Alone time Four seasons, four cities, and the pleasures of solitude

Review by New York Times Review

LIKE A LITERARY companion to Google Earth, a host of new books zero in on points across the globe from Alaska to Iran, the Middle East to Mesoamerica, Khartoum to Calcutta and, of course, Paris (we'll always have Paris), providing highly individual answers to the question: Why do we travel? Patricia Hampl isn't sure we should. Raised in Minnesota, educated by nuns, she long sought to reconcile her Roman Catholic school appreciation of the "inner voice" with her "native" Midwestern trait: "the desire to be elsewhere." Early in THE ART OF THE WASTED DAY (Viking, $26), she reaches back to Chaucer to grasp the roots of wanderlust. "Springtime, after a winter cooped up, and everyone wants to hit the road," she writes, paraphrasing his zestful Canterbury pilgrims. Hampl suspects that a less cheery impulse motivates contemporary American wanderers, a national mania - encoded in the Declaration of Independence - to pursue happiness, rather than "stay put" and simply be happy. But after the death of her husband, she found that her enjoyment of her quiet hours had palled. To rekindle her pleasure in her own company, she embarked on "a tour of the heroes of leisure," men and women like the "sluggish, lax and drowsy" French philosopher Montaigne, who holed up in a drafty tower to write his "Essais" ; the Moravian monk Gregor Mendel, who founded the science of genetics as he cultivated his abbey's garden; and the reclusive 18th-century Welsh BFFs known as the Ladies of Llangollen. Here Hampl finds proof of the endurance of "the sane singular voice, alone with its thoughts," which doesn't need to cross mountains to express itself. fn ALONE TIME: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude (Viking, $27), Stephanie Rosenbloom, a travel columnist for The New York Times, set out on her own for a more practical purpose. Learning that increasing numbers of Americans were taking vacations-for-one, she decided to test-drive the trend in some of the world's most sociable cities, fn so doing, she not only dispels the stigma attaching to solo travel, she debunks the myth of the "supposed horror of solo dining." fn Paris, she picnicked amid the promenades of the Luxembourg Gardens, feasted on oysters at the Closerie des Lilas and ambled through Balzac's home, Hampl-style. fn Istanbul, she lolled in the steamy Cemberlitas hamam, fn Florence, she communed at the Uffizi with the most ogled woman in the world, Botticelli's Venus. "1 liked to be alone in Constantinople," Greta Garbo said. So, Rosenbloom discovered, did she. But she also explored New York, her hometown, as if she were a tourist: "Savoring the moment, examining things closely, reminiscing - these practices are not strictly for use on the road. They're for everyday life, anywhere." The veteran adventure writer Levison Wood had no desire to go it alone on his 2016 trek through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, which culminated in a death-defying crossing of the bandit-ridden mountain jungles of the Darién Gap. For one thing, as a seasoned British paratrooper, Wood is steeped in esprit de corps. But walking the Americas: i,soo Miles, Eight Countries, and One Incredible Journey From Mexico to Colombia (Atlantic Monthly, $27) reveals a less sentimental reason for the author's fondness for company. Without the translation skills and acute regional spider-senses of his compañero, the Mexican photographer Alberto Cáceres, Wood might have been kidnapped, or worse, by the desperadoes they encountered. His latest wanderlog, a selfdeclared "tale of adventure in the modern age," continues the exoticizing, thrill-a-minute tradition of "King Solomon's Mines" and Indiana Jones. For four months, the friends forded streams, plunged into skull-filled cenotes, slithered up muddy ridges, skirted quicksand, huddled in bat caves and hacked through forests filled with tarantulas, scorpions, poison frogs, jaguars and fer-de-lance snakes. There were rewards along the way, from hugging a "dopey" sloth to summiting Costa Rica's Mount Chirripó at dawn. "We stood in wonderment while the sky grew redder and the sun rose above the eastern horizon," Wood writes. "To the east shone the Caribbean Sea, merging into the sunrise, and with a sweep of 180 degrees, 1 looked behind me, and there was the golden panorama of the Pacific; two oceans from one vantage point, separated by one narrow spit of land." At the edge of the Darién Gap, Wood came across a sign on the Pan-American Highway that read: "12,580 km to Alaska." Unbeknown to him (presumably), another explorer, Mark Adams, had completed his exploits of the northern reaches of that road soon before Wood began his down south, fn THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton, $28), Adams repeats the steps (and oar strokes) of the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska. Fifty years before the territory became a state, the Gilded Age entrepreneur Edward Harriman led a reconnaissance tour of the Alaskan coast, starting in Seattle, heading north through the Inside Passage, up to the Gold Rush town of Skagway, on to the former Russian capital, Sitka, and from there to Kodiak Island, the Aleutians and "obscure places ... labeled UNKNOWN on maps." Among