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Yes, I Was Infatuated With You: I Am Still. No One Has Ever Heightened Such A Keen Capacity Of Physical Sensation In Me. I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy. Before I Give My Body, I Must Give My Thoughts, My Mind, My Dreams. And You Weren't Having Any Of Those.

-Sylvia Plath

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Yes, I Was Infatuated

Sylvia Plath

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Yes, I Was Infatuated With You: I Am Still. No One Has Ever Heightened Such A Keen Capacity Of Physical Sensation In Me. I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy. Before I Give My Body, I Must Give My Thoughts, My Mind, My Dreams. And You Weren't Having Any Of Those.

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I Thought The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow.

How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many Strange People, Oh You Strange Girl?

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

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

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

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

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Very Depressed Today. Unable To Write A Thing. Menacing Gods. I Feel Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness.

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

But They Know. They All Know. And What Am I Against So Many…?

Why The Hell Are We Conditioned Into The Smooth Strawberry-and-cream Mother-goose-world, Alice-in-wonderland Fable, Only To Be Broken On The Wheel As We Grow Older And Become Aware Of Ourselves As Individuals With A Dull Responsibility In Life?

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

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.

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 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.

The Constant Struggle In Mature Life, I Think, Is To Accept The Necessity Of Tragedy And Conflict, And Not To Try To Escape To Some Falsely Simple Solution Which Does Not Include These More Somber Complexities.

There Is A Certain Clinical Satisfaction In Seeing Just How Bad Things Can Get.

Masks Are The Order Of The Day - And The Least I Can Do Is Cultivate The Illusion That I Am Gay, Serene, Not Hollow And Afraid.

I Tried To Speak In A Cool, Calm Way, But The Zombie Rose Up In My Throat And Choked Me Off.

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.

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.

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

At This Rate, I'd Be Lucky If I Wrote A Page A Day. Then I Knew What The Problem Was. I Needed Experience. How Could I Write About Life When I'd Never Had A Love Affair Or A Baby Or Even Seen Anybody Die? A Girl I Knew Had Just Won A Prize For A Short Story About Her Adventures Among The Pygmies In Africa. How Could I Compete With That Sort Of Thing?

…'it Always Has To End, Doesn't It? We Always Have To Separate.' 'yes,' I Said. He Was Insistent, 'but It Doesn't Always Have To Be That Way. We Could Be Together Some Day For Always.' 'oh, No,' I Told Him, Wondering If He Knew It Was All Over. 'we Keep Running Till We Die. We Separate, Get Further Apart, Till We Are Dead.

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Charles M. Schwab

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