It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep, maybe it’s jet lag or I am sick and awakened. I wanna work till I tire myself out. I start the audiobook of Bell Jar, it’s narrated in a deep nonchalant voice I like by Maggie Gyllenhall, I look her up, remembering the title details on Audible that she was someone famous, I see, she is part of the The Dark Knight, she was the girl..I recall the scenes from the movie, Harvey and Batman both liked I guess.
It’s narrated from a girl’s point of view, which is a nice break, once in a while, who is living a lavish life in New York but gets disenchanted and numb by it, by all the parties and the fanciness. She likes to nerd out into the books. She had an English Honours degree in college, I sometimes, wonder what a wonderful life it would be to get an assignment like that, to read and review it or write an essay on what you think about it. Like I could do that any day, especially literary works, no wonder after high school, I wanted to do an English Honours degree. Maybe I am idealizing it, just like, I idealized how having to build programs and working on amazing cool internet-computery stuff would be, it was for a while, until the college took the fun of it, and I had no company in girl’s hostel. I am much more motivated by people in general, who are ready to cool stuff. I will stay awake with someone who is building something cool and help out and build as much as I can. Unless I really have the itch to do it myself, which takes a lot sometimes.
I don’t indulge that often, which is a shame, I guess. Maybe I should.
Day 1 (6th Nov):
It’s a stream-of-consciousness flowing novel, the Bell Jar, I feel like I could binge listen it and finish it in a day, it’s narrated that well and is fascinating in the way, how she jumps threads between thoughts. How she is narrating one incident, and then she jumps back to tell how it all began to be and jumps forward again to complete the first thread. How she talks about collecting people with interesting names, she knows someone named Socrates and another person called Atilla. How she leaves her drunk friend, Doreen, at the doorstep outside her room, she does weigh on the possibility of taking her to her room, sleeping on the floor and putting her on her (Esther) own bed, but she keeps the door unlocked, incase she wants to come in. I am edging to know if there will be consequences, was it okay for her to be selfish? Is that allowed?
I like how reading fiction, almost feels like a sin to me, because I derive such great pleasure, that it must be bad, that I must control myself or something bad shall befall upon me.
Day 2 (7th Nov):
As I listen through Sylvia Plath’s book, it flows and flows, the story about the fig tree, her story, of each possiblity – a purple fig, dried and fell down at her feet as she waited in paralysis, of how she wants to do both, live in the city and the countryside, how she was called neurotic for being so.
Of how it rang so true, almost everything, what she said.
Day 3 (8th Nov):
Am I able to trace where she fell off? She comes back from New York and hasn’t been able to fall asleep for 21 days straight. The psychiatrist recommends shock treatment, after the sleeping pills don’t work. She tries cutting herself with Gillette blades, so that she can finally fall asleep, but is unable to bring herself to do it fully. She contemplates while meeting people of how her life could be or would have been simpler if she would marry this simple and kind looking people, will have lots of babies, plump arms, cook food for the husband and drink pot of coffee after the another. Of the sentiment in the time was that women are the board that provides the base and men are the arrows through which they are shot out of. And how she says she doesn’t want to be a board, she wants to be an arrow darting here and there and everywhere.
She finally takes the whole bottle of sleeping pills, about 50 in there and goes to into the household cellar to finally sleep, she wakes up to the sound of being carried into a hospital. Her dad had died when she was nine, we get to know from tits and bits here and there. If he would have survived, he would be an invalid, so better die than live that life.
Day 4 (9th Nov):
Still reading, about 30% left. I am scared of what I shall find, is she gonna die? Is there a happy ending? Is it worth reading?
Day 5 (10th Nov):
Well, it was worth it, I guess, for brooding, still absorbing. I think, the loner, one lives, the more the bell jar covers us. We are social animals, and although it seems we lose touch with humanity and get disinterested in it altogether. The bell jar rose slowly and slowly but she did despair at the end, when it might come back. When I am too much by myself and in my own head, I think that’s what the bell jar, I start assuming meaner intentions, all my relationships and friendships become devoid, as if the strong living roots we were bound with, the ones I have nurtured with so much care and water, have turned plastic.
