Solitude, Glenn Gould, and the Back-to-School Season

It used to be the worst time of year. Now it’s the best.

Cap Béar, France, in September. Photo by author. There are few better places to be alone.

“It’s all a piece. The clothes, the hands, the quiet,
my need to live alone, by night.” — These Hands by Kate Braid

September

France is never better than this. The sun still ferocious, still beating the old stone walls where lizards scuttle at the edge of vineyards, the vines heavy with unharvested fruit.

But the nights are cool now, the mornings mild and crystal clear.

The tourists have gone home, most of them. The schools are open again, the playgrounds ringing to the sounds of joy and battle. The offices reopen all around the country, the cities swelling as the inhabitants return from mountain and forest and beach.

Leaving all that to me.

The bright blue world is mine again. Mine alone.

There’s parking in the harbor, right next to the beach. Two young women in matching black bikinis rise sleek as seals from the crystal-clear sea, rivulets of water running over a slight ridge of stomach muscle that catches the late-summer light.

Two hikers climb breathlessly down from the hill where flags flutter and snap in the breeze…