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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?

-Sylvia Plath

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You Walked In, Laughing,

Sylvia Plath

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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?

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Aloneness And Selfness Are Too Important To Betray For Company.

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me; All Day I Feel Its Soft, Feathery Turnings, Its Malignity.

My Worst Habit Is My Fear & My Destructive Rationalizing.

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

I Deserve That, Don't I, Some Sort Of Blazing Love That I Can Live With.

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

I Am Flushed And Warm. I Think I May Be Enormous, I Am So Stupidly Happy, My Wellingtons Squelching And Squelching Through The Beautiful Red.

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

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

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

It Never Occurred To Me To Say No.

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

Eternity Bores Me, I Never Wanted It.

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

She Stared At Her Reflection In The Glossed Shop Windows As If To Make Sure, Moment By Moment, That She Continued To Exist.

I Keep Wanting To Crawl Back Into The Womb.

I Find Myself Absolutely Fulfilled When I Have Written A Poem, When I'm Writing One. Having Written One, Then You Fall Away Very Rapidly From Having Been A Poet To Becoming A Sort Of Poet In Rest, Which Isn't The Same Thing At All. But I Think The Actual Experience Of Writing A Poem Is A Magnificent One.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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?

There Must Be Quite A Few Things That A Hot Bath Won't Cure, But I Don't Know Many Of Them.

A Bad Dream.to The Person In The Bell Jar, Blank And Stopped As A Dead Baby, The World Itself Is The Bad Dream.a Bad Dream.i Remembered Everything.i Remembered The Cadavers And Doreen And The Story Of The Fig-tree And Marco's Diamond And The Sailor On The Common And Doctor Gordon's Wall-eyed Nurse And The Broken Thermometers And The Negro With His Two Kinds Of Beans And The Twenty Pounds I Gained On Insulin And The Rock That Bulged Between Sky And Sea Like A Grey Skull.maybe Forgetfulness, Like A Kind Snow, Should Numb And Cover Them.but They Were Part Of Me. They Were My Landscape

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

I Must Learn More About These People―try To Understand Them, Put Myself In Their Place. No, Instead I Am So Busy Keeping My Head Above Water That I Scarcely Know Who I Am, Much Less Who Anyone Else Is.

The Night Sky Is Only A Sort Of Carbon Paper, Blueblack, With The Much-poked Periods Of Stars Letting In The Light, Peephole After Peephole--- A Bonewhite Light, Like Death, Behind All Things.

One Thing, I Try To Be Honest. And What Is Revealed Is Often Rather Hideously Unflattering.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

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.

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.

Is To Throw Together Events From My Own Life, Fictionalizing To Add Color—it’s A Pot Boiler Really, But I Think It Will Show How Isolated A Person Feels When He Is Suffering A Breakdown . . . I’ve Tried To Picture My World And The People In It As Seen Through The Distorting Lens Of A Bell Jar.

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.

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

Time Of My Life

I Felt Dumb And Subdued. Every Time I Tried To Concentrate, My Mind Glided Off, Like A Skater, Into A Large Empty Space, And Pirouetted There, Absently.

…'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.

Then I Decided I Would Spend The Summer Writing A Novel. That Would Fix A Lot Of People.

Doreen Had Intuition. Everything She Said Was Like A Secret Voice Speaking Straight Out Of My Own Bones.

I Had Been Alone More Than I Could Have Been Had I Gone By Myself.

Could Have Been

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

I Must Say That I Am Not Very Genteel And I Feel That Gentility Has A Stranglehold: The Neatness, The Wonderful Tidiness, Which Is So Evident Everywhere In England Is Perhaps More Dangerous Than It Would Appear On The Surface.

If I Rest, If I Think Inward, I Go Mad.

Life Was Not To Be Sitting In Hot Amorphic Leisure In My Backyard Idly Writing Or Not Writing, As The Spirit Moved Me. It Was, Instead, Running Madly, In A Crowded Schedule, In A Squirrel Cage Of Busy People. Working, Living, Dancing, Dreaming, Talking, Kissing- Singing, Laughing, Learning.

When They Asked Some Old Roman Philosopher Or Other How He Wanted To Die, He Said He Would Open His Veins In A Warm Bath. I Thought It Would Be Easy, Lying In The Tup And Seeing The Redness Flower From My Wrists, Flush After Flush Through The Clear Water, Till I Sank Into Sleep Under A Surface Gaudy As Poppies.

Opinions Are Like Orgasms...mine Matters Most And I Really Don't Care If You Have One.

I Felt My Lungs Inflate With The Onrush Of Scenery—air, Mountains, Trees, People. I Thought, "this Is What It Is To Be Happy.

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Eyes And All Is Born Again.

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.

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

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

Sometimes I Feel So Stupid And Dull And Uncreative That I Am Amazed When People Tell Me Differently.

