I’ve described Amina Cain’s book, A Horse at Night, as akin to reading a painting. I follow with, if that makes any sense, because it’s hard to articulate what it’s been like to navigate this book. Amina’s first nonfiction book is classified as a series of essayistic inquiries that serve as a sustained meditation on writers, literature, the spaces of both reading and writing fiction, and how all of these facets take shape in one’s life. In all, a craft book; but this is so much more than a craft book.
The reason it feels to me like reading a painting is because when we go to look at art, everyone is entitled to their own viewing experience, their own interpretation of whatever visual stimulus, and sometimes we are so porous to the work that we incorporate these experiences into our being.
My copy of A Horse at Night is heavily underlined; so many gems to treasure along the way. And I'm particularly struck by Amina’s thoughts on privacy and solitude, both exhibited in fictional characters and also by the self.
“I think this is what excites me about narrative,” Amina says. “Outside the body and inside the mind, a novel can be like a landscape painting with a character moving through it, all of her violences and joys playing themselves out in only this setting, only this narrative, for in another it would not be so” (A Horse at Night).
Amina discusses a sort of layering that happens when we read or view something, how it’s impossible not to project one place on top of another, one experience over, under, or through one we’ve already lived, or one we hope to have. And why would we want to stop this process? As writers, we are constantly seeking universality in our work, a connection with our readers on some deeper level. But I assume Amina Cain would argue we must connect with ourselves first.
Upon remembering bouts of living alone, Amina reflects on women in literature who have been abandoned, who must start over, or who simply desire to be free and unbound by anybody else, anything else, and why she layers her own life among these stories. She reflects, “…I was imagining my own relationship to something, to escape, to self-determination.”
Having moved to Tennessee almost six months ago, I’ve certainly experienced the territory of loneliness that comes with starting fresh. I’ve made friends here, but I’ve also spent a lot of time alone wandering and exploring. Sometimes I felt myself caught between Los Angeles and Nashville, the two overlapping since neither of them are my city of origin, the experience of moving to a new place taking shape both in my past and in my present. Especially as a writer, it can already be difficult to find a balance between living in the world and living in one’s mind. But reading this book, I feel the encouragement to put myself in the middle of this feeling, rather than to let myself sink below it or try to rise above it.
“To be in favor of solitude is not to be against community or friendship or love. It’s not that being alone is better, just that without the experience of it we block ourselves from discovering something enormously beneficial, perhaps even vital, to selfhood. Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a parents, a child? When no one is with you, what do you do, and do you do it differently than if someone was there? It’s hard to see someone fully when another person is always attached to them. More importantly, it’s hard for us to see our own selves if we’re not ever alone” (A Horse at Night).
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In season 4 of Sex and the City when Carrie is adjusting to living with Aiden, she grapples with her own loss of privacy and the solitude she had enjoyed when living alone. She coins the term “secret single behavior” in speaking to the other ladies about saying farewell to her cherished practices of singlehood. She muses, “I like to make a stack of saltines. I put grape jelly on them. I eat them standing up in the kitchen reading fashion magazines.”
Back in 2016, I went through one of the worst breakups of my life. It wasn’t the pain of the relationship ending that stung most, but the agony of being alone. I had been living with this person; we had shared some sort of life together. And then I was on my own again for the first time in years. Although I had grown up in south Florida, I began to explore my city anew, without the companionship I’d been accustomed to for so long.
This didn’t come easy. I started seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist who were both integral in my re-introduction to life as an adult woman. I remember my first visit with the psychiatrist vividly. His office was on Palmetto and Powerline in this pyramid-like structure that sat next to a little manmade lake. I believe the plaza now serves as a hub for real estate agencies, but as a teen, there used to be an underground nightclub underneath that same building called Club Boca, where waitresses dressed up like nurses and you could buy Jell-O shots that came in colorful vials for a dollar. In 2016, the building was filled with offices for various medical groups: orthodontists and orthopedics, neurologists, internists, physical therapy, talk therapy, psychiatry.
At that first appointment as part of my intake paperwork, the doctor asked me what my hobbies were. I paused and thought, but ultimately couldn’t answer. I cried. I didn’t have any hobbies that were solely my own. Everything for the last few years of my life had been done with another person, for another person. I had absolutely no sense of self.
I didn’t even have a secret sense of self, some things I did only when my ex was gone, out of the house. I waited for him. I left places early when he called. I changed the course of my own days to fit his. Even in privacy, I wasn’t truly ever alone. It wasn’t that I was too shy or uncomfortable, but I didn’t think it possible to be wholly myself, or rather I didn’t know myself at all.
Amina asks the reader these vital questions, “Who are you when you are not a friend, a partner, a lover, a sibling, a parent, a child? When no one is with you, what do you do, and do you do it differently than if someone was there?” And back in that psychiatrist’s office in 2016, I couldn’t answer.
