not my words
good morning, thursday.she greets you in great faith and hope of what you may hold for her. perhaps you will accept this tea-and-words offering and return to her the gift of confidence, fulfillment, and rest that comes from knowing her gifts were utilized, her work noticed, her aches purposeful.
though, my dear thursday, you have much to live up to after yestereve. when all the world finally hushed, she grabbed her book and ran her hot bath. she read and read and read and then she scooted into her comfies and crisp sheets and and then she wrote. she felt the brimming over with words, the extension of her mind manifested in pen to paper. she wondered bemusedly at 11 post meridian bringing her the most awake and alive time to her day.
everything else must quiet before she can be heard...
and then she read some more.
"It seems to me more than ever that I am a victim of introspection. If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen. I am possessive about time alone, more so now that my working hours are not spent studying for myself, but dancing attendance to a family. Here I am in the midst of a rich, versatile family, as close as I could get...Yet so constantly am I moving, working, acting, that I do not often think "How strange this is ...I am competently frying eggs for three children on Sunday morning while the parents sleep. 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..." (76).
"...and yet does it not all come again to the fact that it is a man's world? For if a man chooses to be promiscuous, he may still aesthetically turn up his nose at promiscuity. He may still demand a woman be faithful to him, to save him from his own lust. But women have lust, too. Why should they be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, feeder of soul, body, and pride of man?
Being born a woman is my awful tragedy.
From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought, and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always 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..." (77).
From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought, and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable femininity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always 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..." (77).
though these words are the words of an 18-year-old Sylvia Plath...and are not her words, she absorbs them into her being, fully entrenching her soul in this truth:
she is not alone
on the path
to find a life worthy of living, of deep introspection, of abiding affection
not just to others,
but indeed...to self.
her tea and heart need warming - off to tend to both,
~crm
6 comments:
As I began to read the first quote I knew that it was Sylvia Plath's words, but I felt that they belonged to you more than anyone.
I am so thankful for the moments of peace that you find, the moments where your soul can stop questioning and just be present.
i dont think it ever stops questioning, but at least i can hear it finally, you know?
and I KNOW! i have been so moved - and while I can NEVER write like she does, I often feel she has captured my own words.
(to an extent. i mean i have explain that i am not entertaining any dilusions of grandeur or insanely becoming SP. just in case you thought i was going to end my life...b/c my counselor was "worried" when i explained how attached i was to SP journals. oh lame.)
Also.
BOOM.
brilliant. all of it. wholly, overwhelmingly brilliant. it only makes sense that it's hard to put into words how brilliant it is. words that bring us to a point of wordlessness. what power.
introversion is such a blessingcurse...not something to be overcome, but something to be understood, so that i know how to best tend to myself. things get more complicated when i, an introvert, find myself in love with another - how to let him in? how to let him learn to tend to me and have the same patience with his learning as i have had to have with my own?
oh. it's almost too much.
damn. i think i'm going to have to splurge for SP's journals. but i'm sensitive to copycatting so i may wait awhile. she is very meaningful to you in these days and it is a wonderful thing to behold.
and i suppose it is not only the words themselves that make us speechless, but the soul's expression behind them...even so, the words are tremendous too.
sweet and sensational SHE-
reading the same book at the same time? HARDLY COPYCATing. Do it.- it will oh so enrich my experience.
your point about introversion makes me wonder about the impatience i have with people who dont seem to get me...that i have had 30 years to tolerate myself (and learn to love), and how could i expect that those who have known me any less amount of time wouldn't be baffled at least occasionally.
This is wonderlovely. Question for you: Do you ever experience times when you can abstractly relate yourself to someone and dive into their life right there with them, still knowing that your safety net is in the fact that you can be both with them in that moment and a self outside of them simultaneously?
That may not make sense. Prefacing it: I have seen this about myself recently. My desire to not be selfish and actually feel and care about other people is sometimes inhibited by my desire to not be really known by them. Thus I just act a chemeleon and don't really know them. It has been pointed out to me that this is more selfish, because when they are being vulnerable with me, I in turn am shutting off my self and turning on my perceived self...
I am hesitant about this.
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