I Love The People,' I Said. 'i Have Room In Me For Love, And For Ever So Many Little Lives.

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

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

I Am Afraid. I Am Not Solid, But Hollow. I Feel Behind My Eyes A Numb, Paralyzed Cavern, A Pit Of Hell, A Mimicking Nothingness.

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.

There Is Something Demoralizing About Watching Two People Get More And More Crazy About Each Other, Especially When You Are The Only Extra Person In The Room. It's Like Watching Paris From An Express Caboose Heading In The Opposite Direction--every Second The City Gets Smaller And Smaller, Only You Feel It's Really You Getting Smaller And Smaller And Lonelier And Lonelier, Rushing Away From All Those Lights And Excitement At About A Million Miles An Hour.

I'm About Fifty Years Behind As Far As My Preferences Go And I Must Say That The Poets Who Excite Me Most Are The Americans. There Are Very Few Contemporary English Poets That I Admire.

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.

If I Didn’t Think, I’d Be Much Happier.

My Life Is A Discipline, A Prison: I Live For My Own Work, Without Which I Am Nothing.

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 Think I May Well Be A Jew.

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid.

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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

The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

Every Day Is Precious And I Feel Infinitely Sad At This Time Melting Away From Me.

The Sun Gives You Ulcers, The Wind Gives You T.b. Once You Were Beautiful.

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

I Liked Looking On At Other People In Crucial Situations. If There Was A Road Accident Or A Street Fight Or A Baby Pickled In A Laboratory Jar For Me To Look At, I'd Stop And Look So Hard I Never Forgot It.

You Have Lost All Delight In Life. Ahead Is A Large Array Of Blind Alleys. You Are Half-deliberately, Half-desperately Cutting Off Your Grip On Creative Life. You Are Becoming A Neuter Machine. You Cannot Love, Even If You Knew How To Begin To Love. Every Thought Is A Devil, A Hell-if You Could Do A Lot Of Things Over Again, Ah, How Differently You Would Do Them! You Want To Go Home, Back To The Womb. You Watch The World Bang Door After Door In Your Face, Numbly, Bitterly. You Have Forgotten The Secret You Knew, Once, Ah, Once, Of Being Joyous, Of Laughing, Of Opening Doors.

Stars Open Among The Lilies. Are You Not Blinded By Such Expressionless Sirens? This Is The Silence Of Astounded Souls.

Because Wherever I Sat—on The Deck Of A Ship Or At A Street Café In Paris Or Bangkok—i Would Be Sitting Under The Same Glass Bell Jar, Stewing In My Own Sour Air.

You Are A Dream; I Hope I Never Meet You.

What I Didn't Say Was That Each Time I Picked Up A German Dictionary Or A German Book, The Very Sight Of Those Dense, Black, Barbed-wire Letters Made My Mind Shut Like A Clam.

It's A Hell Of A Responsibility To Be Yourself. It's Much Easier To Be Somebody Else Or Nobody At All.

I Ride Earth's Burning Carousel. Day In, Day Out.

I Always Was Interested In Prose. As A Teenager, I Published Short Stories. And I Always Wanted To Write The Long Short Story, I Wanted To Write A Novel. Now That I Have Attained, Shall I Say, A Respectable Age, And Have Had Experiences, I Feel Much More Interested In Prose, In The Novel. I Feel That In A Novel, For Example, You Can Get In Toothbrushes And All The Paraphernalia That One Finds In Dally Life, And I Find This More Difficult In Poetry.

And I, Love, Am A Pathological Liar.

Pathological Liar

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

If You Love Her", I Said, "you'll Love Somebody Else Someday.

I Collected Men With Interesting Names. I Already Knew A Socrates. He Was Tall And Ugly And Intellectual And The Son Of Some Big Greek Movie Producer In Hollywood, But Also A Catholic, Which Ruined It For Both Of Us.

No, I Won't Try To Escape Myself By Losing Myself In Artificial Chatter 'did You Have A Nice Vacation?' 'oh, Yes, And You?' I'll Stay Here And Try To Pin That Loneliness Down.

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.

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

I Can't Be Satisfied With The Colossal Job Of Merely Living.

The One Man In The Room Who Was As Big As His Poems, Huge, With Hulk And Dynamic Chunks Of Words.

A Little Thing, Like Children Putting Flowers In My Hair, Can Fill Up The Widening Cracks In My Self-assurance Like Soothing Lanolin.

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To.

But I Wasn't Sure. I Wasn't Sure At All. How Did I Know That Someday―at College, In Europe, Somewhere, Anywhere―the Bell Jar, With Its Stifling Distortions, Wouldn't Descend Again?

Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

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.

I Want To Be Important. By Being Different. And These Girls Are All The Same.

