a good day to die

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you-Nobody-too?
Then there's a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they'd banish us-you know!

How dreary-to be-Somebody!
How public-like a Frog-
To tell your name-the livelong June
To an admiring Bog!

Emily Dickinson

Sarah had a delightfully moderate response to my shock at Emily Dickinson’s complicity in her brother’s extramarital affair, “We don’t know their circumstances so we can’t judge.” As you are all well aware: Sarah and I are not here to help; we are here to observe and pass judgment.

I learned this while participating in the Emily Dickinson Death Day Toast at her grave in Amherst, Massachusetts while joining a troupe of traveling literary scholars led by my undergraduate advisor (and good friend) from my university.

It was the perfect day for such an outing – the weather was dreary and it rained all day. CNN reports that Senator Kennedy was struck by lightening while flying over us – he is safe but it would have been more fitting if he had crashed into our van or had caused our van to go careening into a lake, “We forgot Tiffany was in the back! Was she pregnant?”

It was not a bad day, despite the fact that in the Berkshires the only song on the radio all day was Daniel Powter’s Bad Day. There was a moment where we were sure we were lost or had taken a wrong turn on our way to a Shaker Village when Melissa Potter appeared to us in a vision and told us that we were not lost as long as we were still in Massachusetts. We arrived at the Shaker Village after taking the scenic tour of the greater Pittsfield area.

The Shakers were strange industrious folk. Their whole religion was based on hard work and no sex. This is what many people are doing right now – working all the time and not dating – but that does not mean that people are going to sign up for a lifetime of assiduous celibacy. This austere lifestyle would not go very far when the cults of today’s selling points are sex, cool aide, and free tennis shoes.

I accidentally stepped into a “Discovery Center” which had the draw of newborn chickens – we call them nuggets in the profession – when it was a craft and coloring room for children where I was waylaid by John Kerry’s grandfather with an undergraduate as he told us about the ceramic cow and how they had it harnessed in a much more humane setting then when it was in the barn. I learned a lot about cows – the butter content of their milk and the coloring of their flesh – but the big draw was a glass beehive. I am daft enough to have watched that beehive all day long, but we were on a schedule.

We traveled to Amherst to see the home of Emily Dickinson, her brother’s home and participate in the Death Day March around Amherst after we were finished with the Shakers. The march around Amherst in honor of Emily Dickinson was punctuated with readings and recitations of her poems by her ardent followers. Poetry was read in a parking lot and to a recycling dumpster as well as the train station and her home.

There were unintentionally funny moments, but for the participants this was a very serious occasion like Pearl Harbor or 9/11. I appreciated their religious fervor for Miss Dickinson so I did not point out that we were briefly joined on this cold and blustery day by a man wearing tiny orange shorts or that the man who seemed to be leading the march kept picking his nose.

This whole process culminated at Emily Dickinson’s grave where people recited their favorite poems, tears in the eyes and Miss Dickinson was toasted with ginger ale and mineral water. I hope years after my death that people notice me gone and miss me, too. I am not sure that I want excerpts from my short stories read to garbage receptacles – who am I kidding. If my death is celebrated, I want it done in a very absurd way. Also, if it is on a miserably cold, wet day that people be invited into my historic home and offered something hot to drink.

We had dinner at Wendy’s and parted ways. I was sure, however, that I was going to die on the way home. I had no directions but had no trouble finding my way back to the Interstate and then home, having familiarized myself with the area for an hour and a half earlier in the day. However, with our without directions I find myself lost and finding myself home without incident can only mean that I have entered an alternate dimension.

In the next installment
Sarah and I prepare for our documentary – the Seven Wonders of Nebraska.

Comments

[golfwidow]

On Head of the Class, Mr. Moore once pointed out that every Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of Yellow Rose of Texas.

I love teachers.

[Alex Vance]

Emily Dickinson and Shaker furniture? You spring breakers are out of control!

[melyni]

I hope that one weekend after my 21st birthday (which is august 27), and we head up to Boston, you could make it? Are you far?

[Suburban Island]

Poetry will never be the same.