the passengers were the eminent naturalist John Muir and George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audubon Society. Taking a boat into Glacier Bay, Adams observes sea lions clustered on low rocks "like ants on a dropped lollipop," then turns in time to spot six spouting whales. Jumping from ferry to kayak, he glides with a guide into a cove dominated by a "neon-blue glacier" and sets up camp on Russell Island, "a cathedral of ice," to behold the Grand Pacific Glacier. Adams and his guide wake in that breathtaking setting to a heart-stopping spectacle: two grizzly bears nosing around their tent. After trying to scare them off, the men high-tail it for the kayak. Later, Adams meets a cruise ship pilot who had spotted them on the beach before the ursine invasion. "1 thought, Man, look at that setup!" the pilot tells him. "Those guys must be having the time of their lives." He wasn't wrong. The British geography professor Alastair Bonnett has a flair for communicating his passion for "the glee and the drama, the love and the loathing" that emanate from the earth's most perplexing and mutable places. Prudently, he has gathered 39 of these protean zones between two covers, so readers will know what on earth (or water) he's talking about. And if BEYOND THE MAP: Unruly Enclaves, Ghostly Places, Emerging Lands and Our Search for New Utopias (University of Chicago, $25) doesn't produce a tsunami of new geography majors, he isn't to blame. Had you heard that a peat bog as big as England was discovered in Congo only four years ago? Were you aware of the term "spikescapes" - public spaces that urban planners mine with booby traps, like benches barbed with steel prongs and rosy flourescent lighting that showcases acne, spooking teenage loiterers? Don't you wish you could visit the massive film set in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, the size of two football fields, built between 2006 and 2011 to hold a disturbingly exact replica of 1950s Moscow, where thousands of drably clad actors re-enacted Soviet life, including nighttime visits by the K.G.B.? Bonnett's provocative detours show us how much more we can know of the known world, if we know where to look, and how. Still, some places are harder to access than others. When the journalist Stephan Orth traveled to Iran, he was aided by the accident of his German nationality. Americans have a hard time getting visas to the country and it's not much easier for others. Nonetheless, like a web-savvy denizen of Bonnett's 16th stopping point, "Cybertopia," Orth used the internet to launch himself into a fantastical realm that happens to be real. In couchsurfing in iran: Revealing a Hidden World (Greystone, paper, $16.95), he describes the openhearted reception he encountered in that closed country, where he found lodging in the homes of ordinary Iranians who put him up free during his two-month trip. This was brave of them because, as Orth's host in Shiraz explained, taking in foreigners is forbidden. "Be quiet and don't speak English on the street," he is warned. "Otherwise, the neighbors will hear you." Orth found his hosts mostly through the app "Couchsurfing," an international enterprise that pairs travelers with sociable locals. City by city, he winged it, texting his hosts to arrange meeting points. On the island of Kish, in the middle of the night, he fished for bream and catfish with a die-hard Iranian fan of the American motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. In Isfahan, he played guitar (Adele and Metallica) for a classroom of schoolboys. And in Tehran, he joined a clandestine gathering of mild-mannered BDSM devotees in a public park. "The people here are hungry for news from other countries," he observes, adding that outsiders are just as hungry for on-the-ground knowledge of Iran. "I have an explicit answer to the question of whether you should visit a country where you are at odds with the political leadership," he writes. "There are no bad places if the reason you are traveling is to meet people." The novelist Jamal Mahjoub has been at odds with the political leadership of Sudan for much of his life. Born in London in 1960 to a Sudanese journalist and a British accountant, he was raised in Sudan's capital, Khartoum. He went to England for college and stayed abroad thereafter. His parents remained in Khartoum until 1989, when an Islamist coup spurred them to move to Cairo, never to return. But in 2008, Mahjoub began a series of his own returns. A LINE IN THE RIVER: Khartoum, City of Memory (Bloomsbury, $30) explains why. It is said, he writes, that from the sky the city resembles an elephant's head ("khartoum" means "trunk" in Arabic). But on his visits, he saw that Khartoum's outward face had changed, studded with towering buildings courting oil-industry wealth. Beneath the boomtown mask, he detected a palimpsest of the past, from imperial interference (Egyptian, British) to the rise of the charismatic "Mahdi" to the demise of Maj. Gen. Charles Gordon, which provoked Lord Kitchener to reassert British influence. When, in 1956, the British relinquished their hold, Khartoum was reborn as the capital of the Republic of Sudan. Why, Mahjoub asks, has his country made so little use of its freedom? "Out of half a century of independence Sudan has seen 40 years of