Final Paper Isolation

Scott Taylor

Dr. John Schwiebert

24 February 2009

Isolation

The young man sat in the darkened room, the crispness in the air evident as all occupants of the small home, the man, his dog, and the cat who owned them both, huddled in front of the wood-burning fireplace, ghostly shadows from the fire danced on the four book-lined walls of the room. Even though the clock showed 10 am, darkness rivaling midnight engulfed the house. Such is winter life in Alaska above the Arctic Circle. Normally Josh would be at work, manning a weight station for trucks hauling fuel and supplies to the remote town of Barrow, Alaska, on Ice Road. But not today; today Josh called in sick and he never calls in sick.

The cat allowed the dog to lie beside him as the two rested together on the floor in front of the man, both content in the warmth of the flames. The room’s cold and dreary feeling was eclipsed only by Josh’s attitude as he sulked in his chair before the fire, a heavy wool blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a half-eaten bowl of oatmeal sat on a small table next to the worn and tattered chair, one purchased at an office supply store years before. The solitary figure remained, staring at the fire, fixed in a position where he had remained for several hours ever since a phone call, a call from a man Josh didn’t know and had never talked to before, interrupted his deep sleep. The man at the other end of the phone said he had just flown in from New York City and had a few questions for Josh. “Just a few questions—should only take about an hour is all.” Maybe it was because he was barely awake, or maybe he was tired of his solitary life, but for some reason Josh agreed to meet the man, but only if he’d give him a few hours before he came over; he just woke up, for Heaven’s sake. The man agreed, saying he had to make sure his rental car was available. He got Josh’s address and hung up. A drowsy and confused Josh stumbled out of bed, made some oatmeal for breakfast, called in sick, lit his fire and sat down. “How did they find me?” his breath visible as his question ventured into the cold air.

“It was the e-mail I sent,” Josh cursed. “I knew I shouldn’t have sent that thing.” The dog and cat barely stirred as Josh spoke, they being used to Josh speaking to himself, though today’s words were tinged with an edge of bitterness usually not found in the dialogues. “I knew I shouldn’t have sent that; why was I so stupid?”

It was dumb, really, Josh’s action. He realized it at the time, but he thought since he was sending one of his writings to a website where authors and poets can submit content supposedly anonymously, no one would know who he was, or better yet, where he was. Living at the northern most point of North America makes you feel so isolated that you could disappear from society because, in reality, you pretty much were. And since Josh was not a techno-geek, he didn’t realize that joining an on-line group meant he could be in the most remote location in the world, or the earth’s most populated city, for to the internet, it didn’t matter; they were all “together.” Also, if Josh had realized how easy it would be for someone to gain access to those who logged in to the website and know exactly who those people were and exactly where those people were, he would never have logged in and submitted his poem. He probably would have never set up an internet account or used the computer (the computer being a gift from his parents currently living in Carlsbad, California) in the first place. The whole purpose of him quitting school at USC with one semester of philosophy under his belt and moving to Alaska to work by himself in a 5’ X 7’ building counting diesel trucks as they entered one of the most dangerous stretches of road anywhere on earth, was to be alone, to escape the hypocrisy humanity had become and enter a world of total darkness or total light, a place where he could be one with nature and write down—using paper and pen, the old-fashioned way, the way God intended—the feelings of his heart. He wrote for himself, not for others. He never wanted it published.

However, had Josh continued using his computer after sending his “anonymous” e-mail, he would have discovered something amazing. He would have been informed, if he had just checked any major news website, that a poem had recently been discovered, sent to a writing group by an unknown writer and who’s author remains a mystery, that his poem was causing a sensation throughout writing circles, university poetry programs, and interested literary parties the world over. The questions flooded in. “Who was this genius?” everyone wanted to know. “Is this a new talent, or an accomplished poet bored with traditional methods of poetic delivery?” Reviews from across the globe heralded the writer as unsurpassed, omniscient in his/her understanding of the secrets of life, and even Dickinsonian. Major literary interests were even offering rewards leading to any information on the poet’s identity. Unbeknownst to Josh, he had become part of a modern-day treasure hunt, he being the treasure. A reporter, utilizing several “less-than-legal” methods found a man named Josh working and living in one of the most unlikely spots a creative genius would call home and decided to book a flight to Barrow, deciding to try his luck and call this unknown poet once he touched down. He knew this could all be a wild goose chance, ending in futility, but he had to take a chance.

