Profane Exegesis: My Day In The Life Of Sylvia Plath

Profane Exegesis: My Day In The Life of Sylvia Plath Robert K Hogg Here’s a good one: During a dream, by which I mean only the other day, I found I couldn’t switch the light on, which baffled me. There was someone there with me, I don’t know who. Perhaps he was my surrogate version of the character in the Waking Life movie. But it was an anxiety dream. I assumed my electric had been cut off. I still have the bill to pay (Drama? You got it). And even within the dream, if obscurely, I had the conviction it might be an 'omen' of some kind, or a warning. One that said, this is a glimpse of your trivial future, and you screwed up paying your bill. But then I noticed the electronic clock of the video-recorder – that in real life doesn’t work – shining in the darkness.... Whatever the hell that means. But time could represent the way it preoccupies us, weighs on us, like gravity, tying our thoughts down, to thoughts of death, feeling we're trapped in the mire, stuck in the here and now – and not in a good, fun, spanky way – that the battle was lost before it's begun. A symbol of the dangers of future, potential demoralisation. I'm out of similes now. Nothing like looking on Mr Brightside. There's a taste in my mouth, and it's no taste at all. At worst, I’ll keep an eye on the cash so as not to be careless, just in case. That’s reminded me of a quite recent weird episode with money, but I can barely be arsed describing it, so I won’t, but might come back to it if I remember. Last night just before I went to bed, I had the impulse to take down The journals of Sylvia Plath from the shelf. No biggie (though it’s a large volume!). When I think of her, the first thing that comes to mind is her attractiveness and intelligence and the waste of her suicide; but that was up to her. I noticed the stuck up bint across the street, sorry – mother's – voice sounded oddly Plathlike. She (Plath, not the mother: though to think on it, there isn't a million miles between them in their outlook; at least Plath knew she was preoccupied with thoughts of death, but these people are dissociation par excellence) – came to remind me of Lynn and her death fixation. I well remember Lynn remarking on it when she – Plath – was featured in an O.U. prog on female writers. I watched it a couple of times. One of the Brontes was also featured I think, as well as the poet, Christina Rossetti. I have a small volume of hers... supporting the wafer thin Simpson's poster on my bedroom window. (One afternoon it was warping in the sun and sliding off and it was beginning to freak me out until I realized what the weird scratching sound was). It crossed my mind to stick the big Plath book on the windowsill in my no doubt vain quest to educate and inform the mindless masses in the form of her younger alter-ego's – Walter Ego – the silly little bitches across the street, who watch everything I do. At the moment, I also have a cheap novel I picked up, titled The Earth, My

Butt, and Other Big ROUND Things. But I would. That and the Simpson's poster featuring tens of characters in the series – a kind of eccentric group portrait, and also the old Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray large format volume on Bowie. I had it years ago, but these get nicked or lost in the morass of the prime narst ex. Same thing. All pearls before swine of course, but Bowie features in the next episode of this new history of rock on BBC 2, along with Pink Floyd, Roxy Music and others, though I fail to see the direct connection with Floyd. I suppose it must be the Sixties connection. He – Bowie – did do a cover of Floyd's See Emily Play, on Pin-ups. I was listening to Floyd’s Relics at the time of Ziggy Stardust in ’72. The first in the series was on Hendrix and it was interesting to hear how he “blew Clapton off the stage”. Poor Eric, conceited, humourless, arrogant tyke that he is. I’ve always had that impression. It must've been a mortifying experience for him, but that's the sporadic nature of artistic gifts for you. My dad once saw him bawling out some girlfriend in Turnberry hotel by the lift. sense. Maybe she was crazymakuing gold-digger, and it was his artistic temperament. Anyhoo, not to be sidetracked any more, I opened the Plath volume at random and read (154), “November 3 – God, if I ever have come close to wanting to commit suicide, it is now, with the groggy sleepless blood dragging through my veins, and the air thick and grey with rain and the damn little men across the street pounding on the roof with picks and axes and chisels, and the acrid hellish stench of tar. I fell into bed again this morning, begging for sleep, withdrawing into the dark, warm, fetid escape from any action, from responsibility. No good. The mail bell rang and I jerked myself up to answer it. A letter from Dick. Sick with envy, I read it, thinking of him lying up there, rested, fed, taken care of, free to explore his books and thoughts at any whim. I thought of the myriad of physical duties I had to perform: write Prouty; write up Press Board; call Marcia. The list mounted, obstacle after fiendish obstacle, they jarred, they leered, they fell apart in chaos, and the revulsion, the desire to end the pointless round of objects, of things, of actions, rose higher. To annihilate the world by the annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism. The simple way out of all the little brick dead ends we scratch our nails against. Irony it is to see Dick raised, lifted to the pinnacles of irresponsibility to anything but care of his body – to feel his mind soaring, reaching, and mine caged, crying, impotent, self-reviling, an imposter. How to justify myself, my bold, brave humanitarian faith? My world falls apart, crumbles, “The centre does not hold.” There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge to self-preservation.” Cheerful, huh? She’s interesting to read. She certainly has a naturally dramatic way with language, but it lacks exuberance – to say the least. “The damn little men across the street”... sounds almost like harassment from gangstalkers of the time. Look it up. And her abhorrence of the demands of life, of time – probably the world, to escape everything, sounds like one of Ballard's short stories. It sounds like – comes across like – she was desperate for meaning