She had a lot of energy and was an “efficient tool”, I guess she was writing the Ariel poems, as I am writing my blogs. In Bell Jar, we see her replying normally/cheerfully to people, while her inner monologue broods away or is unimpressed. I wish I could read her second book, the one she had on health and endurance, she can humour people. And is curious and excited by nature, scenery and the world. I was listening to the audiobook, she was bold, it requires boldness to be mean and she was mean enough and I liked that, I am too “obligatory nice” to be mean. And I see her meanness, and it’s understanding where it’s coming from, more from self-preservation and hanging by a thread but not in a pity or sympathetic way, it’s different. She’s intelligent, you can tell. Also, it’s interesting to see how she described women more vividly than men, maybe women are more vivid than men, or in contemporary times, the Greeks might disagree in the older times.
I am reading my logs of emotions I went through while reading the book in five days.
Extras:
Sylvia Plath did kill herself, putting her head in an oven, that’s one sure way to die, I guess, frying your brains out.
Her daughter Frieda Hughes, wrote a poem about how everyone is watching her mother die over and over and over. So they don’t have to make the decision, they can die through her, it’s sad, the cost of fame and then cost of being related to someone famous.
And then the son Nicholas Hughes, an expert biologist, studying fishes in Atlanta, committed suicide too, was battling depression. Sylvia’s dad was into biology too, insects.
And the person (Wevill) who took care of the children, Ted Hughes had affair with (Wevill), also committed suicide after murdering her daughter, no wonder, the other two children were plagued with darkness.
If you see too much darkness as a child, it’s hard to find the light as an adult.
———
Should I really cross about my possible dream of playing a musical instrument off too?
It feels sad about giving up on the dream of playing a musical instrument well, piano/violin, because even my own accord I can’t reproduce the simplest tunes by myself. Another friend of mine just hummed the theme song of Harry Potter.I don’t know what I am missing, will I ever get better at it? Can I get better at it? Maybe I should at least give it a try, see a music instructor, and get written off, like a doctor, that I can’t be good at it ever. Just like on average, I can never run faster than a boy. That’s life. As my therapist calls it, the “reality” probability and not the “morality” probability.
I recently took up more responsibility for cooking and bought a mushroom packet from the local grocery store. I wonder if I am writing the way, people put pictures on Instagram fervently, like no part should be missed, don’t know who am I being possessed by? Anyway, when I look underneath the cap of the mushroom, it had something black and hairy, I immediately video called my mum to ask what to do. She said unconvincingly that it’s edible and I can remove it, if I want to. All those years, I ate the mushroom curry prepared by my mum, I didn’t see it or questioned it. Those black hairy things are gills, they spread their spores and it helps in reproduction.
Note to Self: You can correct the white balance in the picture after it has been taken.
The picture clicked by an old-fashioned camera didn’t look much better these days than clicked by a phone. Technicolor, a brand, also a way of coloring movies in the olden days, was a complex and expensive process which applied color filters to the negative and white strip of the pictures. Esther (main prot. of Bell Jar) goes to movie screening in New York, all movies were Technicolor at the time. She remarks how there always would a vast field, with dandelions or some flowers, I guess for better support for technicolor coloring, the backdrops became more predictable.
While we are on the topic of light, camera, it’s again another note to myself, have you ever observed horizontal lines when capturing a picture, say of a screen, TV or anything in a showroom. The horizontal lines observed due to the frequency at which the light source flickers and the camera shutter rate are not in sync. The effect is called Strobe Effect or Stroboscopic Effect, the way to beat it is, either control the frequency of the light (LED bulbs with 0 flicker) or increase the shutter speed of the camera.
Just solved another mystery! When you switch on a fan and look at it as is about gathering speed, there is a time, it seems it has suddenly started rotating in the opposite direction. And then again, it appears to have flipped and continues to rotate in the true direction, as if almost illusionary mocking you, turns out it is an illusion. It was the Strobe Effect.
Silly Thoughts: In laundry, whites are a minority. Maybe I should give them quota or reservations. Once whites are used and are tossed into the laundry basket, it might be months before they see the light of the day.
How does a fish breathe? (More research into gills)
* Intakes water from the mouth
* Pushes it towards the gills, at either side of the head, called Gill Chambers (chamber of secrets, : p)
* The gill filaments absorb O2 and release CO2 by the process of diffusion.
* The CO2 water is released through gill slits, from outside only.
Thanks for reading,
Calra
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