The reporter placed the call right after he landed and simply asked if Josh had been the one who submitted the poem to the website “a few months ago.” To his amazement the young man on the other end of the phone said he had indeed submitted one of his, what he called, “not one of his best” poems to the site. The reporter’s heart jumped as he stood alone in the small airport lobby. ‘Yes!’ he inwardly said—his hunch paid off, and now came the tricky part. He had to find a way to get the interview, to see if he could get the interview. The long plane trip gave the reporter several hours to contemplate possible angles to construct his story. Of course not knowing if Josh would allow him an interview, not to mention the very distinct possibility Josh may not be the author of the country’s newest “favorite” poem. All those doubts disappeared with a single word over a public telephone in the lobby of the airport at Barrow, Alaska. Sure, the reporter thought. I can hang out here for a few hours, start my article, get a bite to eat, then become the most read reporter in the country in just 24 hours. Things were definitely looking up.

The time dragged as time usually does when anxiety overwhelms. The reporter, an observer of life in all its varieties, did what a person does when trying to kill time. Interestingly enough, the floor tiles—those whose entire surface area remained unobstructed by chairs, file cabinets, vending machines—totaled 513, of which 259 were black tiles, 247 white tiles, and seven off-orange tile squares located near a unplugged and unattended hot dog wagon in the room’s corner. In the one hour, 45 minute span, the reporter saw 10 people enter the building and eight people leave. Already tired of rehearsing the questions he planned on asking Josh, the reporter slipped into a light nap and for a reason known to no one, he dreamt of pineapples. A pleasant voice from a diminutive, grandmotherly ticket agent/elementary school librarian/church organist brought the reporter back to the frozen black of Alaska’s morning. The reporter thanked the woman, gathered his belongings, obtained the rental car keys from the nice lady who just woke him up and opened the door into the dark.

Josh felt about as appetizing as the half-eaten bowl of oatmeal looked. For him, the two hours came all too quickly. With a half hour to spare, Josh arose and took a shower—no sense making this stranger’s visit unpleasant. He had just finished pulling a Norwegian sweater over his wet, thick, sandy-brown hair when a clear knock echoed through the small house. The reporter had arrived.

With towel in hand Josh made his way to the door, frantically trying to remove the remaining water from his hair. “Josh…Josh Hansen?” came the reporter’s voice through the door even before Josh reached it. “It’s Robert Feingold, the reporter from the New York Post—I called you earlier…” Josh opened the door just as the reporter continued…“about the poem…”

Both men looked at each other, each having an expectation of how the other would look and each being slightly disappointed that their mental pictures turned out to be wrong. The reporter broke the silence. “Yes, Josh, do you have a minute for some questions?”

“Of course,” said Josh apologetically. “Please.” He opened the door wider and moved to allow the reporter to enter. “Come in—it’s freezing out there.”

“Is it always this cold?” the reporter asked as he entered the room, realizing immediately the question must sound moronic to someone living in Alaska. “Actually,” Josh said. “We’re in the middle of a heat wave, you know, global warming being what it is.” The attempt at humor had the desired affect.

“Yes, I see,” the reporter said with a smile, a cloud of uncomfortability still existed between the two men. As the reporter entered the home, he was amazed by the overwhelming number of books crammed into the small space. It appeared almost every possible space which could hold a book held a book. “Here,” Josh said pointing to a chair strategically placed next to he fire. “Please sit down.”

For a man used to talking a mile a minute, the reporter found himself at a loss for words. After his long trip he found himself sitting in the home of the literary world’s biggest mystery. All the questions, that flowed only hours before were gone. Instinctively, the reporter reached into his coat pocket and withdrew a small notepad and pen, inwardly thanking Deity he had the foresight to write many of his thoughts down beforehand.

