Profane Exegesis: My Day In The Life of Sylvia Plath: 2

…It crosses my mind also, that Sylvia Plath may well have been a whole lot
happier if she could have followed her own inclinations more, rather than
feeling she was over-obligated to various other projects and demands on her
time, which is, admittedly, what our lives are made up of, if only on the face of
it, but she wasn’t to know that it seems – though I could be wrong. I spend far
too much time not getting it together as an 'artist', during which I’m spending
the time on writing. I’ve never really 'got it together' as an artist; proficient and
even prolific as I can be over periods of time.
Part of the problem for me, not least an obsession with ideas, was in
applying this speculative or analytical predilection to relationships. Patterns
were beginning to be discerned as were my deeper motivations beyond the
usual male drive for sex, ever alert to the possibility of bedding any attractive
woman if it was there or seemed to be there. Of course, I got the types where it
was there, just not with me as often as not, as my more altruistic qualities came
to the fore and I was relegated to a sort of belated Parsifal-like pedestal – then
under one, as much in an unspoken, covert way, while they carried on their
relationship/s with their significant and less significant others while I was
supposed to wither and shrivel in frustration, literally and metaphorically;
emotionally, and physically.
Eventually you have to come to the realisation that love is in you and not
something some else can give or withhold, as with sex. And anyway, there are
other things to think about. Easier said than done, sometimes. My keenness –
as much 'blasé', would be anathema to relatively experienced and intelligent,
but sensitive women, who liked me more than I realised or acknowledged to
myself as I would be drawn into the seductive trap, which – 'worldly-wise' – as
with most things that reflects the worlds thought-system, would be offered only
to be taken away. A more descriptive way of describing subconsciously or
overtly 'man hating cock teasing bitches'... cagey coquettes. But then they
could see me as a pussy-chasing male whore if they so chose. The 'male whore'
part was Lynn's analogy as I recall. Not about me, she meant it rhetoricaly.
It was all in the eye of the beholder. (A matter of interpretation, and
sometimes all is not as it seems. You can write that down if you like). And
how we choose to perceive ourselves also. It seems a very odd dichotomy in
the male psyche that we see ourselves as being literally unaffected by sex –
regardless of how many women we might sleep with if we’re lucky, not to
mention we’ll sleep with just about anything for the frisson of sex, often little to
do with the person themselves – and yet are intent on seeing a woman – if we
'like' her, as having thrown herself away if she 'fucks' anyone other than
ourselves. You explain it. They of course, are well capable of dismissing any
dalliances on our part as long as it was only sexual, whereas for blokes, with
their – or our – view of sex as the be all and end all of life, feel that “a day
without sex is a day wasted” (I'm paraphrasing from a TV show I saw years
ago, I'm not saying I agree with any of this or believe it.) as well as being
grounds for murder – which we do in the name of 'love'.

Many women of course, think like men and have almost as extreme a
reaction. The problem is that sex is seen as or mistaken for intimacy, real
joining; but it’s only physical closeness. Genuine intimacy is of the mind. I
could tell myself that - as I speculated somewhat masochistically and with
prurience aforethought over their sexual encounters rather than getting on with
with any of my own. That and indulge in the occasional 'sullen wank' – to use
Martin Amis' choice phrase in Success. Jesus I’m not. And far from any saint.
What I needed was to balance my emotions, and learn to be more selfish. And
intimacy could hardly be genuine if it also involved being seen as a doormat,
the recipient of their need to express their hatred through me while they hid
behind bo's and acquaintances, expressed in a different way, but equal in
hatred all the same That was the problem in a nutshell. There was never really
any 'happy medium' for them. It was all extremes, polarized,
compartmentalized. Like screwed up porn 'actresses.' This one for sex, that
one for conversation and 'intimacy'. But they were incapable of it on any level.
It was all hatred in one form or the other. Special 'love' for one, special hate for
me, and no doubt some reversals of the roles, metaphorically speaking; but nor
always. And I would feel uncomfortable with it, but could never quite fathom
the situation and find the clarity I needed to articulate it to myself.

