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Living With Him Is Like Being Told A Perpetual Story: His Mind Is The Biggest, Most Imaginative I Have Ever Met. I Could Live In Its Growing Countries Forever.

-Sylvia Plath

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Living With Him Is

Sylvia Plath

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Living With Him Is Like Being Told A Perpetual Story: His Mind Is The Biggest, Most Imaginative I Have Ever Met. I Could Live In Its Growing Countries Forever.

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But I Am I Now; And So Many Other Millions Are So Irretrievably Their Own Special Variety Of 'i' That I Can Hardly Bear To Think Of It. I: How Firm A Letter; How Reassuring The Three Strokes: One Vertical, Proud And Assertive, And Then The Two Short Horizontal Lines In Quick, Smug Succession. The Pen Scratching On The Paper…i…i…i…i…i…i.

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I, Love, I Am The Pure Acetylene Virgin Attended By Roses.

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I Like People Too Much Or Not At All. I've Got To Go Down Deep, To Fall Into People, To Really Know Them.

Let's Face It: I'm Scared, Scared And Frozen. First, I Guess, I'm Afraid For Myself ... The Old Primitive Urge For Survival. It's Getting So I Live Every Moment With Terrible Intensity. Last Night, Driving Back From Boston, I Lay Back In The Car And Let The Colored Lights Come At Me, The Music From The Radio, The Reflection Of The Guy Driving. It All Flowed Over Me With A Screaming Ache Of Pain ... Remember, Remember, This Is Now, And Now, And Now. Live It, Feel It, Cling To It. I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I've Taken For Granted. When You Feel That This May Be The Good-bye, The Last Time, It Hits You Harder.

I Drink Sherry And Wine By Myself Because I Like It And I Get The Sensuous Feeling Of Indulgence...luxury, Bliss, Erotic-tinged.

See, The Darkness Is Leaking From The Cracks. I Cannot Contain It. I Cannot Contain My Life.

The First Time I Saw A Fingerbowl Was At The Home Of My Benefactress. [...] The Water Had A Few Cherry Blossoms In It, And I Thought It Must Be Some Clear Sort Of Japanese After-dinner Soup And Ate Every Bit Of It, Including The Crisp Little Blossoms.

I Am Dead To Them, Even Though I Once Flowered.

The Silence Between Us Was So Profound I Thought Part Of It Must Be My Fault.

I Wish To Cry. Yet, I Laugh, And My Lipstick Leaves A Red Stain Like A Bloody Crescent Moon On Top Of The Beer Can

That’s One Of The Reasons I Never Wanted To Get Married. The Last Thing I Wanted Was Infinite Security And To Be The Place An Arrow Shoots Off From. I Wanted Change And Excitement And To Shoot Off In All Directions Myself, Like The Colored Arrows From A Fourth Of July Rocket.

As I Lay On My Back In Bed Staring Up At The Blank, White Ceiling The Stillness Seemed To Grow Bigger And Bigger Until I Felt My Eardrums Would Burst With It.

I'm Sarcastic, Skeptical, And Sometimes Callous Because I'm Still Afraid, Deep Down, Of Letting Myself Be Hurt.

I Didn’t Want Any Flowers, I Only Wanted To Lie With My Hands Turned Up And Be Utterly Empty. How Free It Is, You Have No Idea How Free.

But Life Is Long. And It Is The Long Run That Balances The Short Flare Of Interest And Passion.

That Is Salvation. To Give Of Love Inside. To Keep Love Of Life, No Matter What, And Give To Others. Generously.

The Claw Of The Magnolia, Drunk On Its Own Scents, Asks Nothing Of Life.

Dancing Is The Normal Prelude To Intercourse.

Only I Wasn't Steering Anything, Not Even Myself.

If Every Soldier Refused To Take Arms ... There Would Be No Wars; But No One Has The Courage To Be The First To Live According To Christ And Socrates, Because In A World Of Opportunists They Would Be Martyred.

If You Pluck Out My Heart To Find What Makes It Move, You’ll Halt The Clock That Syncopates Our Love.

So Learn About Life. Cut Yourself A Big Slice With The Silver Server, A Big Slice Of Pie. Open Your Eyes. Let Life Happen.