civil war." With this book, he wanted to trace "the evolution of the tragedy of a nation never achieved," a task he likens to "trying to throw a rope around a cloud." While Mahjoub's fascination with Khartoum is largely political, the journalist and political scientist Kushanava Choudhury takes his own hometown extremely personally. Passionate and pugnacious, Choudhury's epic city: The World on the Streets of Calcutta (Bloomsbury, $28) reveals a man head over heels in love with a badly behaved but alluring metropolis. Westerners see his city as "the epitome of urban hell, the Detroit of the world," but to him, the city's flaws can't dispel its enchantment. Although born in Buffalo, Choudhury lived in Kolkata, as the city is now known, until he was almost 12, when his family moved back to the United States. Resistant to American transplantation, he pined for the chaotic hubbub of West Bengal and after graduating from Princeton returned to Kolkata to work for an English-language newspaper. Back in Bengal, he exulted in the "aimless, digressive" conversational pastime known as adda; savored the street food; admired the gaudy chariots and costumed revelers that thronged narrow lanes during Hindu festivals; and embraced the whoosh of the monsoon rains that send the tarpaulin roofs of sidewalk restaurants "flying open like giant capes." He left again to study at Yale, but returned after he got his doctorate, with his grad-school girlfriend, soon-to-become wife, Durba, in tow. Immune to her husband's magnificent obsession, she protested when he mocked her preference for Western-style coffee shops over tea wallahs whose stands faced open gutters. "Who do you think you would marry who would be happy here?" she exclaimed. But "Epic City" makes it clear that Choudhury's heart already belonged to another. What living woman can compete with an immortal old flame? Amore placid female smoothed Shoba Narayan's re-entry to India when she moved with her husband and young daughters to Bangalore - southern India's tech hub and finance center - after nearly 20 years in the United States. That female was a cow, whom she encountered in her building's elevator, "angled diagonally to fit," heading three floors up to bless a housewarming. "You'd think that a modern democracy like India would get over this cow obsession," she thought, amused; but after mulling it over, she hustled upstairs to ask the cow to bless her apartment, too. The friendship Narayan struck up with Šarala, the cow's escort, forms the subject of her amiable memoir, the MILK LADY OF BANGALORE: An Unexpected Adventure (Algonquin, $24.95). At first, Narayan was wary of the earthy, grassysmelling unpasteurized milk Šarala sold, produced by cows that grazed in the neighborhood. Before long, though, she became an "evangelist," inviting neighbors over for coffee in hopes of converting them to fresh milk. Soon she resolved to buy a cow to donate to Sarala's herd, scouring nearby villages for a candidate. "This is a good cow," the owner of a Holstein-Friesian assured her. "Its milk will taste like ambrosia." Sold. As her new acquisition munched betel nuts, coconut and bananas, Narayan decided the creature was "positively Zen" and named her "Blissful Lakshmi," for the goddess of wealth. Rick Bass had other sacred cows in mind when he began a multistop literary and gustatory pilgrimage a few years back. Reeling from an unsought divorce and yearning to reinforce his bonds with the authors and artists who had shaped his writing life, he devised a soul-nourishing, roadburning act of tribute. He would leave his log cabin in Montana's remote Yaak Valley, travel to the homes of his mentors and thank them by cooking them a meal. In the record of this culinary catharsis, THE TRAVELING FEAST: On the Road and at the Table With My Heroes (Little, Brown, $28), Bass serves up a rich smorgasbord of a memoir, truffled with pungent anecdote, sometimes funny, sometimes sorrowful, always savory. The melancholic power of these reunions is heightened by the reader's awareness that some of these literary lions (Peter Matthiessen, Denis Johnson, John Berger) were soon to roar their last. But there's also abundant hilarity, usually provided by Bass's mountain-man approach to the dinner table. Whether the GPS points to Wisconsin (Lorrie Moore), the "meadow-scented green wonder of West Sussex" (David Sedaris), the French Alps (Berger) or northern Idaho (Johnson), Bass loads the cooler with salmon, elk and rhubarb, like a bear on holiday. At Tom McGuane's place in Montana, he attempts to grill a turkey, producing a "sonic blast" that rocks the house, burns "like a comet" and blazes in a golden "molten, gurgling, flaming corona." At Berger's farmhouse, on the other hand, where a crowd of friends and family has gathered, every course is perfection. As Berger pours out wine "like rich paint in our sunlit crystal goblets," Bass reads grief in his host's eyes. Remembering that Berger's wife of 40 years, Beverly, had died not long before, he recalls the emotion that gave rise to his pilgrimage: his fears, as a suddenly single man, about what the rest of his life would look like. "What do I need?" he asks Berger. "Courage" is the reply. THE ROAD TRIP BOOK: 1001 Drives of a Lifetime (Universe, $36.95) requires a different kind of courage, as well as, in some