Maybe I was enjoying myself too much. That I'd think about it, come to
grips with it, at some increasingly vague point in the future. I had been going to
say I can at least understand that as 'friends', emotionally intimate
acquaintances, this negated any ambiguity they’d have felt if we had been
lovers physically. That it demonstrated my 'appreciation' for them as persons.
And this is what they wanted and needed. But the problem was as much that
they would often compromise it themselves by leading me on – apparent to any
good therapist perhaps, but it was all news to me as I was making the mistake
of seeing them as emotional equals, which in essence, they are of course, just
not at that point in time and insanity. And neither was I their therapist or
counsellor, perish the thought. I think this was to prove to themselves I would
be happy to exploit them 'like the rest', then they could treat me with us much
contempt, expressed in passive, sneaky aggression, while carrying on the
pretence that it might still happen when I had lost interest, this in itself
compounding their sense of not being treated as an individual but a sexual
plaything, while wanting to be 'loved' for themselves. But it was often how
they'd set it up.
 I think Lynn was aware of this herself, when shortly before I finally got
around to saying “fuck it,” she'd put me on the spot in her circular and self-
defeating way by saying “Don’t you ever say “fuck it?” ” As this was a
statement in the guise of a question, I haven’t described it as as if she asked it.
It was a Catch 22 of course. 'Damned' whether I did or didn't. “The ego’s
characteristic impossible situation'. Or situationist, as my spell check had it.
And her way of damning herself by seeing herself as superior. And you can
only put up with so many put-downs and for some people it's way of life; or
what they think life is.

I have to stop to remark on the movie I have on in the background, There's

Something About Mary. A buddy of Ben Stiller's tells him he should have a
handjob – 'spank the monkey, strangle the bishop', whatever – before his big
date with love of his life Mary, to 'take the edge off'. This he does, and keeping
this short, his come, ejaculation, call it what you like, 'vanishes' – it's hanging
from his ear and he answers the door to her like this.
She - Cameron Diaz, thinks it's hair gel and scoops it up and applies it
liberally to her hair, then when they're sitting in a restaurant, she's sporting this
ludicrously prominent, stiff quiff. It's certainly a funny, 'outrageous' idea –
scene – but it never worked for me. Simply because there would be no reason
to do that, as she wouldn't have with, ah, regular hair-gel. I've seen it before
and it was only mildly amusing then too. Otherwise there are genuinely
hysterical scenes. And the premise of the movie was a revelation to me of sorts,
though I saw it only years after it was released.

Lynn seemed to be fascinated by Plath... but this was as much due to her
own attraction to guilt... and death; which also expressed itself in murderous if
restrained fury. And she was pretty much always furious; many of them were,
and probably still are. Just like the fat bint across the street. She’s absolutely
livid, my dear. All is not right in her increasingly unhappy world. Once you
begin to see the accuracy of Maslow’s statement that society is basically
psychopathically oriented, everything begins to fall into place. And these neat
little units of unhealthy living and good and carefully law-abiding individuals
reveal themselves as cauldrons of barely restrained seething hatred. Of course
you wouldn’t know this if all you paid attention to was the news telling you of
the possibility of endless terrorists and 'weirdo' Goth kids' shooting up high
schools. The only differences is the 'straights' are more adept at concealing
their hidden aggression and constant slights and attacks. It is a chronically
passive-aggressive society after all. A society that would conspire to provoke
and cajole you then see that murderous aggression only in you.