Ironically, Henry James' Biography Comforts Me & I Long To Make Known To Him His Posthumous Reputation He Wrote, In Pain, Gave All His Life (which Is More Than I Could Think Of Doing I Have Ted, Will Have Children But Few Friends) & The Critics Insulted & Mocked Him, Readers Didn't Read Him.

Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because It Is Impossible For Me To Be God — Or The Universal Woman-and-man — Or Anything Much. I Am What I Feel And Think And Do. I Want To Express My Being As Fully As I Can Because I Somewhere Picked Up The Idea That I Could Justify My Being Alive That Way.

I Felt Overstuffed And Dull And Disappointed, The Way I Always Do The Day After Christmas.

Love, Love, I Have Hung Our Cave With Roses.

At Twenty I Tried To Die And Get Back, Back, Back To You. I Thought Even The Bones Would Do.

To Annihilate The World By Annihilation Of Oneself Is The Deluded Height Of Desperate Egoism.

For The Few Little Successes I May Seem To Have, There Are Acres Of Misgivings And Self-doubt.

…* To Learn That Money Makes Life Smooth In Some Ways, And To Feel How Tight And Threadbare Life Is If You Have Too Little. * To Despise Money, Which Is A Farce, Mere Paper, And To Hate What You Have To Do For It, And Yet To Long To Have It In Order To Be Free From Slaving For It. * To Yearn Toward Art, Music, Ballet And Good Books, And Get Them Only In Tantalizing Snatches.

…i Hate Myself For Not Being Able To Go Downstairs Naturally And Seek Comfort In Numbers. I Hate Myself For Having To Sit Here And Be Torn Between I Know Not What Within Me.

Cheers For Spring; For Life; For A Growing Soul.

I Have A Violence In Me That Is Hot As Death-blood.

Last Year A Friend Went Dark In A Nervous City Alone, The Sea Flashing Against His Glasses, The Sea Sorted Out At Last In His Inner Ear So He Could Leave This World As He'd Entered It Through The Undependable Irrational Influence Of Water. -kevin Jeffery Clark It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get At.

I Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

Love Life Day By Day, Color By Color, Touch By Touch.

My Best Friends When I Was Young Were Always Doctors. I Used To Dress Up In A White Gauze Helmet And Go Round And See Babies Born And Cadavers Cut Open. This Fascinated Me, But I Could Never Bring Myself To Disciplining Myself To The Point Where I Could Learn All The Details That One Has To Learn To Be A Good Doctor. This Is The Sort Of Opposition: Somebody Who Deals Directly With Human Experiences, Is Able To Cure, To Mend, To Help, This Sort Of Thing.

What A Man Wants Is A Mate And What A Woman Wants Is Infinite Security,’ And, ‘what A Man Is Is An Arrow Into The Future And A What A Woman Is Is The Place The Arrow Shoots Off From.

I Am Still So Naïve; I Know Pretty Much What I Like And Dislike; But Please, Don’t Ask Me Who I Am. A Passionate, Fragmentary Girl, Maybe?

Apparently, The Most Difficult Feat For A Cambridge Male Is To Accept A Woman Not Merely As Feeling, Not Merely As Thinking, But As Managing A Complex, Vital Interweaving Of Both.

The Box Is Only Temporary.

I Have No Preconceptions. Whatever I See, I Swallow Immediately. Just As It Is, Unmisted By Love Or Dislike. I Am Not Cruel, Only Truthful.

When I Fell Out Of The Light, I Entered The Stomach Of Indifference, The Wordless Cupboard.

If They Substituted The Word 'lust' For 'love' In The Popular Songs It Would Come Nearer The Truth.

I Wanted To Tell Her That If Only Something Were Wrong With My Body It Would Be Fine, I Would Rather Have Anything Wrong With My Body Than Something Wrong With My Head, But The Idea Seemed So Involved And Wearisome That I Didn’t Say Anything. I Only Burrowed Down Further In The Bed.

Go Out And Do Something. It Isn’t Your Room That’s A Prison, It’s Yourself.

And I A Smiling Woman. I Am Only Thirty. And Like The Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

Jealousy Can Open The Blood, It Can Make Black Roses.

I Have Taken A Pill To Kill The Thin Papery Feeling.