cases, "nerves of steel, a seriously capable vehicle and very good health insurance." Covering "every country on the planet that was feasibly accessible at the time of publication," this ravishing and sometimes hair-raising bucket list for the bucket seat was assembled by ace roadtripping writers and edited by the "motoring journalist" Darryl Sleath. Don't mistake it for a mere coffee-table book: Although its lavish photographs invite armchair daydreams, this tome doubles as a reference work. Each entry includes a Google Maps link and helpful tips (if driving in Bhutan, be advised that roads are generally eight feet wide, tops, unpaved and "subject to severe landslides"), and the drives are organized according to an orderly geographic scheme and meticulously indexed. Especially tempting entries include the Beartooth Highway drive, which starts in Montana, with stunning views onto Yellowstone's glacial lakes, pine forests, waterfalls and mountains; the Trollstigen National Tourist Route in Norway, whose hairpin curves reward those who don't need Dramamine; and, in Northern Ireland, the "Game of Thrones" drive, which begins at the Titanic Studios in Belfast, heads north past the Antrim coast, and loops round to the Cushendun Caves, before descending to the spooky Dark Hedges on the King's Road. Fasten your seatbelts! LlESL schillinger, a critic and translator, is the author of "Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 3, 2018]

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Review by Booklist Review

If you're traveling alone, you're in good company. Solo travel is on the rise, and people of every age and stage of life are participating, writes Rosenbloom, the author of a column, Getaway, for the travel section of the New York Times. Rosenbloom was inspired to examine the joys of traveling alone after she was assigned to spend five days solo in Paris. That experience stayed with her, and she embarked on a series of solo journeys to Paris (again) and to Istanbul, Florence, and her home city of New York, one for each season of the year. Rosenbloom offers a leisurely look at the simple treasures waiting to be uncovered by the solo traveler, such as the whimsical cartoons on street signs in Florence or the meditative call to prayer from the mosques in Istanbul. She also unpacks research on the benefits to approaching the world with a willingness to try something new, and a commitment to staying in the present moment. The combination makes fora richly rewarding guide for any explorer, whether of distant lands or one's own backyard.--Thoreson, Bridget Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Library Journal Review

Gathering information from studies, writings from poets and philosophers, and from her on-the-ground reporting, New York Times travel columnist Rosenbloom presents an argument in support of traveling alone. She visits four cities, each during a different season-Paris, Florence, Istanbul, and New York. Although a chapter offers practical advice for the solo traveler, with tips on safety, health care, and useful apps, most of the book is more meditative. The author contemplates the importance of alone time for creative activities and pursuing knowledge, and the joys of visiting museums and dining out unfettered by the schedules and pressures of others. The concept of the flâneur, the solitary walker, is used to encourage -travelers to amble with no destination in mind, savoring one's surroundings. To boost spirits in advance of the trip, the author advises a dip into the culture of the destination; read novels and blogs, watch films. VERDICT Appealing for travelers who are considering solo trips, or those who already enjoy adventures on their own.- Susan Belsky, -Oshkosh P.L., WI © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Paris; June. The taxi rolled to a stop in front of 22 rue de la Parcheminerie. It was Saturday morning, before the café chairs were put out, before visitors began arriving at the old church, before check-in time at the little hotel with its window boxes of red geraniums. Cigarette butts and red petals were scattered across the sidewalk. I was alone with a suitcase and a reservation. And days to live however I chose.   *   The average adult spends about one-third of his or her waking time alone. --Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow     How are you spending yours? Scrolling Facebook? Texting? Tweeting? Online shopping? The to-do list is endless. But time isn't. Alone time is an invitation, a chance to do the things you've longed to do. You can read, code, paint, meditate, practice a language, or go for a stroll. Alone, you can pick through sidewalk crates of used books without worrying you're hijacking your companion's afternoon or being judged for your lousy idea of a good time. You need not carry on polite conversation. You can go to a park. You can go to Paris. You'd hardly be alone. From North America to South Korea more people are now living by themselves than ever before. Single-person households are projected to be the fastest-growing household profile globally from today to 2030. More people are dining solo. More are traveling alone--a lot more. From vacation rental companies to luxury tour operators, industry groups have been reporting double-digit upticks in solo