Why Emily Dickinson

Did you ever learn about Emily Dickinson's life, back in high school when you were taking English classes? Poets.org has a good description, in case your time was spent investigating other writers. I remember falling in love with her way with words, but I was also fascinated by how her life went, as she spent a great deal of time by herself, and she herself was the main audience for her writing. I can sure whine a lot about being lonely, but just look - here I am, writing in a blog that has an immediate audience. You might think that Dickinson's poems would be utterly depressing, given her aloneness, but they aren't. Sure, many of them contain notes of melancholy, but they also contain an incredible element of hope, and awareness and celebration of the beauty of the natural world.

I got to thinking back to middle school yesterday evening , after I remarked to scrottie that I was going to go read a book. He sighed wistfully about how much he wished he had more time to read. Well.

I started to read most avidly in third grade, the year I switched from attending a public school to attending a private, Catholic school. I was an outsider at the new school, and didn't have many friends to begin with. Over the next couple of years, I started to work my way up the social ladder, but by about sixth and seventh-grade, I privately concluded that my interests weren't aligned with the interests of my classmates, and so I gave up on trying to fit in. I spent recess in the library, reading, and I could come home from school every day and spend the rest of the afternoon lying on the couch with a book. So really, I associate lots of reading with spending a lot of time alone.

That changed quite a bit when I started high school and decided to try out rowing. My novice year, our coach told all of us novices that we could earn a varsity letter in rowing if we made it out to every single rowing practice through the fall and spring seasons. I missed only one practice, during the first week of rowing, because I needed to buy running shoes. I never missed a single practice after that, and so I earned varsity letters for all four years of high school. There was still time, between rowing seasons, for reading, but it wasn't the same.

While there are some wonderful exceptions out here, across the board I have been experiencing that feeling of being surrounded by people whose values and interests are markedly different from my own. We are lucky, these days, to have ways to connect with other people with shared interests who are spread out across the globe, though of course it isn't the same as direct contact.