I Have Stitched Life Into Me Like A Rare Organ

It Is A Feeling That No Matter What The Ideas Or Conduct Of Others, There Is A Unique Rightness And Beauty To Life Which Can Be Shared In Openness, In Wind And Sunlight, With A Fellow Human Being Who Believes In The Same Basic Principles.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

And The Danger Is That In This Move Toward New Horizons And Far Directions, That I May Lose What I Have Now, And Not Find Anything Except Loneliness

I Do Not Love; I Do Not Love Anybody Except Myself. That Is A Rather Shocking Thing To Admit.

Shocking Things

What I Cannot Forgive Is Dishonesty - And No Matter What, Or How Hard, I Would Rather Know The Truth Of Which I Today Had Such A Clear & Devastating Vision From His Mouth Than Hear Foul Evasions, Blurrings And Rattiness.

I Lay In That Tub On The Seventeenth Floor Of This Hotel For-women-only, High Up Over The Jazz And Push Of New York, For Near Unto An Hour, And I Felt Myself Growing Pure Again. I Don't Believe In Baptism Or The Waters Of Jordan Or Anything Like That, But I Guess I Feel About A Hot Bath The Way Those Religious People Feel About Holy Water.

I Feel Self-repressed Again. The Old Fall Disease. Where Is My Willpower? The Idea Of A Life Gets In The Way Of My Life...i Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

Joy:show Joy & Enjoy: Then Others Will Be Joyful.

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. Nothing More Than An Empty House, The Warm Hazy Weariness From A Day Spent Setting Strawberry Runners In The Sun, A Glass Of Cool Sweet Milk, And A Shallow Dish Of Blueberries Bathed In Cream. When One Is So Tired At The End Of A Day One Must Sleep, And At The Next Dawn There Are More Strawberry Runners To Set, And So One Goes On Living, Near The Earth. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

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.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

I Don’t Care About Anyone, And The Feeling Is Quite Obviously Mutual.

As From A Star I Saw, Coldly And Soberly, The Separateness Of Everything. I Felt The Wall Of My Skin; I Am I. That Stone Is A Stone. My Beautiful Fusion With The Things Of This World Was Over.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

You Have To Be Able To Make A Real Creative Life For Yourself, Before You Can Expect Anyone Else To Provide One Ready-made For You.

... You Looked Around And Saw Everybody Either Married Or Busy And Happy And Thinking And Being Creative, And You Felt Scared, Sick, Lethargic, Worst Of All, Not Wanting To Cope. You Saw Visions Of Yourself In A Straightjacket, And A Drain On The Family, Murdering Your Mother In Actuality, Killing The Edifice Of Love And Respect Built Up Over The Years In The Hearts Of Other People.

I Wonder Why I Don't Go To Bed And Go To Sleep. But Then It Would Be Tomorrow, So I Decide That No Matter How Tired, No Matter How Incoherent I Am, I Can Skip On Hour More Of Sleep And Live.

Once One Has Seen God, What Is The Remedy?

I Hate Handing Over Money To People For Doing What I Could Just As Easily Do Myself, It Makes Me Nervous.

I Dreamed That You Bewitched Me Into Bed And Sung Me Moon-struck, Kissed Me Quite Insane. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

Then I Thought, "no, I Broke It Myself. I Broke It On Purpose To Pay Myself Back For Being Such A Heel.

I Need Not To Be More With Others, But To Be More & More Deeply, Richly Alone. Recreating Worlds.

Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie And Cry After It

Today Is The First Of August. It Is Hot, Steamy And Wet. It Is Raining. I Am Tempted To Write A Poem. But I Remember What It Said On One Rejection Slip: 'after A Heavy Rainfall, Poems Titled 'rain' Pour In From Across The Nation.

I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

The Journey Over The Bridge Had Unnerved Me. The River Water Passed Me By Like An Untouched Drink. I Suspected That Even If My Mother And Brother Had Not Been There I Would Have Made No Move To Jump.

So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do! A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough.

It Seemed Silly To Wash One Day When I Would Only Have To Wash Again The Next. It Made Me Tired Just To Think Of It.

I Want To Live And Feel All The Shades, Tones And Variations Of Mental And Physical Experience Possible In Life.

