"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. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and off-beat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself setting in 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."
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Never before has a book spoken to me like this one. It's quite depressing, but ever so enlightening.
2 comments:
hello darling!
thanks so much for the reply. wanna know the superweirdest thing? i've been meaning to read the bell jar since year 12 when we studied poetry and sylvia plath's work, and I borrowed it last week and was gonna start reading today. i think im in the perfect mood for it.
i know people wouldn't know these things about me - which is also why i keep this blog on the down lo. its more for me and strangers and a few select others. its like, the people who commit suicide are usually the ones you'd least expect. weird isn't it?
i'd love to see a movie in the holidays! do you have anything in mind? i'd love to either see a foreign film of 5oo days of summer which i've been hankering to see!! .. and jess who?
yes lets go get lost in someone elses life. oh lets do it!
PS: i'll paste this into your most recent post to make sure you get this!
I can't get enough of the bell jar. I'll tell you more about my thoughts on monday @ the movies but man, she is amazing! these random observations are so wonderful. like the peanutbutter breath of the subway and the visions she has. she thinks so differently to me. so bitter but so vulnerable. wow.
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