What would it be like to live alone?

I really don't know. It's been a long time. And a four-day weekend by myself is not about to show me in any real way what living alone would be like, although it does prompt the question, and it's a question worth asking. Not that I'm planning on living alone any time soon, like in the next 30 years, but eventually almost everybody lives alone.

I've done it a couple of times. I grew up in a moderately big family - five kids, two parents. Even then I spent a good bit of time alone, but I never ALONE - existentially alone - because I was always surrounded by my family. Then I had roommates for two years in one dorm, Apple Hall in Kent, and one year in two apartments in Ann Arbor. Those were good times and good places, and I enjoyed the company, mostly.

Then I came back from a trip to Europe and got a room by myself in a rooming house for a year. Nice quiet street, come and go as I please; friends would come over. It was okay. It was better than okay, it was great, but it didn't last very long. I moved out and moved on, living in other people's places for a couple of years - a spare room here, a spare room there, Lower Peninsula, Upper Peninsula - in a house, a cabin, a tent, and finally moved south and found a roommate who eventually became a wife.

Of course that changed everything. For the next 33 years I managed to find time by myself, and over the years I have gotten better at making space for myself within the shared space of apartments and houses. Even with kids, it has always been possible to find time alone and create a space for being alone. But that ongoing balancing act is not the same as living alone, which makes the occasional four-day weekend a useful and revealing experiment while Gven Golly takes part in a sisters-and-cousins reunion in scenic Helen, Georgia.

One makes one's own coffee in the morning; walks the dog in the morning and evening, feeds the dog, and makes sure the dog has water in her bowl. This is not part of my routine normally, so it's a new and different part of my day that would take a serious decision to commit the kind of time a dog requires, that is, if it was just me and the dog. For now, since it is just me and the dog, it's still a major responsibility, as the dog needs and expects my full attention, at least a couple of times every day. Now if she would just learn to heel instead of yanking the leash - and my shoulder - this way and that.

One makes bean soup and arranges lumber in the shed. One watches tennis and football on TV. One reads a story in McSweeney's and articles in the New York Times. One goes for a longish bike ride out Dustin Road to 3Bs&K Road. Have you ever been out that way? West of the interstate, east of Alum Creek Lake, a quiet rural part of Delaware County, quite lovely if you have the time.

I've had an surprisingly active social life this weekend, aside from all that time with the dog. Saturday night I went to a gallery opening - Gven's friend Evangelia's gallery with Gven's work in the show - where I ran into a few people I knew - friends of Gven. Sunday I went to the temple and meditated, stayed for the teaching, went out for coffee, and drummed with the regular Clinton-Como drum circle in the park, where I ran into several people I knew - independently of Gven. She has her circle, I have my circle, and our circles overlap like a classic...Gvenn diagram. Sorry.

One finds things exactly where one put them, cleans up one's messes, and eats what one cooks. There is an increased sense of control, inhabiting a house by oneself. Everything is right where I put it. Nothing gets done if I don't do it myself. There will be no chicken dinner on Sunday. Nobody's going to clean up those dishes but me. Who am I gonna blame when something goes wrong? Why are we are out of coffee? Who left all this stuff lying around? Oh, yeah, that would be me.

I don't know how long it would take for all this glorious solitude to get old, but it would get old. There is no one there in the evening to unload all the day's baggage of disappointments, misdeeds, unmet deadlines, and crises du jour. And there is no one occupying the couch and the TV the entire evening with inane hospital shows and sitcoms, so I can catch every update on every ballgame on SportsCenter if I feel like it. Or not. It's mixed.