Showing posts with label Depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Depression. Show all posts

Friday, September 18, 2015

XXVII.


cul de sac

On this dark and pluvious evening,

I drew the curtain back,

to peer from my window discretely,

Looking down upon a dreary cul de sac.

Black lamps line granite streets, so neatly;

Seemingly intended for illumination,

but in reality, contributes to the bleak,

as it feeds the weak and desolation.

The rain showers are incessant, unending;

People move slowly and with hesitation.

They are dressed in black and grey,

I watch them pause and delay; as if in sedation.

With indifference, they survey each step,

casting a black silhouette, over wet walkways.

The outdoor conditions have worsened,

As I close the tatted lace curtain,

to inspect the room herein.

On the table of teak, lie confections sweet,

with roses and grapes nestled on a silver tray;

and the wine is chilling in a crystal vessel,

Intended for a party of two.

Yet, the door knocker has not knocked;

and the clocks have not stopped,

As I wait in vain for you.

The candles upon the mantle have receded;

my expectations have been defeated,

and the temperature has fallen from red to blue.

Instantly, the fruit upon the table appears decayed,

and I feel deflated and betrayed.

In profound disgust, the candle is snuffed;

and, like the weather external,

where clouds are black and nocturnal;

I am eclipsed of hope and illumination,

and in my wretched imagination,

I wear the eternal disguise of rain.


© Original poetry by Denise Goodwin, Lady Denyse and moonspyre.blogspot.com; 
All rights reserved.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

XX.


~ An excerpt from THE BELL JAR, by Sylvia Plath


"I woke to the sound of rain....

It was pitch dark. After a while I deciphered the faint outlines of an unfamiliar window. Every so often a beam of light appeared out of thin air, traversed the wall like a ghostly, exploratory finger, and slid off into nothing again. 

Then I heard the sound of somebody breathing.

At first I thought it was only myself, and that I was lying in the dark in my hotel room after being poisoned. I held my breath, but the breathing kept on.

 A green eye glowed on the bed beside me. It was divided into quarters like a compass. I reached out slowly and dosed my hand on it. I lifted it up. With it came an arm, heavy as a dead man's, but warm with sleep.

Constantin's watch said three o'clock.

 He was lying in his shirt and trousers and stocking feet just as I had left him when I dropped asleep, and as my eyes grew used to the darkness I made out his pale eyelids and his straight nose and his tolerant, shapely mouth, but they seemed insubstantial, as if drawn on fog. For a few minutes I leaned over, studying him. I had never fallen asleep beside a man before.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband.

It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted.

This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

Once when I visited Buddy I found Mrs. Willard braiding a rug out of strips of wool from Mr. Willard's old suits. She'd spent weeks on that rug, and I had admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid, but after Mrs. Willard was through, instead of hanging the rug on the wall the way I would have done, she put it down in place of her kitchen mat, and in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar in the five and ten.  And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

Hadn't my own mother told me that as soon as she and my father left Reno on their honeymoon -- my father had been married before, so he needed a divorce -- my father said to her, "Whew, that's a relief, now we can stop pretending and be ourselves"? - - and from that day on my mother never had a minute's peace.

I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

As I stared down at Constantin the way you stare down at a bright, unattainable pebble at the bottom of a deep well, his eyelids lifted and he looked through me, and his eyes were full of love. I watched dumbly as a shutter of recognition clicked across the blur of tenderness and the wide pupils went glossy and depthless as patent leather.

Constantin sat up, yawning. "What time is it?"

 "Three," I said in a flat voice. "I better go home.



"The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef since the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression. Plath committed suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, pursuant to the wishes of Plath's mother and her husband Ted Hughes. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages." - Source: wikipedia

Thursday, July 2, 2015

XIX.



"Fire And Rain"

"Just yesterday morning, they let me know you were gone.
Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you.
I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song,
I just can't remember who to send it to.
I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand and I won't make it any other way.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
but I always thought that I'd see you baby, one more time again, now.

Thought I'd see you one more time again.
There's just a few things coming my way this time around, now.
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you, fire and rain, now."


Writer(s): Amanda R. Hunt-Taylor, James Taylor
Copyright: Emi Blackwood Music Inc., Country Road Music, Randy Scruggs Music, Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp. 


Background and composition

"Taylor has related different versions of what the song is about.

On the VH1 series Story Tellers, Taylor said the song was actually about several incidents during his early recording career. The second line of the song, "Suzanne the plans they made put an end to you," refers to Suzanne Schnerr, a childhood friend of his who committed suicide while he was in London, England, recording his first album. In that same account, Taylor said he had been in a deep depression after the failure of his new band The Flying Machine to coalesce (the lyric "sweet dreams and Flying Machines in pieces on the ground"; the reference is to the name of the band rather than a fatal plane crash, as was long rumored).

In 2005, during an interview on NPR, Taylor explained to host Scott Simon that the song was written in three parts:

The first part was indeed about Taylor's friend Suzanne, who died while Taylor was in London working on his first album after being signed to Apple Records. Friends at home, concerned that it might distract Taylor from his big break, kept the tragic news from him, and he only found out six months later.

The second part details Taylor's struggle to overcome drug addiction and depression.

The third part deals with coming to grips with fame and fortune, looking back at the road that got him there. It includes a reference to James Taylor and The Flying Machine, a band he briefly worked with before his big break with Paul McCartney, Peter Asher, and Apple Records.


Carole King played piano on the song. Drummer Russ Kunkel used brushes rather than sticks on his drum kit and Bobby West played cello in place of a bass guitar to "underscore the melancholy on the song"." - Source: directly from WIKI