by Sylvia Plath
and now that I have expounded in capsule form my philosophy of childcare and cultivation, I will bid you a most fond adieu and return to the next crammed week, at the end of which I shall either be a genius or a gibbering idiot . . .
do let me know immediatement when I may plan to see you! till then . . .
affectionately,
sylvia
TO Gordon Lameyer
Friday 11 June 1954
TLS, Indiana University
june 11
3 p.m.
very dear gordon . . .
writing you now, I suppose, is like bringing the redundant coals to newcastle (or sailors to newport) but this is just a little anyhow inbetween note to say I am home safely and not driving bewildered somewhere down in north carolina asking most naively for the expressway to boston . . . no mistakes on the way back . . . only stops for gas . . . and a half-asleep, numbed following of broken white lines coming always at me from out of the long dark . . . infinity, I decided, is driving forever down a celestial highway of whitelines: my one flash of insight during the trip . . .
today, miles in time from you, is hot, wetly humid and sunny . . . morning spent under phil’s coaching on town courts, how to hold racket again, and run, for god’s sake, run . . . and I recall an equally patient you telling me the same constructive things last summer . . . and hope that I can relearn how to at least hit before you and I try again . . .
the week bellies and fills like an inflating balloon . . . wish you were here for the arts festival in boston* . . . think I’ll see modern dancers* on the common tomorrow night and our boy frost sunday . . . reading poems in a granite textured over-the-split-rail-fence voice . . .
ran into perry for the first time in a year down biking past the courts, caught up on news, and said I’d be in the branford chapel in new haven on saturday the memorable 19th* (which is when you go to jaffrey, n’est-ce pas? hope things synchronize that neatly, anyway!)
so many lovely people you will sometime meet: perry (just realized how coincidental the name of your boat is!) and boyish phil, pat o’neil and marcia brown . . . all possible and probable . . .
writing now is so different, somehow . . . there is a real, vital stimulating gordon who cuts oh, such an endearing space out of the thin air . . . so multidimensional in this suddenly more-than-we-think-it pluriverse, that I can scarcely become accustomed to saying casually to myself: ah, yes, next friday, after a merry-go-round of champagne wedding and light blue connubial skies (made out of linen this time) I will leave early on friday morning and drive down for lunch and . . . there he will be . . .
with a need (such as we have) to be articulate so intensely, I feel how I should now be able to recapitulate verbally all the complex of ideas, sensations and orientations experienced this last week . . . but there are times when I feel no words could approach or approximate the actual triumph of living and acting in time . . . even though I am at war psychically over this problem: one earthly part in me preferring bodily sunworship and physical prowess and power, the other cerebral part preferring the sedentary construction of aesthetic artifices to order in form the artless chaos of content in the flux of time . . . a dynamic equilibrium, I suppose, a paradoxical maximum of both qualities, is perhaps the most desirable end . . .
and yet I feel it would be a triumph, somehow, to invent new ways of expressing the richness of life I have felt in being with you these last magnificent days . . . I shall be trying for a long time, no doubt, to be making up a new language for you . . . and perhaps never quite being able to ever express all I think and feel about you . . .
mother and warren have taken off for nahant beach, an hour’s drive away, and I am now going to shower the dust from the tennis courts away and drive to cambridge to see some spanish prize film* at the avant garde (so they say) brattle theater with another of my very young, psychic (sic.) brothers, phil . . . who, by the way, would really appreciate meeting you . . .
I enjoy thinking of you in the yellow wardroom with the family of coffeepots (a “coven of kettles”* as dylan would say) hissing and perking on the gas jets. Now at last I can visualize you moving in a concrete context . . . not just floating like amorphous ectoplasm through blue strata of sea and sky on a phantom ship the size of a stationery-representation . . .
And here, by the way, is a face I found . . . do you recognize it? sometimes I wish I didn’t! anyhow, it the remnant of some proofs of a senior picture, of sorts, and at least is not so haughty as the ones mother has strewn about the house for propaganda . . .
until friday, when I will come for lunch . . . and . . . you . . .
love from
your very own
sylvia
TO Gordon Lameyer
Saturday 12 June 1954
TLS, Indiana University
saturday
10 p.m.
dear gordy . . .
feel like talking twilightly to you and so will, most especially because have just arisen from prone adulation before aural altar of our lp-hearing our father (allah, dada, etc.) . . . you know . . . lilt along aloud about anna livia* and the hitherandthithering waters of . . .
it was a small sacrilege that you weren’t there. hearing joyce, I was amazed at the similarity of your own accent when reciting (blithely) to me on the way home from amherst . . . you, I think, have attained the very inflections of our musically reflecting creator . . . and I begin to wonder whether I am admiring symbols of idols, or idylls of cymbals, . . . (oh, “gather behind me, satraps,”*) . . . simply, I understand joyce better for the hearing of you . . .
