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With Me, The Present Is Forever, And Forever Is Always Shifting, Flowing, Melting. This Second Is Life. And When It Is Gone It Is Dead. But You Can't Start Over With Each New Second. You Have To Judge By What Is Dead. It's Like Quicksand... Hopeless From The Start.

-Sylvia Plath

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With Me, The Present

Sylvia Plath

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With Me, The Present Is Forever, And Forever Is Always Shifting, Flowing, Melting. This Second Is Life. And When It Is Gone It Is Dead. But You Can't Start Over With Each New Second. You Have To Judge By What Is Dead. It's Like Quicksand... Hopeless From The Start.

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Shocking Things

It Is A Terrible Thing To Be So Open: It Is As If My Heart Put On A Face And Walked Into The World.

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

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I Knew You'd Decide To Be All Right Again.

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When They Asked Me What I Wanted To Be I Said I Didn't Know.

What Do You Have In Mind After You Graduate?" What I Always Thought I Had In Mind Was Getting Some Big Scholarship To Graduate School Or A Grant To Study All Over Europe, And Then I Thought I'd Be A Professor And Write Books Of Poems Or Write Books Of Poems And Be An Editor Of Some Sort. Usually I Had These Plans On The Tip Of My Tongue. "i Don't Really Know," I Heard Myself Say. I Felt A Deep Shock, Hearing Myself Say That, Because The Minute I Said It, I Knew It Was True.

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

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

I Suppose If I Gave Myself The Chance I Could Be An Alcoholic.

The Silence Depressed Me. It Wasn't The Silence Of Silence. It Was My Own Silence.

I Think I May Well Be A Jew.

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Self Questioning

Now I Am Silent, Hate Up To My Neck, Thick, Thick. I Do Not Speak.

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 Silence Drew Off, Baring The Pebbles And Shells And All The Tatty Wreckage Of My Life.

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

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The Frost Makes A Flower, The Dew Makes A Star.

I Am Afraid Of Getting Married. Spare Me From Cooking Three Meals A Dayspare Me From The Relentless Cage Of Routine And Rote.

The Trouble Was, I Had Been Inadequate All Along, I Simply Hadn't Thought About It.

The Moon Has Nothing To Be Sad About, Staring From Her Hood Of Bone. She Is Used To This Sort Of Thing. Her Blacks Crackle And Drag.

I Don't See What Women See In Other Women," I'd Told Doctor Nolan In My Interview That Noon. "what Does A Woman See In A Woman That She Can't See In A Man?" Doctor Nolan Paused. Then She Said, "tenderness.

Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness. I Look Down Into The Warm, Earthy World. Into A Nest Of Lovers' Beds, Baby Cribs, Meal Tables, All The Solid Commerce Of Life In This Earth, And Feel Apart, Enclosed In A Wall Of Glass.

I Am Too Pure For You Or Anyone.

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Read Widely Of Others' Experiences, Even If It'd Be More Comfortable To Snuggle Back In The Comforting Cotton-wool Of Blissful Ignorance.

I Was Supposed To Be Having The Time Of My Life.

Time Of My Life

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

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Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

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I Must Not Be Selfless: Develop A Sense Of Self. A Solidness That Can't Be Attacked.

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There Is No Life Higher Than The Grasstops

I Can't Think Logically About Who I Am Or Where I Am Going. I Have Been Very Ecstatic, Horribly Depressed, Shocked, Elated, Enlightened, And Enervated.

Do We Always Grind Through The Present, Doomed To Throw A Gold Haze Of Fond Retrospect Over The Past?

I Can't Deceive Myself Out Of The Bare Stark Realization That No Matter How Enthusiastic You Are, No Matter How Sure That Character Is Fate, Nothing Is Real, Past Or Future, When You Are Alone In Your Room With The Clock Ticking Loudly Into The False Cheerful Brilliance Of The Electric Light. And If You Have No Past Or Future Which, After All, Is All That The Present Is Made Of, Why Then You May As Well Dispose Of The Empty Shell Of Present And Commit Suicide.

I Want To Force Myself Again And Again To Leave The Warmth And Security Of Static Situations And Move Into The World Of Growth And Suffering Where The Real Books Are People's Minds And Souls.

We Know A Thing By Its Opposite Corollary; Hot By Having Experienced Cold; Good By Having Decided What Is Bad; Love By Hate.

If Doctor Nolan Asked Me For The Matches, I Would Say That I'd Thought They Were Made Of Candy And Had Eaten Them.

Winter Dawn Is The Color Of Metal, The Trees Stiffen Into Place Like Burnt Nerves.

I Felt Very Still And Empty, The Way The Eye Of A Tornado Must Feel, Moving Dully Along In The Middle Of The Surrounding Hullabaloo.

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.

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

I Am Made, Crudely, For Success.

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