travel. Airbnb is seeing more solo travelers than ever. Intrepid Travel reports that half of its guests--some seventy-five thousand people a year--are now traveling by themselves, leading the company to create its very first solos only tours. And the boom isn't being driven just by people who are single: The "married-with-kids" solo traveler market is growing as well. Nearly 10 percent of American travelers with partners and children are taking solo vacations during the year, according to one of the world's  largest travel marketing organizations, MMGY Global. In other words, traveling alone isn't just for twentysomethings and retirees, but for anyone who wants it, at any age, in any situation: partners, parents, and singles looking for romance--or not. Few of us want to be recluses. The rise of coworking and coliving spaces around the world is but the latest evidence of that. Yet having a little time to ourselves, be it five days in Europe or five minutes in our backyard, can be downright enviable. Some 85 percent of adults--both men and women, across all age groups--told the Pew Research Center that it's important for them to be completely alone sometimes. A survey by Euromonitor International found that people want more time not only with their families, but also by themselves. And yet many of us, even those who cherish alone time, are often reluctant to do certain things on our own--which may lead us to miss out on entertaining, enriching, even life-changing experiences and new relationships. A series of studies published in the Journal  of Consumer Research found that men and women were likely to avoid enjoy- able public activities like going to a movie or restaurant if they had no one to accompany them. Any potential pleasure and inspiration that might come from seeing a great film or an art show was outweighed by their belief that going alone wouldn't be as much fun, not to mention their concerns about how they might be perceived by others. Indeed, for many of us, solitude is something to be avoided, something associated with problems like loneliness and depression. Freud observed that "the first situation phobias of children are darkness and solitude." In many preliterate cultures, solitude was thought to be practically intolerable, as the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote in Flow, his book about the science of happiness: "Only witches and shamans feel comfortable spending time by themselves." Perhaps it's not surprising that a series of studies published in the journal Science in 2014 found that many participants preferred to administer an electric shock to themselves rather than be left alone with their own thoughts for fifteen minutes. Man, as scientists and philosophers from Aristotle on have noted, is a social animal. And with good reason. Positive relationships are crucial to our survival; to humanity's collective knowledge, progress, and joy. One of the longest studies of adult life in history, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, has tracked hundreds of men for nearly eighty years, and the takeaway again and again has been that good relationships--with family, friends, colleagues, and people in our communities--make for happy, healthy lives. Socially isolated people, on the other hand, are at an increased risk for disease and cognitive decline. As Robert Waldinger, the director of the Harvard study, has not so subtly put it: "Loneliness kills." Christian hermits broke up their solitary periods with communal work and worship. Thoreau had three chairs in his house in the woods, "one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society." Even the Lone Ranger had Tonto. Solitude and its perils is an ancient and instructive story. But it's not the whole story. The company of others, while fundamental, is not the only way of finding fulfillment in our lives. For centuries people have been retreating into solitude--for spirituality, creativity, reflection, renewal, and meaning. Buddhists and Christians entered monasteries. Native Americans went up mountains and into valleys. Audrey Hepburn took to her apartment.  "I have to be alone very often," she told Life  magazine in 1953. "I'd be quite happy if I spent from Saturday night until Monday morning alone in my apartment. That's how I refuel." Others went great distances. Miles were sailed, flown, and driven by solo adventurers like Captain Joshua Slocum and Anne-France Dautheville, one of the first women to ride a motorcycle alone around the world. "From now on, my life would be mine, my way," she said of riding solo 12,500 miles in 1973. Scholars have been insisting for decades that the positive aspects of solitude deserve a closer look, from the pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in the 1950s to the British psychiatrist Anthony Storr in the 1980s, to psychologists leading studies today. A little solitude, their research suggests, can be good for us. For one thing, time spent away from the influence of others allows us to explore and define who we are. In private, we can think deeply and independently, as the legal scholar and privacy expert Alan Westin explained. There's room for problem solving, experimentation, and imagination. The mind can crackle with intense focus or go beachcombing, plucking up an idea like a shell, examining and