Walking. With Ted.

~ Live & Learn

277 consecutive mornings. My daybreak walk at Cove Island Park.

Ted tells Sylvia’s mother: “I try to keep her writing and drawing—the more she does, the more she can do, and the better she feels.”

—the more she does, the more she can do, and the better she feels.

Yes. Ted. Yes.

It’s a passage 463 pages into Heather Clark’s “Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.”  I’m not sure why Kiki, but I persist. I keep turning the pages. Soot, and all.

Hughes continues…

And the sky
Was vast gulfs of blue, and the air
Lifted us like alcohol

Not blue today Ted. Not blue.

But vast gulfs of sherbets, pinks, mauves, oranges, and everything but, Blue.

And lift it did…

Notes:

  • Photo: DK, Daybreak. 6:50 and 7:03 am, February 6, 2021. 28° F, feels like 20° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
  • Lisa, thank you for Sherbet!

38 thoughts on “Walking. With Ted.”

  2. I don’t have you vision or knowledge of words or photography but do share your sense of wonder, DK. No sherbet here in northern Vermont yesterday morning…more fire and ice. Thank you for your daily faithful reminders to look up! MA

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  4. Wow! Did it really look like that this morning? Here (Central NJ) the skies were luciously pinked last evening, a harbinger of beauty today. Your scenes with the water are magic. It just never quite “took” for poor Sylvia. I may never get her “The Bell Jar” out of my memory–sorry but left with a heavy sense of a life full of coldness…her inability to love any of the people in it (and how awful it must have been to have been her.

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  6. David,
    This reminds me of poet Kathleen Norris who read a poem from one of her students, a little girl who writes of the Dakota sky: “The sky is full of blue/and full of the mind of God.”

    Thank you for your 277 days and counting…. we walk with you from a distance (and some–like me–from warmer climes🌡)!

    Daniel

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  9. To end her life at 30yrs feels far to soon and tragic for all of us, but maybe her best work had been done and she was ready, and our job is to honour the beautiful wisdom she left behind.

    I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” 🙏🏻

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    1. Thank you for sharing Karen. I needed to hear this. I’ve been losing steam with my blog. It inspires me that you look forward to seeing my posts. Thank you for taking a moment to share your thoughts.

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      1. I understand. Steam is very hard to maintain in theses challenging times we are experiencing world wide. Know you are appreciated by many of us that are unknown to you.

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  14. David,
    Your blogs are true treasures. Please don’t stop. If you send out an invite for your 365th consecutive daybreak walk at Cove Island Park, I’d like to join you. All the best,
    Steve

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  15. Beautiful photos, I had to re-read b/c when I got to “Sylvia’s Mother” I started singing Dr. Hook’s song … “too busy to come to the phone ………..Sylvia’s mother said, Sylvia’s packing, to start a new life of her own….” -MJ

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  16. 2 days later:
    Meant to tell you that I love your sherbert pink captures – they are the best! AND that having had my rant on Elizabeth Gilbert’s personality, on that blog post of ‘must read’ about Sylvia Plath had serious consequences for me too. YOU MUST finishing reading boring and annoying books, I took up my unread large tome by EG. I thought that although I hated her manipulating her readership, I pulled out The Signature of all Things by her and as a writer, she is as compelling as highly intelligent and she keeps a super complicated story masterfully together. So, you finish your homework-reading and I’m nearing the end of the Signature of Things and all is well. BTW, thank you for ‘needling’ me w/o realising it.

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  17. Yes, I am tempted, perhaps like Kiki? to ask you why you keep diving into those dark depths of Plath. At the same time, I fully understand it. I had to do it myself. My oldest daughter also. I don’t think we can turn away from this stuff, and it’s important to integrate it into the collective psyche. Perhaps we are just brave enough to do that. As was she, undoubtedly. And if more were able to do it, perhaps we would not have such a fragmented society right now that wants to shy away from its shadow, while unconsciously embodying it like never before. Interesting times.

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