Merriam-Webster defines:
True- "conformable to an essential reality."
Friend- "a favored companion"
Huh? A conformable favored companion? Maybe that's not too far from the...truth. How about a favored companion that is accepts you for you?
Maybe through in a dash of unconditional love, if that concept is even possible outside of Biblical dimensions. So, how is it that we really find very few true friends along this journey? Maybe it's just too much work! "Oh! I can't be around her too much because she always brings up what's his name..." "I know and he is so clueless to her games!" "Well, she is my best friend after all" WHAT!?! This is a dialogue of a "best friend?" Face it, we are all guilty of the same conversation. It just feels better when we couch our conversations with, "I'm not one for gossip, but did you hear that...."
So why do we do it? Or in the case of making deep friendships, why don't we do it? Or maybe I'm the only one who doesn't and anyone reading this is just confused. Because, in my opinion, like most things in life, it makes us feel better on some level.
Victoria Lucas was a young female writer and poet who in 1963 published an account of a young woman named Esther Greenwood, who moved from her Boston suburban home to the bright lights of New York City. Esther unfortunately suffers from severe depression and becomes disillusioned by the life of a writer in NYC and has ongoing struggles with the question of, "is death better than life as I know it." Esther ultimately has several suicide attempts, one, by swimming far out to sea, and another by taking 50 sleeping pills and lying under her house to die. The authorities believe that Esther was kidnapped and after an exhaustive search, they find her unconscious under the house. Finally, Esther plunges her head deep into her gas oven, seals all the doors and windows and successfully ends her life.
Why is Esther's life different from anyone else's? And whatever happened to Victoria Lucas, the author of this novel? Well, Esther's life is different because albeit parallel to many other's, it is ultimately fictional. As to what became of Victoria Lucas, well, she also turned out to be fictional and her book was entitled, "The Bell Jar." So, for those keeping score at home, Esther killed herself with gas, at the hands of Victoria Lucas, who was in reality a woman named Sylvia Plath.
Sylvia Plath was born October 27th, 1932 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Sylvia was a gifted poet and writer, who like many very creative and talented people, she had problems dealing with problems. Sylvia first tried to kill herself, after winning a prestigious opportunity to be a guest editor for Mademoiselle Magazine. Her trip to NYC wasn't everything she thought it would be and despite this seemingly small dilemma, she ingested 50 sleeping pills and laid down under house...sound familiar?
Plath wasn't a small time writer who happened to be hung up on death. Plath was a significant talent who's poetry was deeply depressing and often described death, blackness and loss. The Bell Jar wasn't a small work of literature, it was a well received book from a well known author. Plath was married to another well-known English poet named Ted Hughes and had two children. Did no one read these poems or her books and maybe pull her aside at a picnic and say, "Ya know Sylvia...the old man and I were just wondering the other night at dinner...are you feeling oh, I don't know...suicidal?"
Holy cow! Really? No one saw her poems like, Death & Co, Contusion, Edge, Lady Lazarus. I guess they were just too busy. The Bell Jar is how she described how her depression felt, like a bell jar being placed over her. I know this was 1963 and the wheel had only been invented a few years earlier, but damn!
Maybe she hid it well, who knows, but just reading her poems makes me look for a house to lie under! OK, so what's the point?
Sylvia Plath loved her kids, and her husband, who strangely enough had an affair with a woman named Assia Wevill. Assia was a German born woman who escaped the Nazis and was also married...to her third husband, English poet David Wevill. Forget soap opera's, this was a rocking time. Speaking of poets, Assia was also a poet and is credited with translating Israeli poets work into English, under the name Assia Gutmann. If you're not confused yet, you're just not trying hard enough.
OK, with all this confusion it's no wonder why no one knew how depressed Sylvia was...remember Sylvia, the one I was talking about? Anyway, Sylvia published, The Bell Jar, in 1963. The Bell Jar documented the depression of a young woman who was almost like Sylvia Plath, No, I take that back...JUST like the woman Sylvia Plath, and her unfortunate and untimely suicide. That would consider that there is a fortunate or timely suicide, but I will let it stand. Sylvia Plath sealed her doors and windows with towels, to prevent the gas from effecting her children, Frieda and Nicholas and thrust her head into a gas oven. The last poem that young Plath wrote was called Edge.
Edge
The woman is perfected.Her dead body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity
Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over.
Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little
Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded
Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden
Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.
The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone.
She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.
OK, that was nice... The final chapter: Sylvia's husband Ted the poet, slept with Assia the poet translating home wrecker, who strangely enough was pregnant with Ted's child when Sylvia killed herself, but terminated the pregnancy and had a 4 year-old daughter who Ted always thought was his, and Assia, who raised Sylvia's two children found out that Ted was also having an affair with two, yes two other woman, one 20 years younger than he, Assia also killed herself and her four year old child, by first giving them both a large dose of sleeping pills and yep, you guessed it, put her head in a gas oven. Thank God we have less gas ovens around! Sylvia's son Nicholas also suffered with severe depression and on March 23, 2009 he promptly hung himself.
I can almost understand in 1963, if everyone was so obsessed with themselves and seriously, who had time to write poetry with all the sex happening? But do we really think we would notice now if someone went to extremes to say, "Hello...I'm trying to die here!" I surely hope so. Lindsey Lohan comes to mind. Maybe no matter what we do, if people are self-destructive, I guess there is nothing short of kidnapping them that would intervene. Certainly shows like, Celebrity Rehab have given National attention to some who are slowly doing what Sylvia Plath and other did quickly.
Humans have a powerful force called free will, but I would hope that if you or I knew Sylvia Plath, we would have tried to help her heal. Maybe that concept is just plain short-sighted, but it would seem that people cared about her, her son, her husbands lover, enough to stop them, but maybe they didn't. Either way we know for sure that suicide can be an act of the coward or the angry act of the scorned, but in the end it is an act of desperation.
The following poem is one that Plath wrote describing her thoughts about past suicide attempts, heartfelt and painful as they were. If you are a true friend or have a true friend, congratulations...hold them dear.
PM
Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it-----
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?-------
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The Peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand in foot ------
The big strip tease.
Gentleman , ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.
It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart---
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair on my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash---
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
A very cool article. Informative while being logical.
ReplyDelete