pocketing it, or letting it go to pick up another. Thinkers, artists, and innovators  from Tchaikovsky to Barack Obama, from Delacroix and Marcel Marceau to Chrissie Hynde and Alice Walker, have expressed the need for solitude. It's what Rodin has in common with Amy Schumer; what Michelangelo shares with Grace Jones. Philosophers and scientists spent much of their lives in solitude, including Descartes, Nietzsche, and Barbara McClintock, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist who resisted having a telephone until she was eighty- four. Countless writers, including Shakespeare, Dickinson, Wharton, Hugo, and Huxley, mined solitude as a theme. Symphonies and songs, poems and plays, and paintings and photos have been created in solitude. For the creative person, "his most significant moments are those in which he attains some new insight, or makes some new discovery; and these moments are chiefly, if not invariably, those in which he is alone," Storr wrote in his seminal book, Solitude: A Return to the Self. While other people can be one of our greatest sources of happiness, they can at times nonetheless be a distraction. Their presence may also inhibit the creative process, "since creation is embarrassing," as the writer Isaac Asimov said. "For every new good idea you have, there are a hundred, ten thousand foolish ones, which you naturally do not care to display." Monet slashed his paintings before the opening of an exhibition in Paris, declaring the canvasses unworthy to pass on to posterity. Robert Rauschenberg flung his early works into the Arno. Yet just as alone time can be important  for creation (and possible subsequent destruction), it can also be necessary for restoration. Some of the latest research has found that even fif- teen minutes spent by ourselves, without electronic devices or social interaction, can decrease the intensity of our feelings (be they good or bad), leaving us more easygoing, less angry, and less worried. Studies led by Thuy-vy Nguyen, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, suggest that we can use solitude or alone time as a tool, a way to regulate our emotional states, "becoming quiet after excitement, calm after an angry episode, or centered and peaceful when desired." Alone, we can power down. We're "off stage," as the sociologist Erving Goffman put it, where we can doff the mask we wear in public and be ourselves. We can be reflective. We have the opportunity  for self-evaluation, a chance to consider our actions and take what Westin called a "moral inventory." We can also take inventory of all the information that has accumulated throughout the day. We can organize our "thoughts, reflect on past actions and future plans, and prepare for future encounters," as the psychologist Jerry M. Burger wrote in the Journal of Research in Personality . Even Bill Clinton, exemplar of extraversion, acknowledged that as president he scheduled "a couple of hours a day alone to think, reflect, plan, or do nothing." "Often," he said, "I slept less just to get the alone time." This notion of reflection harks back to an ancient Greek principle known as epimelesthai sautou . The philosopher Michel Foucault translated it as "to take care of yourself," and though it was once "one of the main rules for social and personal conduct and for the art of life," Foucault observed that there is a tendency, particularly in modern Western society, to view caring for oneself as almost immoral. And yet alone time has the potential to leave us more open and compassionate toward others. John D. Barbour, a professor of religion at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, has written that while solitude involves the self, it's not necessarily narcissistic. He's suggested that the solitude sought by biblical prophets helped shape their perspective and may have made them more sensitive to the suffering of people who were less powerful or outsiders. "Solitude at its best," he wrote, is not about "escaping the world, but toward a different kind of participation in it." Unfortunately, there's a tendency in our own age of scant nuance to conceive of solitude and society as either-or propositions: You're either alone on your couch or you're organizing dinner parties. That's an unhelpful (and often wrong) distinction. The psychologist Abraham H. Maslow found that self-actualizing people--those who have attained the highest tier of his hierarchy of human needs--are capable of being more than one thing at one time, even if those things are contradictory. They can be simultaneously individual and social; selfish and unselfish. Burger wrote that people with a high preference for solitude don't necessarily dislike social interaction, and aren't necessarily introverted. They probably spend most of their time around others, and enjoy it; he said it's simply that, relative to others, they more often chose to be by themselves because they appreciate the reflection, creativity, and renewal that solitude can offer. For years, the conventional wisdom was that if you spent a good deal of time alone, something was likely wrong with you. And, certainly, as psychologists have observed, many people do withdraw because they're socially anxious or depressed. Yet many others choose to spend time alone because they find it pleasurable. Maslow, for