I Didn’t Want Any Flowers, I Only Wanted To Lie With My Hands Turned Up And Be Utterly Empty. How Free It Is, You Have No Idea How Free—— The Peacefulness Is So Big It Dazes You, And It Asks Nothing, A Name Tag, A Few Trinkets. It Is What The Dead Close On, Finally; I Imagine Them Shutting Their Mouths On It, Like A Communion Tablet.

I’ll Never Speak To God Again.

You Know What Lies Are For.

Secretly, In Studies And Attics And Schoolrooms All Over America, People Must Be Writing.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

The Floor Seemed Wonderfully Solid. It Was Comforting To Know I Had Fallen And Could Fall No Farther.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid. I Can Never Read All The Books I Want; I Can Never Be All The People I Want And Live All The Lives I Want.

The Reason I Haven't Been Writing In This Book For So Long Is Partly That I Haven't Had One Decent Coherent Thought To Put Down.

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.

I'm Never Going To Get Married." "you're Crazy." Buddy Brightened. "you'll Change Your Mind." "no. My Mind's Made Up.

This Is The Light Of The Mind, Cold And Planetary. The Trees Of The Mind Are Black. The Light Is Blue.

I Think My Poems Immediately Come Out Of The Sensuous And Emotional Experiences I Have, But I Must Say I Cannot Sympathise With These Cries From The Heart That Are Informed By Nothing Except A Needle Or A Knife, Or Whatever It Is.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

I Want To Taste And Glory In Each Day, And Never Be Afraid To Experience Pain; And Never Shut Myself Up In A Numb Core Of Nonfeeling, Or Stop Questioning And Criticizing Life And Take The Easy Way Out. To Learn And Think: To Think And Live; To Live And Learn: This Always, With New Insight, New Understanding, And New Love.

Pretty Soon, The Only Doubt In My Mind Was The Precise Time And Method Of Committing Suicide. The Only Alternative I Could See Was An Eternity Of Hell For The Rest Of My Life In A Mental Hospital, And I Was Going To Use My Last Ounce Of Free Choice And Choose A Quick Clean Ending.

If Only A Group Of People Were More Important To Me Than The Idea Of A Novel, I Might Begin A Novel.

I Am But One More Drop In The Great Sea Of Matter, Defined, With The Ability To Realize My Existence.

What A Man Wants Is A Mate And What A Woman Wants Is Infinite Security.

A Skeptic, I Would Ask For Consistency First Of All.

I'm Doped And Thick From My Last Sleeping Pill.

I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard's Study; Because He Would Make Love To Me I Am Sending Back The Key; In His Eye's Darkroom I Can See My X-rayed Heart, Dissected Body: I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard S Study.

I Wish You’d Find The Exit Out Of My Head.

Hour By Hour, Day By Day, Life Becomes Possible.

* To Know A Lot Of People I Love Pieces Of, And To Want To Synthesize Those Pieces In Me Somehow, Be It By Painting Or Writing. * To Know That Millions Of Others Are Unhappy And That Life Is A Gentleman's Agreement To Grin And Paint Your Face Gay So Others Will Feel They Are Silly To Be Unhappy, And Try To Catch The Contagion Of Joy, While Inside So Many Are Dying Of Bitterness And Unfulfillment.

If Neurotic Is Wanting Two Mutually Exclusive Things At One And The Same Time, Then I'm Neurotic As Hell.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

It Was Sometime In October; She Had Long Ago Lost Track Of All The Days And It Really Didn’t Matter Because One Was Like Another And There Were No Nights To Separate Them Because She Never Slept Any More.

I Wanted To Do Everything Once And For All And Be Through With It.

If The Body Is A Temple, Then Tattoos Are Its Stained Glass Windows.

God Has To Remind Us This Isn't Heaven By A Long Shot, So He Increases The Radios And Lethal Flies.

The Moon Is No Door. It Is A Face In Its Own Right, White As A Knuckle And Terribly Upset. It Drags The Sea After It Like A Dark Crime; It Is Quiet With The O-gape Of Complete Despair. I Live Here.

I Felt Myself Melting Into The Shadows Like The Negative Of A Person I'd Never Seen Before In My Life.

I Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.