Being Different

Oh, Something Is There, Waiting For Me. Perhaps Someday The Revelation Will Burst In Upon Me And I Will See The Other Side Of This Monumental Grotesque Joke. And Then I'll Laugh. And Then I'll Know What Life Is.

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 Have Let Things Slip, A Thirty-year~old Cargo Boat Stubbornly Hanging On To My Name And Address.

I Thought The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow, The Million Moving Shapes And Cul-de-sacs Of Shadow. There Was Shadow In Bureau Drawers And Closets And Suitcases, And Shadow Under Houses And Trees And Stones, And Shadow At The Back Of People's Eyes And Smiles, And Shadow, Miles And Miles And Miles Of It, On The Night Side Of The Earth.

... 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 Do Feel That Now And I Feel That This Development Of Recording Poems, Of Speaking Poems At Readings, Of Having Records Of Poets, I Think This Is A Wonderful Thing. I'm Very Excited By It. In A Sense, There's A Return, Isn't There, To The Old Role Of The Poet, Which Was To Speak To A Group Of People, To Come Across.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

Sometimes I Nursed Starfish Alive In Jam Jars Of Seawater And Watched Them Grow Back Lost Arms. On This Day, This Awful Birthday Of Otherness, My Rival, Somebody Else, I Flung The Starfish Against A Stone. Let It Perish.

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?

If The Moon Smiled, She Would Resemble You. You Leave The Same Impression Of Something Beautiful, But Annihilating.

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.

I Am Still Raw. I Say I May Be Back. You Know What Lies Are For. Even In Your Zen Heaven We Shan't Meet.

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

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.

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

How Frail The Human Heart Must Be - A Mirrored Pool Of Thought.

I Could Never Be A Complete Scholar Or A Complete Housewife Ora Completewriter: Imustcombinea Little Of All, And Thereby Be Imperfect In All.

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

Life Has Been Some Combination Of Fairy-tale Coincidence And Joie De Vivre And Shocks Of Beauty Together With Some Hurtful Self-questioning.

Self Questioning

I Want, I Think, To Be Omniscient. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself "the Girl Who Wanted To Be God." Yet If I Were Not In This Body Where Would I Be-perhaps I Am Destined To Be Classified And Qualified. But, Oh, I Cry Out Against It.

I Want To Write Because I Have The Urge To Excel In One Medium Of Translation And Expression Of Life. I Can't Be Satisfied With The Colossal Job Of Merely Living. Oh, No, I Must Order Life In Sonnets And Sestinas And Provide A Verbal Reflector For My 60-watt Lighted Head.

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.

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.

Every Woman Adores A Fascist, The Boot In The Face, The Brute Brute Heart Of A Brute Like You.

If You Expect Nothing From Anybody, You’re Never Disappointed.

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

Shocking Things

O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

Tomorrow I Will Curse The Dawn, But There Will Be Other, Earlier Nights, And The Dawns Will Be No Longer Hell Laid Out In Alarms And Raw Bells And Sirens.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

I Feel, Am Mad As Any Writer Must In One Way Be; Why Not Make It Real? I Am Too Close To The Bourgeois Society Of Suburbia: Too Close To People I Know I Must Sever My Self From Them, Or Be A Part Of Their World: This Half And Half Compromise Is Intolerable.

I Must Be Lean & Write & Make Worlds Beside This To Live In.

I Never Feel So Much Myself As When I'm In A Hot Bath.

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

A Living Doll, Everywhere You Look. It Can Sew, It Can Cook, It Can Talk, Talk, Talk. . . . My Boy, It's Your Last Resort. Will You Marry It, Marry It, Marry It.

I’d Discovered, After A Lot Of Extreme Apprehension About What Spoons To Use, That If You Do Something Incorrect At Table With A Certain Arrogance, As If You Knew Perfectly Well You Were Doing It Properly, You Can Get Away With It And Nobody Will Think You Are Bad-mannered Or Poorly Brought Up. They Will Think You Are Original And Very Witty.

I Like People Too Much Or Not At All.

Yes, My Consuming Desire Is To Mingle With Road Crews, Sailors And Soldiers, Barroom Regulars - To Be A Part Of A Scene, Anonymous, Listening, Recording - All This Is Spoiled By The Fact That I Am A Girl, A Female Always Supposedly In Danger Of Assault And Battery. My Consuming Interest In Men And Their Lives Is Often Misconstrued As A Desire To Seduce Them, Or As An Invitation To Intimacy. Yes, God, I Want To Talk To Everybody As Deeply As I Can. I Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

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.

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

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

Intoxicated With Madness, I'm In Love With My Sadness

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.

Perhaps When We Find Ourselves Wanting Everything, It Is Because We Are Dangerously Close To Wanting Nothing.

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

Character Is Fate.

Death May Whiten In Sun Or Out Of It.

