I was 16 years old the day I skipped school for the first time. It was easily done: both my parents left for work before my school bus arrived, so when it showed up at my house on that cold winter morning, I simply did not get on. The perfect crime!
And what did I do with myself on that glorious stolen day, with no adult in charge and no limits on my activities? Did I get high? Hit the mall for a shoplifting extravaganza(狂欢)?
Nope. I built a warm fire in the wood stove, prepared a bowl of popcorn, grabbed a blanket, and read. I was thrilled and transported by a book-it was Hemingway's The Sun Also rises-and I just needed to be alone with it for a little while. I ached to know what would happen to Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley and Robert Cohn. I couldn't bear the thought of sitting in a classroom taking another biology exam when I could be traveling through Spain in the 1920s with a bunch of expatiates(异乡客).
I spent that day lost in words. Time fell away, as the room around me turned to mist, and my role--as a daughter, sister, teenager, and student--in the world no longer had any meaning. I had accidentally come across the key to perfect happiness: I had become completely absorbed by something I loved.
Looking back on it now, I can see that some subtle things were happening to my mind and to my life while I was in that state of absorption. Hemingway's language was quietly braiding itself into my imagination. I was downloading information about how to create simple and elegant sentences, a good and solid plot. In other words, I was learning how to write. Without realizing it, I was hot on the trail of my own fate. Writing now absorbs me the way reading once did and happiness is their generous side effect.