I Want To Be Silverly Beautiful.

The Moon, Too, Abases Her Subjects, But In The Daytime She Is Ridiculous. Your Dissatisfactions, On The Other Hand, Arrive Through The Mailslot With Loving Regularity, White And Blank, Expansive As Carbon Monoxide. No Day Is Safe From News Of You, Walking About In Africa Maybe, But Thinking Of Me.

It Is As If My Life Were Magically Run By Two Electric Currents: Joyous Positive And Despairing Negative--which Ever Is Running At The Moment Dominates My Life, Floods It.

I Had Imagined A Kind, Ugly, Intuitive Man Looking Up And Say, 'ah!' In An Encouraging Way, As If He Could See Something I Couldn't, And Then I Would Find Words To Tell Him How I Was So Scared, As If I Were Being Stuffed Farther And Farther Into A Black, Airless Sack With No Way Out.

Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

I Think The Coming Of Spring, The Stars Overhead, The First Snowfall And So On Are Gifts For A Child, A Young Poet.

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

It Was My First Big Chance, But Here I Was, Sitting Back And Letting It Run Through My Fingers Like So Much Water.

The Only Reason I Remembered This Play Was Because It Had A Mad Person In It, And Everything I Had Ever Read About Mad People Stuck In My Mind, While Everything Else Flew Out.

There Ought, I Thought, To Be A Ritual For Being Born Twice - Patched, Retreaded And Approved For The Road.

Poetry, I Feel, Is A Tyrannical Discipline. You've Got To Go So Far, So Fast, In Such A Small Space, That You've Got To Burn Away All The Peripherals.

All The Heat And Fear Had Purged Itself. I Felt Surprisingly At Peace. The Bell Jar Hung Suspended A Few Feet Above My Head. I Was Open To The Circulating Air.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

Please Don’t Expect Me To Always Be Good And Kind And Loving. There Are Times When I Will Be Cold And Thoughtless And Hard To Understand.

And When At Last You Find Someone To Whom You Feel You Can Pour Out Your Soul, You Stop In Shock At The Words You Utter— They Are So Rusty, So Ugly, So Meaningless And Feeble From Being Kept In The Small Cramped Dark Inside You So Long.

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

Perhaps, Perhaps This Would Be The One To Pull Me Out Of My Plunge.

If You Dissect A Bird / To Diagram The Tongue, / You'll Cut The Chord / Articulating Song.

Antoine St. Exupery Once Mourned The Loss Of A Man And The Secret Treasures That He Held Inside Him. I Loved Exupery; I Will Read Him Again, And He Will Talk To Me, Not Being Dead, Or Gone. Is That Life After Death — Mind Living On Paper And Flesh Living In Offspring? Maybe. I Do Not Know.

I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

I Love Life. But It Is Hard And I Have So Much, So Very Much To Learn.

But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

I Didn't Know What I Was Doing In New York.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

I Started Adding Up All The Things I Couldn't Do.

Sure, I’m Dramatic And Sloppily Semi-cynical And Semi-sentimental. But, In Leisure Years I Could Grow And Choose My Way. Now I Am Living On The Edge. We All Are On The Brink, And It Takes A Lot Of Nerve, A Lot Of Energy, To Teeter On The Edge, Looking Over, Looking Down Into The Windy Blackness And Not Being Quite Able To Make Out, Through The Yellow, Stinking Mist, Just What Lies Below In The Slime, In The Oozing, Vomit-streaked Slime; And So I Could Go On, My Thoughts, Writing Much, Trying To Find The Core, The Meaning For Myself.

The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

I Think I Am Mad Sometimes.

I Cannot Life For Life Itself: But For The Words Which Stay The Flux. My Life, I Feel, Will Not Be Lived Until There Are Books And Stories Which Relive It Perpetually In Time. I Forget Too Easily How It Was, And Shrink To The Horror Of The Here And Now, With No Past And No Future. Writing Breaks Open The Vaults Of The Dead And The Skies Behind Which The Prophesying Angels Hide. The Mind Makes And Makes, Spinning Its Web.

I Would Catch Sight Of Some Flawless Man Off In The Distance, But As Soon As He Moved Closer I Immediately Saw He Wouldn’t Do At All.

