Sunday, July 22, 2007
Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jaron change:
"...i felt like a racehorse in a world without race-tracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.."
on decisions:
"i saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked."
on making decisions (or more aptly, indecision):
"i saw myself sitting on the crotch of this fig-tree, starving to death, just because i couldn't make up my mind which of the figs i would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet"
on giving up:
"piece by piece, i fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where i would never know, in the dark heart of New York.."
on not wanting to let go, or desire at its passive most:
"i hadn't, at the last moment, felt like washing off the two diagonal lines of dried blood that marked my cheeks. they seemed touching, and rather spectacular, and i thought i would carry them around with me, like the relic of a dead lover, till they wore off of their own accord."
on fear, escape and emptiness:
"a floorboard creaked, and i ducked down again, just as her face, by instinct, or some gift of supernatural hearing, turned on the little pivot of its neck.
i felt her gaze pierce through the white clapboard and the pink, wallpaper roses and uncover me, crouching there behind the silver pickets of the radiator.
i crawled back into bed and pulled the sheets over my head. but even that didn't shut out the light, so i buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up.
i had nothing to look forward to."
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the book is insanely riveting as one traces her imminent breakdown. im so gonna complete it before i fly off, yay.