Plathian Vampires
The phrase has been haunting me in recent weeks. I amnae certain, but I believe the term comes to me through English Lit circles. A snide comment from a fellow student protesting the forced study of "The All-American Suicide Queen?" Writer's group commentary? Educated chumps who had recently been dumped by poor little rich girls? Dunno, but the haunting has been going on for long enough to make me believe something in there needs processing. Processing. . .
LF is the image which is most conjured in the haunting. I knew LF through writer connections I was pursuing around the time of the domestic drama of the closest Hubs and I have come to divorce so far. Our relationship was brief and creatively intense. It was more of a creative collaboration than a friendship. The end of the relationship was my first clear understanding of, "The Mirror Syndrome." The end came without warning during a random encounter in the form of a long-winded, snarling, hissing, spitting refection declaring the end of our collaborations. Her intended message was quite lost in the verbal attack, but the mirror effect was, "Is this what I look like when I reject before I can be rejected? Ouch." All our creative collaborations came to a screeching halt, but the great gift LF gave me was to help me open myself more thoroughly to the therapy programs I was working at the time. This was one of the more therapy intensive periods of my personal herstory.
Small steps, big faith and lots of prayer. The reason for the haunting isnae any more clear than it was at the beginning of this entry, but I am letting the healing mysteries guide. An initial guess is that it has to do with the writer's block which has held me from doing the massive accumulation of re-writes which are on my Someday List. Still just guessing.
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I have never read her but of course I know the end result. I have lingering questions and ideas too... I don't seem to be able to get to much more than the pragmatic in terms of my conclusions on them. Sending courage, faith and prayer.
I've tried to read Plath and her peers but find myself laying in suicide plans after the first few lines a few lines in.
Buttttttaaaaa. . . How many poets go on to become official adjectives? "Plathian" is even in the dictionary. "The Bell Jar" might even be an official psychiatric disorder. Check fact before publication. . .
Since this morning I am wondering if the haunting is about getting the Plathitudes out of my previous writing attempts. I've never been called, "Plathian," or even spoken to a divorce lawyer, but I've done my share of ? ? ? Chickly doomy glooming?
Ah Plathian Vampires brings me right to “Daddy” , perhaps you read that poetic of hers at some point, much lamentation about the struggle of life in the shadow of her father’s passing. Perhaps not, and it is baring a connotation in your mindframe of a unique and personal defining, but alas, you make my mind return to long ago silent lonely moments of plathian contemplations, to which i took a personal afront as a youth and held fast to perserverence. Triple hugs while you sort through this one, and deepest empathy for LF and the mirror syndrome and kudos for focusing on the silver lining~
I haven't been ABLE to read Sylvia Plath, or any of her Ivy League peers. They hit my senses like a toxic milkshake and I can never make it past a line or three in the attempted reading.
The real world memories they give me flashbacks to are Girlie Girl Bullies. There are no shortages of those in the world, in any culture. I was continually targeted by them in every single one of the uncounted schools I was registered in during the coast-to-coast wandering. Whatever their lament of the season, those Cat Walk Imitators have barbs for all. LF was raised as part of a Houston social clique which called themselves, "The Memorial Drive Bitches." I told her the name was insulting to female dogs everywhere. The creative collaboration we were working on was a two-sided view of High School Mean Girls. She had the silver platter eye view and I was the defending victim. It is possible that she, herself, was the one who gave me the term, "Plathian Vampires." in reference to the social clique she was trying to outgrow.