And I Am Aware Of My Heart: It Opens And Closes Its Bowl Of Red Blooms Out Of Sheer Love Of Me.

So I Kiss Him, And There Is The Great Dark Sea Ahead.

Let Me Live, Love And Say It Well In Good Sentences.

I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love.

I Think I Am Worthwhile Just Because I Have Optical Nerves And Can Try To Put Down What They Perceive. What A Fool!

I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy.

What I Hate Is The Thought Of Being Under A Man's Thumb," I Had Told Doctor Nolan. "a Man Doesn't Have A Worry In The World, While I've Got A Baby Hanging Over My Head Like A Big Stick, To Keep Me In Line.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To, Another Body To Keep Us Warm. To Rest And Trust; To Give Your Soul In Confidence: I Need This, I Need Someone To Pour Myself Into.

Everything People Did Seemed So Silly, Because They Only Died In The End.

You Walked In, Laughing, Tears Welling Confused, Mingling In Your Throat. How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many People, Oh You Strange Girl?

I Wondered What I Thought I Was Burying.

I Am Learning Peacefulness, Lying By Myself Quietly, As The Light Lies On These White Walls, This Bed, These Hands. I Am Nobody; I Have Nothing To Do With Explosions.

England Offers New Comforts. I Could Write A Novel There.

I Feel That Very Strongly: Having Been An Academic, Having Been Tempted By The Invitation To Stay On To Become A Ph.d., A Professor, And All That, One Side Of Me Certainly Does Respect All Disciplines, As Long As They Don't Ossify.

I Love People. Everybody. I Love Them, I Think, As A Stamp Collector Loves His Collection. Every Story, Every Incident, Every Bit Of Conversation Is Raw Material For Me.

One Night She Hid The Pink Cotton Scarf From Her Raincoat In The Pillowcase When The Nurse Came Around To Lock Up Her Drawers And Closets For The Night. In The Dark She Had Made A Loop And Tried To Pull It Tight Around Her Throat. But Always Just As The Air Stopped Coming And She Felt The Rushing Grow Louder In Her Ears, Her Hands Would Slacken And Let Go, And She Would Lie There Panting For Breath, Cursing The Dumb Instinct In Her Body That Fought To Go On Living

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content.

So I Began To Think Maybe It Was True That When You Were Married And Had Children It Was Like Being Brainwashed, And Afterward You Went About As Numb As A Slave In A Totalitarian State.

Some Things Are Hard To Write About. After Something Happens To You, You Go To Write It Down, And Either You Over Dramatize It, Or Underplay It, Exaggerate The Wrong Parts Or Ignore The Important Ones. At Any Rate, You Never Write It Quite The Way You Want To.

Talking About My Fears To Others Feeds It.

When You Give Someone Your Whole Heart And He Doesn't Want It, You Cannot Take It Back. It's Gone Forever.

Unrequited Love

Perhaps You Considered Yourself An Oracle, Mouthpiece Of The Dead, Or Of Some God Or Other. Thirty Years Now I Have Labored To Dredge The Silt From Your Throat. I Am None The Wiser.

I Didn't Really See Why People Should Look At Me. Plenty Of People Looked Queerer Than I Did.

Piece By Piece, I Fed My Wardrobe To The Night Wind, And Flutteringly, Like A Loved One’s Ashes, The Gray Scraps Were Ferried Off, To Settle Here, There, Exactly Where I Would Never Know, In The Dark Heart Of New York.

Everything In Life Is Writable.

Feel Oddly Barren. My Sickness Is When Words Draw In Their Horns And The Physical World Refuses To Be Ordered, Recreated, Arranged And Selected. I Am A Victim Of It Then, Not A Master.

I Have The Choice Of Being Constantly Active And Happy Or Introspectively Passive And Sad. Or I Can Go Mad By Ricocheting In Between.

And There's The Fallacy Of Existence: The Idea That One Could Be Happy Forever And Age With A Given Situation Or Series Of Accomplishments.

Every Day One Has To Earn The Name Of 'writer' Over Again, With Much Wrestling.

Love Is The Bone And Sinew Of My Curse.