I also meant to say I think thoughts of death got the better of Plath. My
purpose, I think, in mentioning the coincidence of coming across such a passage
when opening the book at random and to illustrate it. It speaks for itself. And I
wanted to include at least another paragraph, though I’m tempted to copy the
whole section, it’s so 'extreme' on the face of it. In this climate of denial and
projection, often extreme, some of her remarks would be 'reviled' I think,
certainly her thoughts on Hitler. I’m going to read it all at some point.
Hopefully this year. And hers is an interesting mind to explore I should think. A
complex, gifted individual. It's why I bought the books. The huge journal was
£15, second-hand, from the bookshop opposite the old University Quad
building up Clarke Street (I like to sit in there to eat, as it's a stark contrrast to
the busy main road, but also because a scene was filmed there for the movie
version of Verne's Voyage To The Moon. There's also scenes filmed on the
Mound).
And there's less pressure, the awareness of being 'on' as in life – 'real' life'.
It’s either this or 'chic-lit' and don’t rule it out. And I do have The Bell Jar
somewhere. Anyway, I’ve still the 'funny' novel I came across, on Internet
dating to get through; not that I'm thinking of putting it into practice.
Match.con. I bet she’d have loved the net. Or would the current political
climate just be more cause for despair?
These excerpts as with the previous, are from sometime between July 1950
– July 1953. She was 30 when she published The Bell Jar, I know that much.
Born in 1932, she's a good bit older than my mother was, but when I read her
it's as if time is irrelevant... because in the realm of the mind, it is, to all intents
and purposes. That makes her only between 18 and 21 or so, here, come to
think on it. And around 23 when she got married to 'Ted' Hughes. And killed
herself a year or so after their marriage ended... But that too easily puts him in
the position of the bad guy. As much by being there. Who's to say she wouldn't
have killed herself whatever the circumstances.... I don't know. But I do know
that if you make the mistake of thinking you can solve someone elses problems,
you become their problem.
She'd allowed thoughts of death to get a grip on her mind until it
permeated everything she saw and thought about. It's there from the very
beginning of her novel. And on the first page, she worked for the BBC while
living in London with her two children, and wrote poetry and The Bell Jar.
Must read it. It would be an interesting insight. And it looks as entertaining as
it would be interesting. Paragraphs and dialogue and full stops/periods and
everything.... Just to kill herself. I can picture her looking on the world... as an
increasingly hopeless, desolate place to bring children into... and finding it
everywhere she looked, as that's what she'd chosen to see.

“I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a

numb, paralysed cabin, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness (This does
sound to me like an early awareness of the “murderer within”). I never
thought, I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape
from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know
who I am, where I am going – and I am the one who has to decide the
answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from
freedom – I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive
humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active interest and will.
There is no where to go – not home, where I would blubber and cry, a
grotesque fool, into my mother’s skirts – not to men where I want more
than ever now the stern, final, paternal directive – not to church which is
liberal, free – no, I turn wearily to the totalitarian dictatorship where I am
absolved of all personal responsibility and can sacrifice myself in a
“splurge of altruism” on the alter of a Cause with a capital “C. “ ”

You just want to take her in your arms and tell her everything will be
alright. Metaphorically. But no one can be everything for anybody. It brings to
mind Dead Can Dance's 'In Her Saviour's Arms'. I’ve felt the same myself.
Who hasn’t, in all honesty? But suicide is undoubtedly a step backward. It
only means having to face the same questions in another form, whether that’s
another lifetime as another person or another dimension. Better to get it over
and done with now as best one can, but in the best possible sense, a la Gary
Renard's Your Immortal Reality. And where would I be without the Course and
The Third Millennium and a virtual life-time of the ever positive CW? And in
our small ways we’re all Sylvia!, carrying her along as she has us in the past
when we have ourselves floundered; at least I’d like to think so. Because the
mind is one. Or, as his mother says at the end of the film, The Elephant Man,
'nothing really dies'.
If only she had known... and tried to believe it with every fibre of her
being. Perhaps she did. I believed it, knew it even, and I believe it now, yet I
know how easy it can be for 'reality' to become suddenly circumscribed.
Combine that with a pessimistic, even nihilistic outlook and it's a catastrophe
waiting to happen. In one way or another.

“Now I sit here, crying almost, afraid, seeing the finger writing my
hollow futility on the wall, damning me – god, where is the integrating
force going to come from? My life up till now seems messy,
inconclusive, disorganised”.

…And I didn’t even mention Jake Horsley’s Matrix Warrior: Becoming the
One, once.