Feeding emotions or draining them .. Do our brains benefit from isolation?

Writers, as novelist Jamie Attenberg describes them, are people who prefer to stay with themselves. Few of them are so isolated that Cuban poet Dulce María Leonas has taken it. For decades, Leonas has lived alone in a mansion in the center of the Cuban capital, Havana, writing mysterious poems of contemplation. Attenberg, author of "All this could be yours," explains how the poems of "Absolute Isolation," the English translation of Leonas's work, helped to refine her character and her understanding of her relationship with isolation. We also talked about the difference between isolation and loneliness, why long walking tours are essential to their creative practice, and how one's brain can be their best companion.

Attenberg is the author of seven literary books that topped the New York Times bestseller lists, including the Middelstein Family and "All Mature". Her non-literary compositions have appeared in places such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Long Reds, among other publishing platforms.

Here is a summary of her talk with the Atlantic:

In the spring of 2018, I was spending three days in San Francisco for my recent book tour. The event was scheduled for the evening, which meant that daytime was available to me, and that was a source of extravagant well-being. Since I stayed at Mission, a neighborhood with some of the most fascinating bookstores, I decided to devote one day to inspecting the stores. Some of these stores have been around for many years, each with its own signature on the senses. I was in the right place that moment, to go and see what those shops had in store for me.

I was searching the poetry section of Doug Erd's books when I found a collection of poetry entitled "Absolute Isolation" by Dulce Maria Leonas, one of the recommended poetry books at the time, which came with a strong message from the crew, which I believe read "read it immediately." It is the magic that these cards hide alongside books. If there is someone who is very excited about reading a book, I usually listen to it. I had many books that day, from many shops scattered around the city, but "Absolute Isolation" was the biggest winner, and I knew when I left that the book would be a bomb for me, and it was already.

During that summer, I was working on a new novel, "All That Could Be Your King." When I can read poetry for an hour or so before writing, I feel the quality of the language rises. Whatever you read, it plays a role in what appears on paper. Sometimes, when I work on a novel and feel that a lot of sentences do what I want, I write a "poetic draft," a draft that results in reading tons of verses before writing, in order to ensure that the language is as elegant, flowing and poetic as possible.

In this context, I began to read "absolute isolation," and found that the themes of the book began to penetrate me as well. And I came to think of ways in which unity could differ from isolation. "All this can be yours" deals with the only characters, some of whom embrace unity well, while others embrace it in different ways.

The protagonist, Victor, is a person in which loneliness exacerbates the way narcissists themselves. As unity rests, he feels his right to act with greed. He does not believe in the afterlife in any way, nor does he feel he will be held accountable. If something goes wrong, it doesn't matter, because life has to do with his sense of pleasure, entertainment, or excitement he gets as a result of his cruelty. He believes that we live only on earth, and whatever our actions during our stay here are just ours, then we will all die. For me, this is a lonely mindset. There are those other personalities, who regard unity as an advantage, to the point of being considered a global or aesthetic perspective.

Leonas' work expresses this perspective in a wonderful way. "The world gave me a lot of things, but the only thing I kept was absolute isolation," she writes in a one-line poem in her series "Poems Without Names." I liked the idea of ​​unity as a grant. I think we can fear loneliness, but if you find a way to own it and consider it a treasure and a source of pleasure and happiness, it will be a great consolation. I have a place to go in my imagination, which is my place alone. I often appreciate the time I spend with myself, and then I cannot be what I am without it.

However, Leonas seems to acknowledge that excessive isolation is isolation, alienation, and perhaps even danger. In the next poem, Leonas writes: "Solitude, I have always dreamed of isolation! I love you to the extent that I fear divine punishment because I have filled you with my life." It almost tells us: Take care.

Writing routine

My morning process begins with walks in the morning, usually an hour. Then I read for an hour, then I write for hours and hours. Then I spend the afternoon typing everything. If I can, I will type a thousand words a day, and this will be a productive working day. For me, these walking tours are an important part of the process. On the face of it, it seems like a waste of time, but my brain keeps thinking about the problems I have been ordering all the time. It takes me an hour to an hour and a half to get there. I have to stay half an hour away from my home, my personal computer and book piles, just to free myself. And then, the coolest things happen: my brain starts to work.

Brains do great things if they are well treated, and they will have lots of small gifts. It took me four books to start making money from writing. There are small ways to do this, as well as extravagant, such as exercise, good food, and having respectful people.

Isolation is part of these methods as well. Reading is an experience, but the way you work on your brain and soul is to give you solace, like a feeling of meeting someone. There is a line in my book about how people are born alone. They spend all their lives alone, even when people around them surround them. If you can turn this into a positive point, you will have achieved the goal. This is different from being isolated and lonely. The community is very important, and I love the writing community, the readers' community, very much.

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Translation: Farah Essam.

This article is translated from The Atlantic and does not necessarily reflect the location of Medan.