The Lyric Abstrusities Of Auden Ring Mystically Down The Circular Canals Of My Ear And It Begins To Look Like Snow. The Good Gray Conservative Obliterating Snow. Smoothing (in One White Lacy Euphemism After Another) Out All The Black Bleak Angular Unangelic Nauseous Ugliness Of The Blasted Sterile World: Dry Buds, Shrunken Stone Houses, Dead Vertical Moving People All All All Go Under The Great White Beguiling Wave. And Come Out Transformed. Lose Yourself In A Numb Dumb Snow-daubed Lattice Of Crystal And Come Out Pure With The White Virginal Veneer You Never Had.

I Don't See,' I Said, 'how People Stand Being Old. Your Insides All Dry Up. When You're Young You're So Self-reliant. You Don't Even Need Much Religion.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone. There Is An Off-focus Light Cast By The Moon, And The Streetlights Are Part Of The Spotlight Apparatus On A Bare Stage Set Up For You To Walk Through. You Get A Feeling Of Being Listened To, So You Talk Aloud, Softly, To See How It Sounds.

I Have To Live My Life, And It Is The Only One I’ll Ever Have.

I Fancied You'd Return The Way You Said, But I Grow Old And I Forget Your Name. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

Why Am I Obsessed With The Idea I Can Justify Myself By Getting Manuscripts Published? Is It An Escape-an Excuse For Any Social Failure-so I Can Say "no, I Don't Go Out For Many Extracurricular Activities, But I Spend A Lot Of Time Writing."

I Believe That One Should Be Able To Control And Manipulate Experiences, Even The Most Terrific, Like Madness, Being Tortured, This Sort Of Experience, And One Should Be Able To Manipulate These Experiences With An Informed And An Intelligent Mini.

The Moon, Also, Is Merciless: She Would Drag Me Cruelly, Being Barren. Her Radiance Scathes Me. Or Perhaps I Have Caught Her.

Good To Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die.

On The Train: Staring Hypnotized At The Blackness Outside The Window, Feeling The Incomparable Rhythmic Language Of The Wheels, Clacking Out Nursery Rhymes, Summing Up Moments Of The Mind Like The Chant Of A Broken Record: God Is Dead, God Is Dead. Going, Going, Going. And The Pure Bliss Of This, The Erotic Rocking Of The Coach. France Splits Open Like A Ripe Fig In The Mind; We Are Raping The Land, We Are Not Stopping.

God, Is This All It Is, The Ricocheting Down The Corridor Of Laughter And Tears? Of Self-worship And Self-loathing? Of Glory And Disgust?

Not Being Perfect Hurts.

Not Being Perfect

I Saw Myself Sitting 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 Loosing 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.

In A Rabbit-fear I May Hurl Myself Under The Wheels Of The Car Because The Lights Terrify Me, And Under The Dark Blind Death Of Wheels I Will Be Safe. I Am Very Tired, Very Banal, Very Confused. I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight. I Wanted To Walk Until I Dropped And Not Complete The Inevitable Circle Of Coming Home.

I Don't Know What Started Me, I Just Wrote Poetry From The Time Was Quite Small. I Guess I Liked Nursery Rhymes And I Guess I Thought I Could Do The Same Thing. I Wrote My First Poem, My First Published Poem, When I Was Eight-and-a-half Years Old. It Came Out In The Boston Traveller And From Then On, I Suppose, I've Been A Bit Of A Professional.

God, How I Ricochet Between Certainties And Doubts.

I Felt Dull And Flat And Full Of Shattered Visions.

I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I've Taken For Granted.

I'm Happier Writing About Doctors Than I Would Have Been Being One.

I Do Not Love; I Do Not Love Anybody Except Myself. That Is A Rather Shocking Thing To Admit. I Have None Of The Selfless Love Of My Mother. I Have None Of The Plodding, Practical Love. . . . . I Am, To Be Blunt And Concise, In Love Only With Myself, My Puny Being With Its Small Inadequate Breasts And Meager, Thin Talents. I Am Capable Of Affection For Those Who Reflect My Own World.

As A Poet, One Lives A Bit On Air. I Always Like Someone Who Can Teach Me Something Practical.

In Spite Of Everything, I Still Have My Good Old Sense Of Humor.

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Malcolm Gladwell

Michel Foucault

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