but didn’t know where to find it. This is confirmed later, when she mentions the possibility of finding a psychiatrist then dismisses the idea; and I have to respect her for that as most of them surely don’t know shit, though I’m sure they’ll think they have my number; but 'you ain’t heard nothin’ yet'. I used to feel a vague dislike of her hubby, the poet Ted Hughes, no doubt stemming from an element of jealousy, but also the thought he may have failed her. I pictured him absorbed in his work and desire for literary greatness, fame – and she does remark on it, and it may well be significant, but the truth is I don’t know enough about the relationship, or her personality. And she may well been just as ambitious. I watch the occasional documentary on these literary figures, then forget them almost as soon as I've seen. It's a talent. I only got just over 100 pages into the journals before I let myself be distracted; though I did spend £20 a while back on a bunch of books on the two of them, but didn’t even begin them. I tend to forget my own motivations; that and there is so much to look into and keep up with. My life is a never ending cycle of floundering in reading material. I’m overwhelmed by it. I have enough books to keep me going for twenty years even if I never buy another. You could start a bookshop the pragmatic-minded say. As if I bought them for some lossmaking future business. One buys books for curiosity and the stimulation of ideas, and ideally, in my case, to recycle what I’ve learned from them in the form of more ideas, preferably with an added dimension of interest. Ideally. But I write only of what I find of interest myself, in any case, often of necessity. Seems to me it’s the only way to be. Yes, I can indulge myself in some more conventionally bookish novel of ideas. and being ruthless with my emotions, and demonstrate my versatility in various genres - and I may not, vis a vis Henry Miller, but when all is done and said and done, what is a novel or any writing at all, but a reflection of the thought-system of the author and how they interpret the world and existence? There's also the question of experience, and Colin Wilson writes about this in his letters to Henry Miller. He says – in the intro – that had to skip vast sections, as he found Miller’s long descriptions of his friends and acquaintances boring. Or is just that he, CW, doesn’t have the same interest in them, or people in general, preferring to get his ideas from books? Then again he's remarked on others not being genuinely interested on people. So maybe it's simply a case that Wilson's friends and mind are far more interesting to him than Henry Miller's. Or how he chooses to write about them. The perennial question; and problem. He has solved it, or believes he has, through emphasising the importance of ideas and the mind. He’s right of course. But what is also apparent, to me at least, is he would never have invested the time and effort on certain people as some of us do. True, it was as good as thrown in my face with murderous-minded interest, but it gave me an insight into a way of being in the world that was almost foreign to me, though I shared the same fear, only expressing it differently. I believe Wilson is no different form the rest of us in that sense, and as with the rest of us it comes down to the matter of forgiveness. There’s a lot to write about in the world and about it, but the experience and belief in fear is only the converse of

unforgiveness and collecting grievances. And vice-versa. I think it’s a matter of compassion, and Philip K. Dick was more aware of the problem in his intuitively penetrating way, demonstrated in a novel such as Mary And The Giant, about a fearful and reticent girl – young woman – he meets while working in a record store. But perhaps he identified too closely with them. That would be as detrimental to him as to them; a case of false empathy, identifying with and reinforcing weakness. (Woman do the same with clever, manipulative, abusive partners and bo's who have no intention of changing their ways). I think there are millions of these women around, and dealing with them is anything but straightforward; it takes time. Not because time itself is the problem, but how they set up the situation. And if you're not a therapist getting paid by the hour for this and your allegiance is to being a productive and prolific writer, a la Colin Wilson, along with having to provide for and contribute to looking after a family, then economy of time is of the essence. CW 's novel The Personality Surgeon was very moving in its way as well as amusing; a psychological tour de force, as one come to expect from him. He always surprised. It's why I was so enamoured of him. But I can't say I put as much credence now, in his protagonist, Charlie Peruzzi's solutions to his patients problems. He just had them swapping one negative self for a supposedly [positive other. Maybe the idea is that the change in body image reflects a change in attitude and this will create a virtuous circle – a positive feedback loop – he's very keen on this kind of thinking, based on his studies of Maslow. But changing behaviour or one's self-image doesn't effect lasting change as it's only rearranging the internal furniture of the ego, where shifting perceptions of self and others abound.; lasting change comes from a decision made by the mind, the source of which, is outside of time and space. People are important not just because we want others to respond to us positively – which is really just a way of hoping to get what we want – but because others are the means through which we make our way back to God, through holding nothing against them, and through which we learn to hold nothing against ourselves. But on one level, he's accurate enough. It can be difficult to feel positive about others if you don't feel positive about yourself and they don't either. But ideas aren't objectively separate from people. There's no ivory tower or cave where one achieves enlightenment and other people are inconsequential. We're all a reflection of an idea – of the belief in separation from each other; as we're all projections of one another in any case, as the the world and the whole phenomenal universe; relationships take place only in the mind. We all react to thoughts as if they were concrete things. That only reinforces the point. And hiding away from the world only makes it more real to the mind. You wouldn't hide from or abhor it of you didn't think it was real.. But no one is under any obligation to fill their life with time-wasters and sociopaths. But I digress – yet again.