Cuties

Declan

Grace

Taken by me in April 2010

The annotated bedroom #1

For something different: photos! (of my bedroom)

The cream handbag belonged to my Nan. The Brown one, I think, was an op-shop find. They are hanging on my wall by a drawing-pin, which is holding up miraculously.

The first one had a strange crumbling mesh inside the lining which, years ago, I thought was asbestos. I had to get somebody to burn a piece until I was satisfied it was safe. Funny, but only now. I was fairly convinced I was going to die.

Books. One of my favourite things in the world. Better, certainly, than bags. On a par with a really good, well-scripted TV series by Alan Ball. Perfect taken with tea and a comfy armchair.

My dressing table. I could say something semi-profound and cliche like “my dressing table, which is representative of all things that get more beautiful with age.” But no. I just really like it.

I also like Sylvia Plath, despite the fact that it is faddish and morbid to like people like Sylvia Plath. Too fucking bad. She is amazing. And while The Bell Jar is terrible and morbid and tragic, it is also stunning and beautiful and truthful.

But there is another reason that I love Sylvia Plath’s work. And that is that after the experiences I have gone through this year, The Bell Jar takes on an entirely new meaning.

“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”

I have been in that Bell Jar now. I know life as an unending nightmare. I know the stifling fear of being locked inside a world of terror.

“How did I know that someday – at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere – the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”

And how do we, do I, does anybody? This fear is the fear that stays. Reminding, unable to be truly buried. These are the things that I think of, in my bedroom, on the train, at the coffee shop. Nothing has the certainty that I once took for granted. The solid world might shift and change at any moment under my own frightened gaze. This I know. This I understand. This I see, reflected back at me in Plath’s work.

If I keep up this series may well put “the bedroom philosopher” out of business! Except my musings aren’t quite as funny as songs from the 86 Tram.