Like A Rock

Written for Thursday Inspiration #319 –
“Second Hand News”. Here’s my response.

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration, Jim Adams asks us to respond to the challenge by using the prompt word ‘place’, referring to the song,“Second Hand News” by Fleetwood Mac or any other song by them, featuring a song about retreating into a secluded, private space to heal or find solace, or whatever we think fits. Here is my story.

Like A Rock

Chase unplugs the phone each evening at six. The silence that follows feels like victory.

His cabin sits three miles from the nearest neighbor, which is still too close. He built the porch himself, cut the firewood, patched the roof when winter came. Every nail he drove felt like punctuation: I. Don’t. Need. You.

People always want something …. conversation, validation, the exhausting performance of caring. He tried it once, long ago. The weight of another person’s expectations nearly crushed him.

Now he wakes to frost patterns on the windows, eats when he’s hungry, speaks only to himself. Some might call it loneliness. Chase calls it freedom.

At night, lying in his narrow bed, he sometimes hears the wind testing the walls. It sounds almost like knocking. He never answers. He is granite, an immovable rock.

♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬ ♬

Written by Paul Simon, “I Am a Rock” is a 1965 folk-rock song addressing extreme isolation, emotional detachment, and the protective walls built to avoid heartbreak. It was originally recorded for The Paul Simon Songbook (1965) before becoming a hit for Simon & Garfunkel on their Sounds of Silence album (1966). The lyrics describe a person who has become a “rock” and an “island” …. emotionally detached, avoiding friendship, and hiding from pain after a breakup. It highlights self-imposed isolation and the refusal to let anyone “penetrate” the narrator’s emotional, protected, or “numb” world. The Simon & Garfunkel version reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1966.

This is “I Am A Rock” by Simon & Garfunkel