“Josh, can I call you Josh?” Again, the question sounded stupid as it exited the reporter’s mouth for he had already called him Josh several times already—a nod from Josh signaled the acceptance of the informal address. “First, I want to thank you again for meeting with me. I can understand if you didn’t want to meet with me…”

“You can?” Josh interrupted. “To be honest, sir. I have no idea why you’re even here. You said it was because I submitted my poem to that website—something I forgot I had done almost the second I hit ‘Send.’ But for the last few hours I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out how that poem would make a supposedly intelligent man get on a plane and travel halfway around the world in the dead of winter—to Alaska, of all places—just to talk to me. So forgive me, but I don’t think you do understand if I don’t want to meet with you.”

Josh’s words were hard, yet even. The control in which they were said surprised even Josh himself. Though he was not a man of strong emotional displays, he did take his privacy seriously, personally. The silence following his words made Josh wonder if he had gone too far. The reporter still felt unsure of how to proceed. A flash of insight came from Josh’s speech, that being Josh had no idea the effect his poem was having on the literary world. With this knowledge, the reporter decided not to show his hand just yet.

“So, Josh,” the words helped bring the reporter back to the task at hand. “First, I just want to thank you for letting me talk to you today.” Josh only nodded. “And I also want to say that I loved the poem—just beautiful; it really touched me.” This brought another simple nod from the poet.

Switching gears, the reporter flipped open his commonplace book for inspiration. “Josh, tell me, have you written a lot of poetry, or was your submission to the website an aberration, you know, a one-time thing?” Oh, the reporter thought. He knows what an aberration is. Josh sat and looked at his guest. After a moment, Josh simply bowed his head as if in disgust. Sensing a possible faux pas, the reporter interjected, “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

Josh looked up and simply asked, “Did you even read my poem at all?”

The reporter stopped, his mind raced back to the first time he read Josh’s poem, an e-mail from a colleague at a newspaper in Miami told him of an amazing new poem that was gaining an underground popularity among the college crowd. He found the link, read it, admitted to himself that the poem was a little “highbrow” for him, for he never though himself a big fan of poetry. He thought the poem showed insight, but, to be honest, he just let it slide through one side his brain until it exited the other. As a reporter he was more interested in the writer than the writing.

“Of course, I read the poem,” knowing Josh had really asked if the reporter had understood the poem. “I…well…I mean, sure, I read it…and…you know, it was really good…” Josh stood up and looked down at his guest. Cutting him off, he said, “Hey, I’m sorry,” the apologetic tone evident. “I guess I’m just a little sensitive about what I write. Can I get you something to drink, coffee, tea?” Josh turned and entered the kitchen as the reporter responded, “Coffee, black will be just fine.”

The silence helped both men, each using the time to think about how this interview could be a success. Josh returned and the gesture of warm stimulant in liquid form provided perspective for the two men. Josh spoke first as he set his cup of tea down on the small table and returned to his chair. “So, The question, you asked about…” This time the reporter stopped Josh from speaking. “Josh, look, I’ll be honest with you. I read the poem and it was a little over my head.” The coffee felt good as it warmed from the inside. The fire only went so far and it appeared from the reporter’s perspective that the fireplace might be the home’s only heating source. Josh let the reporter continue. “But even though poetry is not my thing, I know something about people, and after I—and others—read your poem,” the word “others” hung in the cold air, the affect on Josh apparent. “Being a newspaper man, I felt like there’s a story here. You’re a story, and I think people would be interested to know more about you.”

The reporter stopped. He learned years ago if he gave the interviewee time to think, he was sometimes rewarded with what he felt were better answers.

“That’s why I got on a plane a day and a half ago just to talk to you and ask you some questions about who you are and why you write. So, if it’s okay with you, I’ll just sit here, enjoy this coffee—and any more coffee you may have percolating on the stove—and listen to what you have to say.”

Josh looked at the reporter and wondered where he should begin. ‘From the beginning,’ came to mind. “Robert,” Josh said. “Have you ever been to Southern California?”

The question caught the reporter off guard. “Um, sure, couple of times, why?”

“No offense, but unless you’ve lived there, you can’t understand what it’s like growing up in that environment. It can be tough.”

