I was in Malta five years ago when I realized the loneliest hours of solo travel almost always occur during the evening in the hours when people head out for outdoor dinners with their friends and families. In The Great Gatsby, Nick describes the feeling of being at a party but not in the party as a feeling of being “simultaneously within and without,” and I think that almost perfectly captures the experience of wandering cobblestone streets lit by outdoor patio lights and joyous conversation while you are alone.
While it’s somewhere between incredibly appropriate and absurdly cliche to be feeling that during an insomniac episode in Pessoa’s home, that feeling struck again hard last night when I woke from a midday nap and ventured out for dinner in my vibrant Lisbon neighborhood. Choosing a place to go for dinner when traveling solo is always challenging. As lovely as the cafes near my hotel looked, there is something so conspicuous, even off-putting about someone dining alone in a place like that, that I almost always gaze in and imagine the experience before settling for the kind of place where solitude is accepted. Last night was a pizza joint—not the bustling one with a huge, shambolic line, mind you—but the quiet spot with no seating other than a bar built almost perfectly for parties of one.
It’s not that I often feel lonely when I travel. During the days on my trips, I revel in the new experiences and sights. Solo travel like that has been an incredible boon, too, for an introvert who finds days spent wandering around rather than constantly talking and listening rejuvenating.
Yet it’s hard not to wonder a bit during the evenings as I stroll past the people sharing conversation over dinner if that isn’t a bit of a rationalization: I love traveling alone, I might tell myself because it seems to be the way that most of my travel will happen.
Striking close to my dinner time awareness, Olivia Laing, in her book The Lonely City, writes that loneliness “feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.”
And I think that strikes at the heart of the realization of solitary hours spent in Fernando Pessoa’s city. It’s entirely reasonable to hunger for the intimacy of quiet conversation at night without starving from its absence; it’s possible to become more aware of the emptiness of one aspect of life while filling others; it’s possible to feel deep loneliness without despairing about it.
