The Recluse I Might Have Been

Remember the first time you learned about Emily Dickinson, the time you were eight or nine and some teacher or other set a xeroxed copy of a couple of her poems on your desk. You don't remember the poems exactly, but you do exactly remember being presented with Dickinson's lifestyle of voluntary solitude. You remember the fascination with the reality that one can cloister oneself away from the typical structure of a life lived in society, and utilize a books-and-nature structure instead, if one so chooses. You remember the thrill of that possibility.


So 25 years later, when you stumble upon the Dickinson family's “homestead” in Amherst, Mass., you realize that it's probably the one writer's house you want to see more than any other, because this is where the recluse bloomed.


Or maybe you don't, but I do. Emily Dickinson was the hermit I might have been, had I been brave enough or lacking enough in normative obligations to myself, or less fond of drunken conversations with smart people in bars and English accents and big city bustle and home runs in the bottom of the ninth and fondue parties.

Although, don't think I won't still spend three days in my apartment without speaking to a soul, because I can and will and do.