“Tell me about it,” the reporter said, sensing Josh might open up to him after all. But before Josh could answer, a question had to be asked. “Wait…what? Are you telling me growing up in California is really tough?”

Josh just smiled as he let the subtle sarcasm escape into the cool air. “Now I know that even if you read my poem, you didn’t understand it—you didn’t let it become part of you.” Josh settled in his chair, the cat rose, stretched before his human subjects, and sauntered into the kitchen. “Okay, I’ll give you that—growing up in Southern California is not the worst curse inflicted upon mankind. I think my problem was,” Josh paused, a contented look crossed his face. “The problem was.….it was too perfect….I had it too good. That was my problem.”

“Too good?” asked the reporter. “You’re right, there’s no possible way I can understand growing up in that environment.” The reporter wondered if this young man, this week’s literary darling, was suffering from some sort of mental ailment, or perhaps a case of Anthropophobia. Oh, how many days did he wish he had grown up in California, going to the beach after school instead of trudging through the snow on Long Island during those long, cold winters. And during the few summer months when he did make it to a beach on the Atlantic, it was nothing like the beaches he saw on TV or in the movies. Those California beaches, now those were beaches.

“Well, even in Paradise, a hell can exist,” said Josh

“I suppose you’re right,” the reporter countered. “But you’ve still got to explain it to me.” The reporter closed his notebook and set it on the small table along with the half-eaten oatmeal. “You’ve a captive audience; I’m all yours. My flight doesn’t leave for three hours and I’ve got no where else to go.”

Josh picked up his cup and sipped his tea, not quite cool enough to warrant a bigger drink. “Well, you’ve traveled all this way, the least I could do is tell you a story.” The humor in his voice masked a real sense of obligation Josh had been feeling since the phone call hours earlier. A sense of relief grew from deep within Josh’s stomach as the story began to unfold.

“I grew up in Carlsbad, by the beach, actually,” Josh said. “If you’ve never seen the sun as it sets into the Pacific Ocean, I don’t think you’ve truly lived. I mean, the colors….it’s as if your soul screams silently, and the words and sounds and passions fly from your eyes and are splashed on the largest canvas ever imagined. Sometimes I would sit on the top of my roof at home and watch until the very last hue of color dissolved and black overtook the memory of what I had just seen. And after I came down from the roof, I’d turn my thoughts and feelings into words.”

The reporter could almost see the sunset in Josh’s eyes as he spoke and for a moment, the room seemed to brighten ever so slightly. He thought about asking a question of Josh, but decided against it—better to let him continue.

“I can’t tell you how many sunsets I watched from that rooftop. At first my parents forbad me from the roof, threatening me with all sorts of punishments if I disobeyed, but I found ways around it, and after a few months without serious injury or death, they decided I was okay to be left alone with my setting suns.”

Josh continued. “And like marijuana, the sun was like a gateway drug; it made me crave other examples of nature’s miracles. I began looking at flowers, and palm trees, and even bumblebees. I think I actually spent more time just looking at the landscaping in my neighborhood than I did watching TV.”

Again, the reporter suppressed the urge to ask follow up questions. This would be a different kind of interview.

“Now, spending all day looking at nature isn’t the most unusual thing you’ve ever heard of, is it” The reporter nodded in agreement. “Things went relatively well until I graduated from high school. That’s when the trouble began. You see, I’m a middle child, I have one of each, siblings-wise. My older daughter is a successful lawyer working in the film industry and my younger brother is a computer programming genius—both very successful. But,” Josh said, he paused, looked up at the reporter and said. “do you know what I wanted to do? Can you guess what the one thing I wanted to do was?”

The reporter was caught off guard by the question. “Uh, I take it not to go to USC and study philosophy?”

Josh chuckled. “Nope, he said. “What I really wanted to do was get married.”

The reporter didn’t expect that.

“Married—did you say, married?” he asked.

“Yup!” Josh said confidently. “I wanted to get married, you know, settle down and share everything I loved with someone else. You know the concept of synergy, I trust?” The reporter nodded. “There’s lots of reasons to get married, but I wanted to have that sense of synergy with another person, and by using that synergistic power…well…the thought of what we could feel and experience together still sends a shiver up my spine.”

