Tag: Sylvia Plath

Miracle. All of it.

Live & Learn18 Comments

Hazy Sunrise. Six photos between 6:29 to 6:50 a.m. 67° F. August 16, 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More pictures from this morning’s walk at Cove Island Park here: 1) Twilight and 2) Brody and Wally Play Date.

Notes:

  • Post inspired by: “I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.” — Sylvia Plath, “The Bell Jar” (Heinemann, 1963) (via Make Believe Boutique)
  • Post Title Inspired by Albert Einstein’s quote: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.”

Walking. With Ted.

Live & Learn38 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!

Walking. Heart & Out of My Mind

Live & Learn132 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. Continue reading “Walking. Heart & Out of My Mind” →

Sunday Morning

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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.

Hear dawn take her first breath

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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.