Sylvia
I haven't done any drawing for two days now. It is rare, but I don't feel like doing it. What I feel like doing, is reading, and that's what I have been doing. I went on an absolute rampage in the library this morning, literally borrowing more books than I could carry (I got the "Just doing a bit of light reading?" joke about three times on my way back to my studio). Light reading it is not, but light reading is not the sort of reading I was put on this earth to do. Those books were damn heavy and I needed someone to come along and say "Do you want me to carry your books for you?" but that happening without implied irony and sarcasm is as rare as well I dunno me actually doing some light reading.
Anyway my new best friend is Sylvia Plath. I'd craftily avoided her because of the way Woody Allen put it
"A poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college girl mentality"
and I didn't like the swooning melodramatic image that accompanies admitting admiration for her work. However - by god, I must admit I am idiotic swooning melodramatic collage girl and she is absolutely terrific. Right now I'm reading 'Letters Home', a great leather bound copy from a strange section at the back of the library and it's changing my life god dammit!
UNDERLINED PASSAGES:
"If I can learn to create lives, stories, and excitement out of myself without depending on external stimuli as shots-in-the-arm, but rather as provocative-yet-dispensable additions to a life already whole and rich in itself, then I will be surer that I am maturing in the direction I want to go"
" I would have taken it all with several grains of salt had we not gone farther. I came out with my old theory that all girls have lovely hair, nice eyes, attractive features and that if beauty was the only criterion, I'd just as soon tell him to go and pick someone else and let me out."
"Just now I don't care where I end up at college. I have a new formal, a row of dates with a fine, sensitive boy, an eye for colour and form in the springtime, and two nicely shaped legs to pedal my bike to school. Art and writing are always with me. I love people. And a few of them love me back. I am the one who creates part of my fate, and I'll fight destiny all the way."