An awkward pause followed Josh’s confession. The reporter thought Josh might have more to say, but as the time ticked on, it was evident he was waiting for the reporter to speak.

“So, did you get married? Did you have a girlfriend in high school?”

“No,” Josh said. “There’s lots of reasons to get married, but there’s also a lot of reasons not to get married. Not being in love is perhaps the biggest reason not to get married.” The response elicited a slight laugh from the reporter.

“And I wasn’t in love. Not with another person, that is.” Josh stood up and walked to where a well-organized pile of firewood in the form of a pyramid sat in the room’s corner. Josh picked up the top log and placed it on the dying flames, the coolness of the object momentarily reduced the heat from the fire, but soon, the new fuel emitted warmth for the inhabitants. Josh sat and continued. “I made the mistake of telling a friend that I really didn’t care about starting college in the fall, or going to parties, or being in the stands when USC played Notre Dame in football. When I told him I just wanted to get married and look at sunsets, the look he gave me was telling.”

“Telling, how?” the reporter asked.

“You need to understand, my high school friends had few goals, and those goals were to play videogames, party on the weekends, have a girl when a girl is wanted, and get a job where those things can remain unimpeded. Marriage—for any reason—goes against the entire social structure of my culture. The look I got was ‘telling’ because he basically let me know that I was some sort of social and cultural freak. I mean, I knew it was a little different, but I guess I had no idea.”

The reporter’s mind raced. He heard what Josh was saying, but it didn’t make any sense. He had friends, not many and mostly girls, who wanted to get married after high school. Some got married—most didn’t, but no one he knew ever abandoned society and moved to the land of total darkness six months out of the year just because they didn’t get married.

Josh stopped and looked at his guest. “You’re probably thinking, why would a guy leave college and move to Alaska just because he didn’t get married? That’s a fair question. So everyone I grew up with went to college and I joined them. But a funny thing happened when I got there. It seemed no one wanted to go out anymore, and by ‘out’ I mean ‘outside.’ All anyone ever wanted to do was stay in their dorm and surf the net, or play games, or chat on Facebook. No one seemed to care about interacting with friends, strangers, any other human, and certainly not nature.” Josh’s voiced raised as emotions came into play. “It was like I was surrounded by zombies, captives of electronic prisons.”

The reporter found himself nodding in agreement. “I see,” he said.

Josh continued. “But I could handle that; I’d been putting up with that for years, honestly. But what really surprised me, and to be truthful, what caused me to quite school and move here was the reaction of people I didn’t know at all. In class or even when out to eat, it seemed everyone wanted to know if I was ‘on-line,’ if I had a MySpace page yet, or if I had a character for Warcraft. I just got tired of it and I realized I didn’t want to live in that world anymore, so I withdrew. The irony is, I withdrew to one of the most open and boundless places on earth. You can’t see it now, but Alaska is almost limitless in its ability to amaze and inspire—it’s a perfect place for a poet.”

The reporter smiled back at this young man, someone who was willing to leave family, friends, and everything he knew, to escape. “Josh, I think I understand now. Not the choice I would have picked, but very brave none the less.” He decided to ask just one more question. “Now, I’m almost done here, and I’ll thank you for your time. I have just one more question. Your poetry, do you think you’ll be sharing more of it with the rest of us, or will it forever stay locked within your memories?”

Josh sat and stared at the flickering flames, obviously facing a decision—one considered many times. “You’ve heard,” Josh said finally, “authors say their writings are like their children.” The reporter agreed. “I don’t look at it that way. To me, it’s more personal than that. I don’t throw my words out to just anyone; I keep them close to my heart, from where they were born. It’s just too private, too personal. Two days ago, I was sitting here with my animals and Kilgrow, here,” the golden Labrador lazily raised his head at the mention of his name, “Kilgrow walked over to his bed and just stood there. He didn’t lie down, he just stood there looking at the place he sleeps every night. I don’t know if he knew I was watching or not, but that wasn’t the point. Finally, Kilgrow slowly turned, walked over to that corner,” Josh pointed to a different corner in the room. “He picked up his favorite dog toy and carried it over to his bed where he dropped it right in the middle. He then circled the bed three times before he laid down right by his toy and went to sleep.”

