quoted

Sylvia’s figs

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

“From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out.

“I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), The Bell Jar, 1963

Shut—your—mouth

“Having devoted the greater part of my life to visiting and studying the various Native Races of North and South America, and observing the healthy condition and physical perfection of those peoples in their primitive state, I believe I have discovered the cause of numerous health problems that exist in our civilized communities. I believe, and feel authorized to assert, that a great proportion of the diseases prematurely fatal to human life, as well as mental and physical deformities, and destruction of the teeth, are caused by abuse of the lungs, in the Mal-respiration of Sleep.

“Quiet and natural sleep is the great physician and restorer of mankind; but the habit of sleeping with the mouth open is destructive to the human constitution. Man’s cares and fatigues of the day become a daily disease, for which quiet sleep is the cure; and the All-wise Creator has so constructed him that his breathing lungs support him through that sleep, like a perfect machine, regulating the digestion of the stomach and the circulation of the blood, and carrying repose and rest to the utmost extremity of every limb; and for the protection and healthy working of this machine through the hours of repose, He has formed him with nostrils intended for measuring and tempering the air that feeds this moving principle and fountain of life; and as the quieting and restoring influence of the lungs in natural repose is carried to every limb and every organ, so in unnatural and abused repose, do they send their complaints to the extremities of the system, in various diseases; and under continued abuse, fall to pieces themselves.

“There is no animal in nature, excepting Man, that sleeps with the mouth open; and with mankind, I believe the habit, which is not natural, is generally confined to civilized communities, where he is nurtured and raised amidst enervating luxuries and unnatural warmth, where the habit is easily contracted, and in sudden changes of temperature, even in his own house. Through the enjoyment of his artificial comforts and pleasures, he is destroying his teeth, his good looks, and often his life, in the thoughtless departure from natural simplicities and instincts. Man, who suffers under many ills in life, should take care that his lungs and teeth, however much abused during the day, should at least be treated with kindness during the night. Breathing should be done as Nature designed it, through the nose.

“There is no perfect sleep for man or brute, with the mouth open. When you close your eyes to sleep, close your mouth too, only to be opened after your eyes and ears in the morning. Though the majority of civilized people are more or less addicted to the habit of sleeping with the mouth open, few will admit that they are subject to it. They go to sleep and awake, with their mouths shut, not knowing that the insidious enemy, like the deadly Vampire that imperceptibly sucks the blood, gently steals upon them in their sleep and does its work of death whilst they are unconscious of the evil. Every physician should advise his patients, and every school its pupils, and every hospital, regiment, nursery, and mother should attempt to stop this unnatural and dangerous habit.

“If I were to endeavour to bequeath to posterity the most important Motto which human language can convey, it should be in three words:  Shut—your—mouth.”

—George Catlin, The Breath of Life and Shut Your Mouth, 1860s, abridged

XXXI

My stiff-spread arms
Break into sudden gesture;
My feet seize upon the rhythm;
My hands drag it upwards:
Thus I create the dance.

I drink of the red bowl of the sunlight:
I swim through seas of rain:
I dig my toes into earth:
I taste the smack of the wind:
I am myself:
I live.

The temples of the gods are forgotten or in ruins:
Professors are still arguing about the past and the future:
I am sick of reading marginal notes on life,
I am weary of following false banners:
I desire nothing more intensely or completely than this present;
There is nothing about me you are more likely to notice than my being:
Let me therefore rejoice silently,
A golden butterfly glancing against an unflecked wall.

—John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950), “XXXI,” Irradiations, 1915

A curious glimmering thing

“Time has proved that the function of poetry is not to impart messages, but to explore the depths of emotion.

“The poet is never a teacher, but always a learner. His poem is a venture at perilous discovery. The fact of writing is not the recording of something already known to the poet; it is his method of bringing to the light things that were previously in darkness for him.

“The aim of poetry is to capture those rare moments of the poet’s experience when, for good or for evil, the consciousness of life sweeps through him like a flame… the moments when he becomes passionately aware of the crises of his spirit’s secret drama, and sees a pattern taking shape in the void, and words of utterance come singing to his lips.

“Out of that dizzy instant he emerges, bewildered but excitedly hopeful, bringing with him his poem. Here, he says, is a curious glimmering thing that I discovered far down in the sea of my dimly conscious spirit:  perhaps it will have a fascination for you, too; perhaps you, too, will see in its pale sphere some hint of the iridescent lights that played on its surface when in those vast deeps I found it.”

—Arthur Davison Ficke (1883–1945), “The Nature of Poetry,” 1926

Agreed!

“I don’t know of any writer who doesn’t look back at their earlier books and think:  can we just shred them? You know, can we go door to door and collect them and shred them?”

—David Sedaris, to Bill Maher, on Real Time, HBO, 2023 March 24th

Ten thousand fathoms deep

“You peer into my life to find a lingering past, but I tell you it was sunk ten thousand fathoms deep and weighted down with my dead self. You look into my breast to find that old, old open wound, but I tell you I seared it with my hot tears and only the cicatrix is there.”

—Muriel Strode (1875–1964), My Little Book of Prayer, 1904

Realm of sorrow

“Another call from the spiritual universe is to the realm of sorrow. We are not good for much until our hearts are broken. I know of no more pathetic object in time than a man or woman who has come to middle life, still heart-whole. It seems as if they had been overlooked or forgotten in the great curriculum of life.

“Sorrow cleanses our vision of misty humors, restores our spiritual myopia, so that we get a clear, long-range outlook upon the verities, the imperishable substances of the inner life.

“He has lived poorly who has come to mature years and has not been touched by world-pain; who has not heard the sighing and the groaning of the millions; who has not at least stepped back a little way into the awful shadow of the world’s spiritual sorrow; known something of its shame and agony for sin; its terrors of an avenging conscience; its fear of angry gods; its shivering dread in presence of an unknown eternity.

“Unless called now and then into the stillness and shadow of this common experience of sorrow, how would we ever be healed of our folly for the getting and having of things? What ministry of consolation and strength could we have among the sinful, the suffering, and the broken-hearted!”

—Rev. James H. Ecob, D.D. (1844–1921), “The Call of the Universe,” sermon, 1904

Out!

Come, abashed Self! admit one thing:
You have been indoors too much of late…
You should have been out wrestling with the sun,
Or running races with the rolling Earth…
Where’s the old smell of you, when, nostrils dilated,
You were drenched with sea-salt and soil-odor?
Where’s the lusty tang of your voice, cleansed by strong winds?
Your sun-burnt cheek?
And the animal magic of your eyes?
Out of the house with you…
Into the water! Into the sky!
Over the hills!

—James Oppenheim, “Out!,” War and Laughter, 1916