I

SEEK SOLITUDE

A crowded world thinks that aloneness is always

loneliness and that to seek it is perversion.

—JOHN GRAVES

t was a habit of Leonardo da Vinci’s to write little fables to himself
in his notebooks. One tells the story of a good-sized stone that
rested in a pleasant grove, surrounded by flowers, perched above a
busy country road. Despite this peaceful existence, the stone grew
restless. “What am I doing among these herbs?” he asked. “I want to
live in the company of my fellow stones.”
Unhappy and alone, the stone contrived to roll itself down the hill
onto the road, where it would be surrounded by countless other
stones. But the change was not quite as wonderful as expected. Down
in the dirt, the stone was trod on by horses, driven over by wagons,
and stepped on by people. It was alternately covered in mud and
feces, and chipped at and jostled and moved—painful moments made
all the more painful by the occasional sight the stone was given of its
old home, and the solitary peace it had left behind.
Not content to leave the story at that, Leonardo felt the need to
put a fine point on it. “This is what happens,” he wrote to himself and
every one of us, “to those who leave the solitary and contemplative
life and choose to live in cities among people full of countless evils.”
Of course, Leonardo’s biographers were quick to point out that
the author didn’t always follow the lesson of this fable. He spent
most of his life in Florence and Milan and Rome. He painted in a