example, said that  mature, self-actualizing people are particularly drawn to privacy, detachment, and meditativeness. Indeed, one of the keys to enjoying alone time appears to be whether or not it's voluntary. Additional factors, like what people think about when they're alone, their age, and whether the time alone is temporary, may also play a role, but choice-- taking some time to yourself because it's what you desire, and not because you've been abandoned by your social network or have no other option--seems to be crucial. It can be the difference between a positive experience of solitude and excessive loneliness. How much time alone feels right, however, is a matter of taste and circumstance. For some, time alone is a rare privilege; something desired but hard to get between long work hours and a full house. Others may feel they spend too much time by themselves. Finding a balance that feels good is personal, and not necessarily easy. In the months before he became engaged, Charles Darwin, who famously wrote about man's dislike of solitude and yet also prized his own solitary hours, created two columns in his journal headed "Marry" and "Not Marry." Under reasons to "Not Marry" he included "freedom to go where one liked"; "Loss of time"; and "cannot read in the Evenings." He continued on the following page: "I never should know French,--or see the Continent--or go to America, or go up in a Balloon, or take solitary trip in Wales." But marriage, with its promise of companionship and children, prevailed. In a letter to his future wife, Emma, before their wedding day, Darwin told her that up to that point, he had rested his "notions of happiness on quietness & a good deal of solitude." However, he believed that with Emma, he might find happiness beyond "accumulating facts in silence & solitude." And for forty-three years, it seems he did. At Down House, the Darwin home in rural Kent county outside London, he lazed on the grass with his children under lime trees, listened to family letters read aloud in the drawing room, and played backgammon with Emma. Still, he carved out alone time, retreating to his study for up to six hours a day. Outdoors, between what his granddaughter Gwen Raverat described as "two great lonely meadows," he built "the Sandwalk," a quarter-mile path around  a wood that he walked almost daily, even circling it multiple times, while trying to solve a problem. It was in his study and on this "thinking path," as Darwin called it, amid old gnarled trees, bumblebees, and birds' nests, that he conducted experiments and wrote On the Origin of Species . While Charles Darwin was in England strolling beneath tree boughs, another Charles--Baudelaire--was in Paris, writing about solitary journeys of a different sort. Baudelaire's subject was Constantin Guys, the illustrator and journalist whose great pleasure was to wander the city's sidewalks. His "thinking path," unlike Darwin's, was paved and public, though no less a source of inspiration. It was Baudelaire's description of Guys's walks that established the archetype and fantasy of the flâneur: the solitary stroller, following his curiosity with no particular destination in mind, nowhere to be but in the here and now. More than 150 years later, I went in search of that fantasy. *     Months before I arrived at the little hotel with its red geraniums, I was in Paris on an assignment for the Travel section of the New York Times . I had five days and a headline: "Solo in Paris." The story was up to me. To find it, I went walking. Each morning I left my hotel in the 9th arrondissement, just east of the apartment where Proust wrote much of Remembrance of Things Past, and didn't return until I had gone some twenty miles in whichever direction whim and croissants (and olive fougasse and pistachio financiers) took me. It was April, and like any tourist I saw monuments and statues, naked nymphs, and gods among the roses. But alone, with no one at my side, I was also able to see le merveilleux quotidien, "the marvelous in everyday life": a golden retriever gazing at a café chalkboard in Montmartre, as if reading the daily specials; boxes of pâtes de fruits arranged in grids like Gerhard Richter's color charts. The city had my full attention; I was attuned to the faint whir of bicycle wheels and the scent of peaches at the street market. Although I was traveling without friends or family, each day brought passing companions: bakers, maître d's, museum greeters, shopkeepers, fellow travelers. The hours were unhurried and entirely mine, like the "limitless solitude" the poet Rilke described in a letter to a friend; "this taking each day like a life-time, this being-with-everything." Only, it wasn't a lifetime--it was five days. On the last morning, I slipped through a gate on rue de Rivoli into the Tuileries. Sprinklers flung water into the air. A man with a wheelbarrow bent over a bed of long-stemmed tulips. John Russell, the British art critic, once wrote that the rue de Rivoli seemed to say to mankind, "This is what life can be . . . and now it's up to you to live it." That's what those days in Paris said to me. I wondered when, or if, I'd see the tulips again. On assignment, I would play detective; partake of everything, get up early, record the details, do the things that felt strange and