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

I Know The Bottom, She Says. I Know It With My Great Tap Root: It Is What You Fear. I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

I Inhabit The Wax Image Of Myself, A Doll's Body. Sickness Begins Here; I Am A Dartboard For Witches.

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.

So Many People Are Shut Up Tight Inside Themselves Like Boxes, Yet They Would Open Up, Unfolding Quite Wonderfully, If Only You Were Interested In Them.

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.

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.

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

You Cannot Regard Your Own Life With Objective Curiosity All The Time.

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.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

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

That Afternoon My Mother Had Brought Me The Roses. "save Them For My Funeral," I'd Said.

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.

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.

Winter Is For Women The Woman Still At Her Knitting, At The Cradle Of Spanish Walnut, Her Body A Bulb In The Cold And Too Dumb To Think.

Do I Like To Write? Why? About What? Will I Give Up And Say, "living And Feeding A Man's Insatiable Guts And Begetting Children Occupies My Whole Life. Don't Have Time To Write"?

And What Is Happy? It Is A Going Always On. There Is Something Better To Be Done Than I Have Done, And Spurred By The Fair Delusion Of Progress, I Will Seek To Progress, To Whip Myself On, To More And More- To Learning. Always.

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

I Thought How Strange It Had Never Occurred To Me Before That I Was Only Purely Happy Until I Was Nine Years Old.

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 Couldn’t See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

In This Particular Tub, Two Knees Jut Up Like Icebergs, While Minute Brown Hairs Rise On Arms And Legs In A Fringe Of Kelp; Green Soap Navigates The Tidal Slosh Of Seas Breaking On Legendary Beaches; In Faith We Shall Board Our Imagined Ship And Wildly Sail Among Sacred Islands Of The Mad Till Death Shatters The Fabulous Stars And Makes Us Real.

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

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defenseless That I Couldn't Do It.

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.

I Have The One Person I Could Ever Love In This World. Now I Must Work To Be A Person Worthy Of That.

We Should Meet In Another Life, We Should Meet In Air, Me And You.

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.

Ash, Ash —- You Poke And Stir. Flesh, Bone, There Is Nothing There—— A Cake Of Soap, A Wedding Ring, A Gold Filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out Of The Ash I Rise With My Red Hair And I Eat Men Like Air.

I Wanted To Be Where Nobody I Knew Could Ever Come.

I Began To Think Vodka Was My Drink At Last. It Didn’t Taste Like Anything, But It Went Straight Down Into My Stomach Like A Sword Swallowers’ Sword And Made Me Feel Powerful And Godlike.

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

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

Kiss Me And You Will See How Important I Am.

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

The Body Is Amazingly Stubborn When It Comes To Sacrificing Itself To The Annihilating Directions Of The Mind.

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

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

…* 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.

There Is A Charge For The Eyeing Of My Scars, There Is A Charge For The Hearing Of My Heart - It Really Goes. And There Is A Charge, A Very Large Charge, For A Word Or A Touch Or A Bit Of Blood Or A Piece Of My Hair Or My Clothes.

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

I Am Silver And Exact.i Have No Preconceptions.

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.

I Am Sure There Are Things That Can't Be Cured By A Good Bath But I Can't Think Of One.

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

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.

Can A Selfish Egocentric Jealous And Unimaginative Female Write A Damn Thing Worthwhile?

Not Easy To State The Change You Made. If I'm Alive Now, I Was Dead, Though, Like A Stone, Unbothered By It.

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

So, Now I Shall Talk Every Night. To Myself. To The Moon. I Shall Walk, As I Did Tonight, Jealous Of My Loneliness, In The Blue-silver Of The Cold Moon, Shining Brilliantly On The Drifts Of Fresh-fallen Snow, With The Myriad Sparkles. I Talk To Myself And Look At The Dark Trees, Blessedly Neutral. So Much Easier Than Facing People, Than Having To Look Happy, Invulnerable, Clever.

I Lean To You, Numb As A Fossil. Tell Me I'm Here.

I Am Solitary As Grass. What Is It I Miss? Shall I Ever Find It, Whatever It Is?

Even Amidst Fierce Flames The Golden Lotus Can Be Planted.

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.

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

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. I Can Never Train Myself In All The Skills I Want. And Why Do I Want? I Want To Live And Feel All The Shades, Tones And Variations Of Mental And Physical Experience Possible In Life. And I Am Horribly Limited.

Famous Inspirational

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."

Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing.

Your Body Hurts Me As The World Hurts God

I Wanted To Crawl In Between Those Black Lines Of Print, The Way You Crawl Through A Fence, And Go To Sleep Under That Beautiful Big Green Fig-tree.

I Have Been Holding A Dialogue With Myself And Girding Myself To Stand Fast Without Running.

I've Got To Have Something. I Want To Stop It All, The Whole Monumental Grotesque Joke, Before It's Too Late. But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

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Melissa Etheridge

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