Path to Plath

I am back in my own bed tonight...the first time in over a month. I have missed my room but have felt so apprehensive to return to it. I don't know why, perhaps I have enjoyed flat-sitting much more than I expected. On a completely different note, I am beginning to worry about my (mis)use of prepositions. Being out of education and work for a couple of years has made me feel the need to dumb myself down. It is very bizarre. All those years of education wasted merely because I choose to keep company and activities in the evenings and not during the day. Tell that to the student loans company...

Anyway, old habits die hard and not having a TV (I've been watching it like a maniac over the last month; a decade of TV abstinence well and truly broken), has made me read again. That's why I like this messy, filled with musical equipment and nothing practical room! It makes me read, create and make music! It's good to be back...

I have been reacquainting myself with Sylvia Plath this evening and in particular, her poetry. It sounds like a truly cliched thing to be doing but my love for confessional poets like Plath and Anne Sexton are equal to my love for music. I identify with their words greatly but I feel uneasy at feeling easy with their volatile and uncomfortable subject matter. After reading the thesis on female poets and mental health, 'I Bask In Dreams Of Suicide', I unwillingly have in the back of my mind that I fit this female poets suffer from gloom and doom stereotype. I usually only write and create when I am down and I am unsure why I don't feel the urge to put pen to paper when I am happy. Those thoughts are no less worthy from sad ones. Perhaps I find them harder to express.

However confessional writing is not for everyone and most people find it very hard to interact with. A friend recently sent me a message in regards to a photograph I had posted up on a blog: http://thequietriots.blogspot.com/2009/06/53-rhydypenau-road.html and said how he found it inconceivable that I could write so openly about such things. However for me, writing is the only way I can share a lot about myself whether it be imaginative, humorous, trivial or extremely personal. I find it very hard to do it through any other medium.

Anyway, I enjoyed the poem below this evening. 100% of the women I know think like this so that gives us a massive unity bond of MADNESS. Grrrl power and all that....

Mad Girl's Love Song
Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

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.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

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.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"