Monday, August 30, 2010

Within the Bell Jar...

How can one call oneself a writer, when one doesn’t write? It is easier when your pronouns have an extra layer of anonymity. I personally don’t have trouble writing at all, neither do you, but if one did, they may question their validity as said writer.

I have been reading a lot lately, mostly craving the escapist indulgence of fiction, losing my own features in the involved internal dialogues of easily integratable protagonists. I call it “accumulating” which I suspect is closer to “procrastinating.” My hands are cold as I type, which seems to make it worse, as if my hands are directly manifesting the rigid sluggish motion of my mind. It goes like this:

I had taken my books back to the library; overdue as usual (I am a repeat offender.) So that night I find myself with no new material, and a yawning expanse of night to fill (do expanses always yawn, are they frequently tired as I am?) Well...I decided to delve into my own stagnant bookshelf, and chose a copy of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, it seemed the time had come. I had had words with this book before, none of it eventuating to anything substantial. What with me being so heavily enamoured with “Ariel” I just couldn’t foresee how this could work out between us. But none the less, with the yawning expanse and my own lethargy I found myself settling down in bed with “The Bell Jar”, pulling the covers up high to my chin.

I read through with the familiar restless dissatisfaction, seriously contemplating the merits of this novel as “A near perfect work of art” (which I will proclaim now, are not words that I would attribute to this novel) yet something compels me through the storyline. The discomfort is insidiously creeping in, (this is how things happen... they creep, insidiously. Otherwise this would never have happened to you, or to me.)

I think one of the most unnerving factors about this novel, is the sort of, non-event of it. The material itself is not new to me, the subject, the types of experiences contained therein. I should explain that this could have been me to a degree, disregarding the particulars of character study, geographical location, at the core though, the coldness, the doubt, the yawning expanses, the insidious creep of non-event.

The suicide issue arose almost as a personal affront. Almost blackly comical in its genuine naivety, yet sickeningly she persists and I am granted both the outsiders perception as well as our own. Novels shouldn’t do this to me, it was really unfair to drag me through this whole affair and out the other end, to realise it was all a farce, well not all of it, perhaps only the end.

Suicides will do this, it is a disconcerting aspect. The lull at the end, it is the only way it is achievable really (for people like us.) The detached smile, the vague sense of improvement, perhaps this is why I worry about myself so much. This apparent improvement, before the plunge (this ensures no one suspects and or is looking at the wrong moment.) I can almost hear them uttering “but she seemed so much happier...healthier.”

I will eventually let these thoughts go, release them from me. I can hardly claim ignorance; I knew what she would do (safely on the edges of the pages, out of view of the sentences and paragraphs) when and how she would do it. It is a condition of the novel. I didn’t however expect it to cut so close to the bone, to have quite the icy after sting. So now I am full of sluggish words rousing in empty rooms, searching but not finding any true context to grasp upon...

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