I started keeping a list of things I liked to do on my phone, as well as a list of experiences I wanted to have. I spent the next few months exploring parts of Florida, parts of myself. I drove to Rainbow Springs and swam in the crystalline spring water. I continued on to Tampa and visited a friend from high school who I hadn’t seen in years. I visited nature preserves, meditated inside of salt caves, went on long walks on the beach, started reading more. I took a trip to Puerto Rico. Another to California, the trip where I ended up meeting my now husband.
As I started to notice myself enjoying an activity, I wrote it down. After a few months, I had a long list that I was proud of. Each item was a piece of me, a true reflection of my personality. It had been there all along, but I hadn’t been aware of it until I was set free from that relationship, the way I was finally able to see the breakup.
This new self was courageous and I happily accepted a spot in a writing retreat in Chamonix, France. For two weeks, I wrote and read and made friends and went hiking and ate delicious food. I even went paragliding. I was able to fully absorb the world around me, and the world felt open and full of possibility. At times I still ached, but the pain became something else; it became folded into the experiences differently in a way that tinged them with vulnerable hope.
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I got a new laptop for my 30th birthday a few years ago and in the midst of transferring over documents and photos, I chose to omit all pictures from the years I was lost. When I first moved to LA, I religiously emailed my mom photos so she could keep up with my life, a time before Instagram and the constant posting of our days. So I can still go back through emails to find the moments I remember, the ones I want to remember, when my hair was dyed white blonde and cut short, when I traveled alone and met so many strangers and was a completely different version of myself.
At the time, I felt afraid to have that time documented, but now I'm able to see it as a layer of myself, like the layers of character in A Horse at Night, it’s a part of me that I now romanticize. This makes the past easier to access in my writing, thinking of myself as a protagonist on a journey. It’s how I write now, remembering but also painting it with distanced eyes, the distance that comes from time and space and years.
I take notes for this essay while I walk the indoor track at the community center gym. I walk for thirty minutes and it takes me nowhere. The track is blue-green with white lines designating lanes. On Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays, walks round the track clockwise; Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays we go counter-clockwise. Sunday, the gym is closed. A boy shoots hoops in the basketball court below the track. He is alone, just him and the ball and the court. The sound of the bouncing ball reverberates, but I put in headphones and listen to music so I only hear it between songs. when I finish my walk, I always feel better. My iPhone tells me I walked just over a mile, but I don’t care about the number. I only care that I got up and did it, that now I am awake for the rest of the day. I will live through it instead of hiding from it.
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My husband and I had tickets to see my favorite band, Men I Trust, but then he got a job in LA and he had to miss the show. I wasn’t sure if I should still go. I’d never been to a concert alone, but the venue was a bowling alley and somehow that felt safe.
It felt wonderful to stand amongst a crowd of strangers and sing along to the songs played. I opted to travel upstairs and watch the show from above; less crowded and honestly a better view. I took pictures and videos and sent them to my husband with the tearful emoji eyes. Wish you were here, got you a shirt, this is amazing, I wrote to him. He hearted all my texts from the other side of the country. I felt close to him, still.
In the middle of their set, the band played a song called “Always Lone,” one of my favorites. The song is upbeat, but has a dreary sadness to it. It’s a song about unrequited love, about pining for someone unavailable while you continue to make yourself available. I don’t feel this way anymore, happily married, but I used to all the time, with everyone I dated or longed for. Longing, that’s what the song is about. And while I used to long for someone else’s love, I longed to find myself too. I don’t have it all figured out, but I'm grateful that I can be with myself now, that I can stand to stand alone.
The crowd sang along, When you lay your eyes on me with pain/ it’s not hard to see you’re getting cold/ oh, bring me home/ where I'm proud/ where the scales are plane/ and it’s sane…I’d rather be the one who got fooled/ than to have my heart cooled…I always care/ always lone/ always lone.
I left during the encore to beat the rush. It was raining hard so I drove home slow and with care.
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Thrilled to share that “Going to the Hospital” was nominated for Pushcart Prize by The Account!!
Check out my latest essay, “The Feeling,” recently published in Mulberry Literary; an essay in parts that explores the many times a girl comes of age full of sexual awareness and awakenings.
And some class offerings for 2023…Saturday, January 14th, I will be leading an online one-day nonfiction seminar for Catapult: The Portrait Essay.
The following Saturday, January 21st, I’ll be guiding an online one-day memoir seminar for Lighthouse Writers: The Snapshot Essay.
Nashville locals- I’ll be teaching a one-day in-person class on Saturday, January 28th at The Porch on The Essayette.
And last, there’s still a few days to submit to HerStry’s annual Eunice Williams Nonfiction Prize. Submissions are welcome through December 16th.
Wishing everyone a happy, healthy new year, and thank you for reading!
I needed to read this today. Thanks for writing, Brittany!
As always, these layered entries you so masterfully write reframe my thoughts and inspire me. Thank you!