Sylvia Plath – Live & Learn

Walking. With Ted.

February 6, 2021 by Live & Learn 38 Comments

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!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: blue, cove island park, daybreak, depression, heather clark, Mental health, Photography, Poetry, stamford, sunrise, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes

Walking. Heart & Out of My Mind

January 17, 2021 by Live & Learn 132 Comments

It’s been almost a full month since I’ve had anything to say on this blog. A full month. It’s as if I’ve lost my voice. Posting puppy pictures. Sylvia Plath quotes. Camels. What’s next? Memes?

This dry spell coincides with my sipping of the ~900 page tome by Heather Clark: “Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.” And here’s Sylvia: “I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more—to learning. Always.” Live & Learn? We see where that got her, right?

257 consecutive days. My morning walks around Cove Island Park. Without a single missed day. That’s today’s climax, up top. What can one possibly say, or write about, that’s more important than THIS? That’s bigger than THIS?

It used to matter, blogging, that is. It used to mean something. Posting every day. Sometimes twice day. Driving stats. Checking stats. Boosting views. Gaining followers. Counting Likes.

Today, not so much.

Sawsan poked the Bear about a week ago when she noticed posts have moved from daily to something else. I’m reconsidering this blogging thing. Running out of steam. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Blog, Blogging, Photography, Quotes, Story, Sun, sunrise, Sylvia Plath

Sunday Morning

January 10, 2021 by Live & Learn 18 Comments

In a May 1952 paper for her religion class, “Religion as I See It,” Plath laid out her “basic tenets”: man was “born without purpose in a neutral universe,” without inherent morals, and was responsible for his own destiny. There was no afterlife. “His mind may live on, as it were, in books, his flesh may continue in his children. That is all.” God was not to blame for man’s evils or triumphs. Plath claimed that she could “never find my faith through the avenue of manmade institutions,” and called herself an “agnostic humanist.” She happily admitted she was a pantheist at heart: “For my security, I resort not to the church, but to the earth. The impersonal world of sun, rocks, sea and sky gives me a strange courage.” For her, the vital world was earthly and present.

— Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf; October 27, 2020)

Notes:

Plath was 19 years old in May 1952.
Photographs: DK @ Daybreak. Jan 10, 2021. 6:43 to 7:20 am. 28° F, feels like 18° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT. More photos from this morning here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: agnostic, conservation, earth, God, heather clark, Nature, pantheist, Religion, Sylvia Plath

Hear dawn take her first breath

January 5, 2021 by Live & Learn 39 Comments

This was also the month (January 1949) Mr. Crockett famously rounded up his charges to watch the sun rise over Babson Park and recite poetry. Sylvia wrote, “The early hour was so that everyone could hear ‘dawn take her first breath’ and thereby reach a higher ‘kinship with infinity.’

— Heather Clark, Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (Knopf; October 27, 2020)

Notes:

Plath was 16 years old at the time she wrote this.
Photographs: DK @ Daybreak. Jan 5, 2021. 6:43 to 7:20 am. 33° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT. More photos from this morning here.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: dawn, daybreak, heather clark, Inspirational, morning, Photography, sun rise, sunrise, Sylvia Plath

Today’s Forecast

October 22, 2019 by Live & Learn 36 Comments

“Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets. Rain and nip of autumn in air; nostalgia.”

~ Sylvia Plath, from a journal entry featured in “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”

Notes: Quote via violentwavesofemotion. Photo via Frillmag

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: autumn, cozy, Fall, Inspirational, Photography, Quotes, Rain, raining, Sylvia Plath, Weather

Change it up, please.

September 17, 2019 by Live & Learn 15 Comments

A change of scene,

of air,

of people.

Amazing.

~ Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Photo: via poppins-me. Quote via Anne Sexton Appreciation

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Change, Future, Inspirational, new, Photography, Quotes, Sylvia Plath

Saturday Morning

December 17, 2016 by Live & Learn 16 Comments

…it is winter here.
Look how white everything is,
how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands…

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets…

~ Sylvia Plath, from Tulips in Collected Poems

Notes: Poem Source – Poetry Foundation, Photo: Donata Wenders (in the snow)

Filed Under: Inspire, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: free, Inspirational, Peace, Photography, Poem, Poetry, quiet, Quotes, snow, solitude, Sylvia Plath, white, Winter

With Clanking Chains

October 10, 2015 by Live & Learn 17 Comments

Saturday.
2:42 am.

Cohen:
Silence / and a deeper silence / when the crickets hesitate.

Montgomery:
With clanking chains. It must not be: this day, this hour.

Plath:
Alone, deepening.

Kafka:
What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

Duras:
My thoughts wear me out.

Prince:
Purple Rain.

Shakespeare:
O sleep, O gentle sleep / Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee / That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down / And steep my sense in forgetfulness?

Humphrey:
(Sleep) A proven capacity for endless resurrection out of nothing.

Give me sleep.
Give me resurrection.
Now.

Photo: Arturs Kondrats Photography via poly-gr

Filed Under: Inspire, Life, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: can't sleep, duras, insomnia, Inspirational, James Montgomery, Kafka, Leonard Cohen, morning, Prince, Psychology, Quotes, Shakespeare, Sleep, Sylvia Plath

To Live & Learn

July 31, 2014 by Live & Learn 23 Comments

I want to taste and glory in each day,
and never be afraid to experience pain;
and never shut myself up
in a numb core of non-feeling,
or stop questioning and criticizing life
and take the easy way out.
To learn and think:
to think and live;
to live and learn:
this always, with new insight,
new understanding,
and new love.

– Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Credits: Quote Source: Petrichour. Painting: Ufukorada