In intense discussion a group leader ponders aloud, asking why hermits hide and what defines outcasts, among other cerebral queries. A group of friends discusses the oddities they have seen and perceived in their lives leather-clad hermits and criminal astronauts among them. They debate the purpose of hermitage, the classification of outcasts, and the purpose of their own reflections.

A starving man wandering the countryside finds solace in a young woman's cottage where she offers him food and rest. But when the young woman starts to behave as if the man is a threat, he must decide whether or not to live up to her fears.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

When a young academic's wife dies suddenly on the couples' honeymoon voyage across Europe, he copes by turning to his landlord.

In a Priory community by a yellow lake, a young man works for his mother's acquaintance to build the basement of her beach house. He is pushed to complete the project before the community summer solstice celebration, though the celebration turns out to be a rather cheerless, mundane success without necessitating the finished basement anyway.

An aging electrical engineer's intensifying sensation of detachment culminates in a series of debilitating headaches. As he works through fatigue, setbacks, and pain, he finally confronts the source of his desolation.

After leaving the south to live with her husband and raise her baby, an optimistic southern woman must adjust to the wintery weather and cold company of her new home.

During a Northeastern winter in their new isolated country home, a woman slowly succumbs to the gaslighting and manipulation of her husband.

A lonely man in his forties imagines a domestic life with a woman he briefly met who is interested in his furniture, but not his marriage proposal.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.