad Swede with a hammer and a hunger, belongs in a lineage of accidental philosophers — those who don’t write books, but boulders, who don’t seek followers, but witnesses. His chiseled creed — Nature is God. Evolution is the Mother and Father of Mankind. The Key to Life is Contact.— reads like the distilled echo of a mind too raw to lie, too alone to pretend.
And how modern, indeed. Before Instagram captions and Substack essays, he was microblogging in stone, sending dispatches into the desert wind like digital flares before the digital existed. He wasn’t a nobody, he was the original poster. The OG influencer, minus the filters.
But here’s my take: contact is not the key to life. It’s the wound through which life leaks in. That ache for contact — relentless, maddening, sacred — is what animates us, what keeps poets scribbling, prophets howling, and a man talking to a volleyball. It’s not the connection that defines us, but the reaching for it. The longing is the thing. Ask Rilke. Ask Orpheus. Ask the desert wind.
You are right to invoke Shakespeare and Thoreau and that terrible, holy cry from the Cross. All of them naming, in their own lexicons, the fundamental human predicament: we are with and yet without. Proximity is not intimacy. Noise is not communion. We are loneliest in rooms full of people, scrolling through a thousand faces we will never touch.
But perhaps we should stop treating the Void like a failure. Maybe it’s a condition. A necessary haunting. The sand-blasted silence in which the truth of a self is revealed—not as an endpoint, but as a frequency we can finally hear. And from that frequency, real contact is possible. Not mass-produced. Not algorithmic. But slow. Singular. Like your sonnet in the handlebars. Like a post that inexplicably catches fire in a stranger’s soul.
So here’s to Samuelson. And to Wilson. And to Shakespeare and the Kansas wind. Here’s to the nobodies writing into the Void. Not because they’ll be heard, but because they must speak. Because that, too, is contact: the act of making a mark —even if the rock never replies.
Jeeze, Tamara. You really do dig your fingers deep into words. What can a writer say to this, but thank you--for hearing it, translating it, reworking it in your way. It is generous of you, this patience to inhabit the words of others. I see you do it time and time again, and I admire it. Did you say you were a Ph.D. candidate in English?
No, just a little writer…. :) with a limitless imagination.
Dialogue inspires me.
But what do you do besides write, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m curious because you reveal few details of your daily life in your writing.
I don’t enter any work category but I do different things, investing time, energy, creativity, and money in projects that either make my heart race or my brain stretch — ideally both. Some are visible, some deliberately not. Let’s just say I’ve made a career out of curiosity and a habit of staying slightly out of frame.
I don’t clock in or wear a badge, unless curiosity counts as a uniform. I live in the space between deadlines and daydreams, where the hours are slippery and the job description is mostly “make it look effortless.” Some days I’m untangling threads no one else sees, other days I’m vanishing entirely. I suppose you could call it work — if you squint.
Not the usual LinkedIn bio.
I’d say it’s more than slightly out of frame.
…the rock…or the man who reads the rock…or the man who writes on the rock…so many interesting thoughts Chris and I compel myself into and out of voids redundantly…a wordless world wouldn’t be worthless but it would be needlessly difficult this day and age…that said the glut described, this online world where these words will disappear in less than a week’s window…is it as lonely as the rock…or the man who reads the rock…or the man who writes on the rock…how rapt and together and lost and lonely we are all at once…stars and stones…all that we see and we don’t…
That’s one of the most heartfelt and poetic responses to anything I’ve written, CansaFis. Thank you.
Your every word laid down seamlessly dovetailing your measured thoughts to meditative conclusion.
Just beautifully written.
Not one word wasted.
I love the foundation of this being Samuelson’s Rocks, too.
I think you see him quite clearly.
Thanks, Kat. Have I told you how much appreciate having you as a reader? Bunches.
You know that means I have to drop hugs here right? 😂
I appreciate you all over the place in all the best ways, Chris.
Chris-I enjoyed that a lot. Every sentence hit some component of my being that feels personal. I CRAvE solitude, time w nature, carve rocks, aim to condense my beliefs into small statements, have done many bike tours, have memorized sonnets, certainly feel the weird loneliness of posting things online where, as you say, they compete w too many other voices and just feel lost. That may be the only time I ever have any real sense of loneliness. Everything else feels intentional, controllable, by design.
Thanks, Lou. We're pretty much the same in these ways. Sometimes I think I just make contact harder than it needs to be, exaggerating the distance between people. I am a hopeless idealist, and it trips me up.