The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

by Sylvia Plath

I hardly recognized her with her eyes downcast, her face made up. But beautiful. “I’ve been looking all over for you,” I said. “Mary. Call me, write me.” She smiled, a little like the Mary I used to know, and she was gone. I knew I would never have a friend quite like her. So I went out in a white dress, a white coat, with a rich boy. And I hated myself for my hypocrasy. I love Mary. Betsy is nothing but fun; hysterical fun. Mary is me … what I would be if I had been born of Italian parents on Linden Street.4 She is something vital, an artist’s model, life. She can be rude, undependable, and she is more to me than all the pretty, well-to-do, artificial girls I could ever meet. Maybe it’s my ego. Maybe I crave someone who will never be my rival. But with her I can be honest. She could be a prostitute, and I would not give a damn; I’ll never deny her as a friend …

Today is the first of August. It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.

With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can’t start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It’s like quicksand … hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.

Yes, I was infatuated with you; I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn’t stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren’t having any of those. – … 23. – There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears. –

Clock snips time in two Lap of rain In the drain pipe Two o’clock And never you. Never you, down the evening, I cannot14 Cry, or even smile Acidly or bitter-sweetly For never you and incompletely. Things surround me; I could touch Soap or toothbrush Desk or chair. Never mind the three dimensions All is flat, and you not there. Letters, paper, stamps And white. And black. typewritten-you, and there It is. The trickle, liquid trickle Of rain in drain-pipe Is voice enough For me tonight. And the click-click Hard quick click-click Of the clock Is pain enough, enough heart-beat15 For me tonight. The narrow cot, The iron bed Is space enough And warmth enough …16 Enough, enough. To bed and sleep And tearless creep The formless seconds Minutes hours And never you The raindrops weep And never you And tick-tick, tick-tick pass the hours.

I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter – they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship – but the loneliness of the soul in it’s appalling self-consciousness, is horrible and overpowering –

I know a little how it must be – to feel the waters close above you for the third time, and to feel the internal juice sapping away, leaving you empty. To have your mind broken, and the contents evaporated, gone. For with the record of images we have ingrained in our heads, all goes and is nothing. Antoine St. Exupery once mourned the loss of a man and the secret treasures that he held inside him. I loved Exupery; I will read him again, and he will talk to me, not being dead, or gone. Is that life after death – mind living on paper and flesh living in offspring? Maybe. I do not know.

Out on the porch, now, I can hear the voices coming up to me, laughter, raveled words. Up here, on the second floor porch, the air blurs the syllables and continuity of conversation like sky-writing, blown from a clear lucid penciled white line to a puffy amorphic mass of cloud.

From this experience also, a faith arises to carry back to a human world of small lusts and deceitful pettiness. A faith, naïve and child like perhaps, born as it is from the infinite simplicity of nature. It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles. Yet, when such implicit belief is placed in another person, it is indeed shattering to realize that a part of what to you was such a rich, intricate, whole conception of life has been tossed off carelessly, lightly – it is then that a stunned, inarticulate numbness paralyzes words, only to give way later to a deep hurt. It is hard for me to say on paper what I believe would best be reserved for a lucid vocal discussion. But somehow I did want you to know a little of what your surprising and perhaps injudiciously confidential information did to me yesterday. A feeling that there was no right to condemn, but that still somehow there was a crumbling of faith and trust. A feeling that there was a way to rationalize, to condone, if only by relegating a fellow human from the unique to the usual.

World compounded of dualities, and man the compromising angelic devil. In the car we laughed miracles of love and incredulous tenderness. Outside a woman wove down the street, her hair frizzed and bushy, her face ugly with hate, yelling at the man, who was faceless: “No more of your bull shit, why should I listen to your shitty talk …” I laugh, and say: stop, stop, you fools, or the sky will crumble and the forty-day rains begin, falling relentless from the angry heavens. And your car will not save you, nor your tardy repentance. Hush, hush your vile talk, he is being won from you. And the world goes by creaking at the joints. You, dear, think you are in love with me. Yet you are not lost. There will be a million women. I am glad to be the first, tacking the gay standard as high as I can reach. You can match it, go beyond it someday,