uncomfortable. But the assignment was over. Months passed and back in New York, the days grew shorter. Yet my head was still in Paris. It wasn't a matter of missing cream confections flirting in the windows of boulangeries. I missed who I was in Paris--the other me, Stéphanie with the accent on the "e": curious, improvisational, open to serendipity. Finally, I took a long weekend to think about why I couldn't let go of that particular assignment, why alone in Paris time seemed to be on my side; why my senses pricked up; why I was able to delight in the smallest of things and yet failed to see and feel with such intensity at home. Friends loaned me their empty house near a bay on Long Island where on an autumn afternoon I stepped off a bus with a week's worth of reading and Chinese takeout. Without car or television, I spent days orbiting between a bench on the front porch and an oversize pink wing chair at the head of the dining room table, like the one at the Mad Hatter's tea party in the 1951 Disney film, eating vegetable lo mein and reading about different experiences of solitude. I plumbed newspaper archives and Gutenberg.org. I ordered used and out-of-print books. I wanted to know what scientists, writers, artists, musicians, and scholars thought about alone time, how they used it, why it mattered. Sometimes I walked a dead-end street to the bay. Other times I would lie on the wood floor in a patch of sun, staring at the ceiling, trying to deconstruct those solitary hours in Paris. There was something there; some way of living that I'd failed to fully grasp, let alone carry with me to my own city. Yet the best way to understand the enchanted solitude I experienced in Paris wasn't to lie around thinking about it. It was to go back. Alone, of course. If the Times assignment had been my introduction to the city, I would have dismissed my time there as just another spell cast on a sentimental American. But I'd been in Paris before. At the house by the bay I'd come to suspect it was the way in which I used alone time on the job, not just the beauty and splendor of the city, that made the days rich and meaningful. If I could figure out what I'd done differently on that trip, and why it felt so right so many months  later, perhaps I could adopt similar practices--and evoke similar feelings--in my own backyard. Back in New York I went online and booked a room--a photo of a little hotel with window boxes of red geraniums caught my eye--and planned my return to Paris. Being in an unfamiliar place can lead to personal change, renewal, and discoveries. Anthony Storr said it's why many people find it easier to give up smoking when on vacation: It disrupts routine and day-to-day environmental cues that may be limiting or flat-out unhealthy. Indeed, my aim wasn't to master Paris. It was to master myself: to learn how a little alone time can change your life--in any city. This book is the story of what I learned in Paris and in other places where I decided to spend time alone. I chose to explore cities, not the countryside, because I live in one; because in cities we can enjoy both privacy and society; because as Baudelaire wrote, "for the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude." At the house on the bay I winnowed the world to four cities--Paris, Istanbul, Florence, New York--one for each week of vacation I had in a year. (I would later revisit certain cities, and those moments appear in these pages as well.) I included New York because it's home; because I wanted to figure out how to recapture the awe of the outsider in a place so familiar to me that it had become invisible. The other destinations beckoned for different reasons. I was taken with the architecture of Istanbul. I liked the thought of strolling Florence when the trees turn as yellow as the farmhouses on the hillsides. Yet all of the cities share certain qualities that spoke to me as a solo traveler. All have waterfronts, and none require a car. The idea of the flâneur may have originated in Paris, yet it was in Florence that Henry James declared himself a "charmed flâneur " in Italian Hours . It's alone on the back streets of Istanbul that Orhan Pamuk's characters seek solace and intrigue. It's on the sidewalks of New York that Walt Whitman sings of America. A number of cities, like Tokyo and Seoul, seemed impossible to omit, but there was the practical matter of my job, and with only a week at most to spare in each place, I ruled out locations that required too much flight time. What follows are impressions of four journeys; a love letter to loners, to witches and shamans, to those who cherish their friends, spouses, and partners yet also want alone time to think, create, have an adventure, learn a skill, or solve a problem. I hope something in these pages helps you to find your "thinking path"; to discover what you want from your own solitary moments. "When do you pause?" wrote Julia Child's husband, Paul, in the 1950s when the Childs were living in Paris. "When do you paint or pant? When write family, loll on moss, hear Mozart and watch the glitter of the sea?" When you're alone. Excerpted from Alone Time: Four Seasons, Four Cites, and the Pleasures of Solitude by Stephanie Rosenbloom All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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