In solis sis tibi turba locis

In solis sis tibi turba locis (In solitude, be a multitude to thyself) Tibullus 

I surely have no problems with this. As much as I agree with Montaigne when he says we need solitude, I think that arriving to a new country or a new city is the best time for a retreat with yourself. 
I've always done that for a few days  at least (to entire weeks), in any new place I was settling for a bit longer than just holidays.
Is it to absorb the surrounding atmosphere, take a deep breath of the environment and appreciate it on your own. The timing is ideal, you are on site, but not really yet, which gives a kind of freedom that one gradually looses - voluntarily - while integrating a society. Once you'll have lost it , you'll seek to get it back again etc...
The first moments are magic. 
And here, in F. with the beach within bike reach, solitude can be a luxury.
Who needs people to go to the beach with? it's like going to the movies , or to a concert. It's as nice to have company as it is unnecessary. (I will not even comment about these people you have certainly heard about, exasperating bummers that go to a concert and keep talking all the time,  .......) 
Anyway, the ocean is a show for itself and strolling on the dunes is just as enjoyable. I do not speak to the sea, I just sing sometimes and whisper prayers. 
Thanks god for a few days of silence in my overtalkative all yearlong race. One million words a second, they said I could do that. How could they count that?  
The time I usually spend on blabbering I dedicated to soul feeding - reading, and for some weird reason I read two very distinct books, which plots have absolutely nothing in common except for the extreme solitude of their main characters. . 
In "The Tunnel", by Ernesto Sabato, we follow the evolution of a mind leading to a violent murder. The narrator, Juan Pablo Castel, notorious painter, perpetrator of both this crime and his emotional and social  suicide, since the victim is the only person he loves for understanding him, gained my sympathy right from the beginning with the following statement: 
  "Diré antes que nada, que detesto a los grupos, las sectas, las cofradías, los gremios y, en general, esos conjuntos de bichos que se reúnen por razones de profesión, de gusto o de manía semejante. Esos conglomerados tienen una cantidad de atributos grotescos: la repetición del tipo, la jerga, la vanidad de creerse superiores al resto."*
I so understand him! 
The character is trapped in his distorted, misinterpreting mania, he reasons with only himself and his own madness while explaining his motives, all constructed on very solid logical deduction, and the issue seems inevitable. Or say, in 136 pages he makes you fully understand and acknowledge there was no other possibility for him. The novel turns up being a masterly described voyage into the twists and turns of a tangled mind and a heavy criticism of art critics and more generally of the" me too" syndrome -see Louis CK -Awesome possum & indie coffee place vid on youtube for the latter. 
(And it is also the first novel I appreciated reading entirely in Spanish)
Here should come something about the second book, The heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, but since I have started to read it again to savour the author eloquence better, I'll leave it for another post. 

In deliberate solitude, you are  with yourself (already a multitude),  with the ocean, with artists singing in your livingroom, with Juan Pablo Casteles, Marlows and other fictional characters... In fact, you end up overcrowded!



*  "I will say first of all, I hate groups, cults, brotherhoods, guilds and, in general, these sets of bugs that come together for professional reasons, taste or similar hobby. These clusters have a number of grotesque attributes: the repetition of the pattern, the jargon, the vanity of believing themselves above the rest. "