“Now,” Josh continued. “How in the world can I possibly express that incredible scene, that wonderful act of nature, in words? And if I even could write that down, do you—someone who is thousands of miles away at the time—deserve to share what happened here between me and my dog? I don’t know….maybe. Maybe not.”

The reporter continued listening, interested and educated by this young man.

“You ask if I’ll ever release any more writings,” Josh said. “Right now, I don’t think I will, but,” a big smile crossed Josh’s face. “I’ll never say never. There are too many strange and beautiful things happening on this earth to keep me bound by the philosophy I now expound. But if I do change my mind, I’ll let you know. You’ve earned that.”

The reporter knew the interview was over. The two men exchanged pleasantries, saying things people say to each other when they know their shared time had ended. The reporter left Josh’s house and stepped into the black of noon, hoping his car would start and he could get to the airport to make his flight. As he settled himself into the driver’s seat the reporter looked around at the world of the young poet. Streetlamps and illumination from homes denied total darkness its victory outside. Before the reporter started his car to leave a thought came to his mind. “This really is a beautiful place,” he said.



Isolation and Emily Dickinson

Alfred Habegger begins the introduction of his Emily Dickinson biography My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson with the following quote, “Any great writer who stand aloof from customs seen as fundamental is certain to be mythologized by posterity. For no one is this truer than Emily Dickinson, whose reclusiveness, originality of mind, and unwillingness to print her work left just the sort of informational gaps that legend thrives on” (xi). On the surface, my story of Josh and his famous poem mirrors much of Dickinson’s life, but only to a point. Dickinson’s exit from society is dissimilar to the path chosen by Josh, the young poet from California. In fact, the argument can be made that Josh’s friends turned to live a Dickinson-like life and Josh Hansen did something Emily Dickinson would never do, namely leave the safety and security of home and family to begin alone an adventure in one of the planet’s last frontiers.

I chose to focus on the external forces of the young man and not the actual poem which garnered so much attention. The purpose is twofold. Since, as Habegger also includes in his biography’s introduction, quotting George Steiner when discussing a poem from Paul Celan, “At certain levels, we are not meant to understand at all, and our interpretation, indeed our reading itself, is an intrusion” (xii). If I had included a poem, it may not adequately persuade the reader of Josh’s passion when it comes to poetry. And the second reason for not including, or focusing on, Josh’s now-famous poem is that I’m not that good a poet to create such a masterpiece.

In studying the reclusive nineteenth century author, I often think of things I would ask Emily if given the chance. I decided to create a fictional Dickinsonian modern-day character, someone who went against the social morays of this culture, so much so he eventually retreats from the world around him to further his creative expressions.

Though Josh and Emily’s situations differ, much of their experience is the same. In Dickinson’s day a woman of fine social standing was expecting to marry and become a homemaker, complete with children. Much social pressure would be brought to bear to achieve this goal. Dickinson did neither. Josh is expected (by his culture) to remain unmarried, attend college and “fit in” by devolving into a world of solitary electronic contact. Both authors wish to not have their works enter the public arena. R. W. Franklin, editor of The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition included in the book’s introduction an insight into Dickinson’s works. Franklin writes, “Unlike diaries, journals, or letters, poetry is commonly considered a public genre, to be brought editorially into line with public norms of presentation, but Dickinson’s poems, never published by the poet, may be seen as a private genre—a journal of her effort, with a distribution of poems that, like letter, was a part of personal communication with the individuals” (9).

Of course, differences between the two poets are numerous, but the desire to create wonderful artistic impressions drives both individuals to make unusual life choices. Josh’s legacy may, like Dickinson, outlive his own life, or the modern, “flavor of the week” world in which we now live may bury Josh’s words under next week’s headlines. To the poets, the outcome is immaterial. They write for different reasons, for themselves.


Works Cited
Franklin, R.W., ed. The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P. of Harvard UP, 1998.
Habegger, Alfred, My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: Modern Library, 2002.