Daddy

Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

From "Ariel," 1966

Oh life.

Today I gave a lesson to my grad cohort on subject/verb agreement, using headlines from The Onion, a variety of Bushisms, examples that referred to Simpsons characters and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and obnoxiously loud party noisemakers. It pretty much rocked the house, even though I was so sure that I was going to vomit as I prepared all of the stuff. It's really (really) nervewracking to teach grammar to roomful of highly educated late-20-somethings in a Masters program.

Also lately:
- I started writing a packet of letters (addressed to nobody presently), which I'm planning to turn into an honest and hilarious novel. I don't have much material down yet, but what's there is of the highest quality that I've probably ever written. I think taking a relational break has been really liberating for the left side of my brain. Tequila might also have something to do with it.
- Yesterday I bought a new set of semi-cheap brushes and four square canvases (14x14and 16x16), and I sat for about eight hours and painted the absolute best work that I've ever made, hands down. I'll post pictures when time allows. It is wildly colorful, multi-dimensional, and kind of borderline circus-artish; and it involves fish with unicorn horns (naturally).
I painted it with someone in mind, but now I'm not sure that I want to give it away. Everyone else owns all of my best artwork. Still, I almost feel almost indebted to the person I had in mind when I painted it. Would I have been able to paint the same thing otherwise?...

So ends this solipsistic rant, with apologies. It is inspiring to feel a bit of art flowing back into my body though; it seems like it's been forever. New beginnings have a way of doing this to me.

Guilty.

Sometimes when I'm alone late at night I read the Eugene Craigslist "Missed Connections" page, just to restore my faith that some sweet and quirky people are out there (even if a lot of weirdos and whackjobs are out there too).

This one posting caught my attention because it sounds like it's about me:
Woman in pea coat smelling fruit at Market of Choice last night before closing. Adorable and kind of funny, even though you probably weren't trying to be.

(I go there late at night, in my gray peacoat, and I do sometimes shamelessly sniff the fruit to see if it's ripe, but I seriously doubt... I mean, this is Eugene.)

And this one is really quite epic, and is arguably made even more so by its spelling errors:
Crying brunette in silver mini van:
Almost every morning I see you driving from beltline taking a left onto gateway. Your beuty is the high light of my morning. Today when I saw you I wanted to jump out of my car and tell you everything would be ok. I can't get you out of my head. Don't cry. Slim chance you will see this but lets talk if you do.

*Gasp.*