It's inspirational, in the sense that it talks about Sylvia Plath in the heyday of her youth, her guest-editorial-ship at Mademoiselle magazine, along with nineteen other aspiring young women--the dawn of a new generation, the last one before real feminism, before the Pill, as the book blithely points out.
But the book to me, a collection of letters, observations, samples of Plath's original, unconventional journal writing, her stark way of painting letters onto the page, is much more than just a generational snap shot of a long-gone New York, a bygone era. It's a calling to write again, to understand the practice is often the product.
I've been delinquent on the blog for a number of months now.
Life has crowded in, time seems to speed up and up to a faster rate with every passing day.
The days have a rhythm all their own, it often feels like my life is living me.
I read pulpy novels in between stumbling onto a good one like this, and I'm reminded to stay alert, awake, in my own life.
Often, I get home from work, 7:00, 7:30 pm, and just collapse. I reheat a dinner I've already made, I pour a glass of chardonnay, and I often stare at the tv, not even taking in what is on. It's all just 'there'.
Then I motivate myself to make my lunch for the next day and put away the dishes so I can wake up to a clean kitchen, one of my favourite things. And the next morning comes all too soon, and I do it all again, and I miss yoga due to the traffic and I stay at work until the sun is at eye-level, these long May days, and I ruminate about how I live. And I keep doing it, as we do, to some degree.
One of the chapters in the Pain, Parties, and Work was in the form of a dictionary, all relating to Plath, each letter illustrating something of her life, a minutae. I loved this format.
I'm going to borrow it for my next post..
A snapshot of the last few months, what I've been up to, what's new, what's not.
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