Sacred and Secret--Dybek's Bottle Caps

I loved the idea of shame in Stuart Dybek's poem Bottle Caps. Not shame in one's self exactly, which is what we usually expect, but instead that of others not understanding the weight of our own sacred eccentricities. 

We've all had something that we have hid from our friends or family out of fear that could make their response to our habit/ hobby impure. A feeling can only be unexplainable when we mean share it--until then it is simply felt. This connection between thinking and feeling is where we find some of our most interesting memories. 

I have had my fair share of secret sacredness. Whether the daily journals I mean to keep, the odd materials I collect for future crafts, or the story ideas I furiously jot down and then leave in the corners of my books to gather textual dust. This shame in others not understanding connects with me. 

The line "the coffee cans stashed in the basement began to smell--a metallic, fermenting malt. I worried my mother would find out. It would look to her as if I were brewing polio. Still, the longer I collected, the more I hoarded my bottle caps" beautifully encapsulates the odd odor that many secret hobbies are hidden with and wonderfully links our emotional responses with our olfactory ones. While I do not associate any of my eccentricities with the smell of faint malt I stop and take in my natural reaction to this thing invading my world. This is opposed to a smell, even a "bad" one, being something comforting (and to a certain degree a symbol of success) after such a long time. But once more, this experience is unable to be replicated and shared on an emotional level. Instead, our senses are blind to the love and work that has been put into that odd-smelling concoction. We are blind to others' hobbies and to their true reactions--we do not see them completely.