tonight was the first record . . . colum, campbell and joyce* . . . tomorrow I will bow once more for the second orgy . . . warren joined me listening and has been inspired this evening to write satirical verse, panning the names of passé swains . . . he is here now, chortling satanically at my side, stretched out on the bed and crossing out, scribbling, and saying periodically, “oh, listen to this . . . ” which I do . . .
cartoon enclosed* made me think of you . . . of literary beacheads in provincetown . . . isn’t the stance magnificent? bare foot planted defiantly on driftwood, hair blowing in line with pipe smoke and waves . . . you must let your hair grow if we are ever to make a social splash at the artist’s ball . . . perhaps I should get an italiate cut?
felt antisocial today, so canceled and revised plans . . . contemplated omphalos (sans salt) and had a few new thoughts and awarenesses about situations that have long concerned me . . . which was gratifying and worth the introspection . . . had afternoon hour session with ruth beuscher, beginning the first of my bi-monthly visits which I’ll continue during the summer . . . do enjoy analyzing and philosophizing with her . . . someday she is another you will meet . . .
warren drove me to nahant, and we had another one of our long, languid, recapitulating talks, getting reacquainted with each other, as we do periodically . . . sunned, but it was too late and sadly cold for us fearing ones to swim . . .
(warren just finished his verse which is subtitled: “a longitudinal orgy to be accompanied with xylophones and muffled conundrums”)
also had a good talk with marcia brown in marblehead . . . she and mike are picking me up monday morning and driving me up to hanover with them, which should be delightful . . . some weekend it might be fun if you and I drove down to the cape to visit them at the camp where they’ll both be counselling on their honeymoon . . .
night falls now. night. night.
and all the things I would tell you I will tell you anon, another day, after a night and a day and a night and a day and on and on until again I come down to the tall ships . . .
Lovingly,
sylvia
TO Gordon Lameyer
Tuesday 22 June 1954*
ALS, Indiana University
tuesday morning
12:15 a.m.
dear gordon . . .
it is so very late, and when it is so very late, I am prone . . . to become either victim of a prolonged talking (or writing) jag or of a spartan somnolent silence. but today, monday, (it is already yesterday) has contained volcanoes, some active, some extinct (but we can never be sure) – and, at any rate, a world has happened, a homestead been re-visited, and a life ended and a life matured a little more – so I must needs impart a little of this to you – in addition to pragmatically letting you know of a minor change in my immediate summer plans . . .
matitutinal ethical storms began the day, forays with the maternal monolith which may at some future date, perhaps be beneficiently discussed with you: conflict was transcended by sudden news that Mr. Freeman, father of my childhood comrades, Ruth & David Freeman, had just dropped dead at his home in Winthrop.
mother immediately insisted that we journey to the Freeman’s to sustain, support, solace – or whatever one does to one’s closest & bereaved friends. at first, going, I felt dubious: what does one say in face of death? he was old – 70 – crochety, still working at a highly successful self-made job, a skilled painter of ships on high seas – but – 20 years older than Mrs. Freeman, catankerous, victim of skin disease which had stopped his one creative outlet – painting – so wasn’t deadness better quick than a slow paralytic stroke, or a slow decaying senility? I thought so, but it was hardly the thing to say . . .
sweltering heat, blowing hot air in sweat stenched subways, a bus jolting through narrow streets, crowed houses, increasingly familiar – and then, suddenly, the blue blast of ocean between bleak buildings – a walk down a street woven with the rich, plumcake associations of ten years of creative and imaginative childhood.
lawns that were continents, rocks that were fortresses, alleys that were secret passages to magic worlds: all seemed now strangely shrunken and denuded of myriad mystic meanings – like talismans become impotent: no more skyblue abracadabra heydays – but a diminished prose translation of what was once an infinite poetic masterpiece of childhood (and yet even now I am guilty of the adult fall, the fatal fault – of exalting a golden eden of free perfection that never quite really was, except in dreams – )
anyway: there was the Freeman’s – a pale, dark parlor, hot and still, with the blinds drawn, and all the highly polished furniture, the ornate antiques, sulking in a brown study – only the pale, tearpurpled faces of Ruth, and Mrs. freeman and her sister* – and the grin of david, the superman of my lois lane days – older now, yet dearly familiar.
so there was breaking of tearful silence and death blighted quiet: talk began of life, of ruth’s coming trip to europe, of supper, and how to learn to cook – life was reestablished in little ways –
accidentally, and in consonance with my infallible instinct for doing the tabu thing in all innocent accidence, I went for a drink of water and picked up the heavy glass from the sink and filled it to quench my thirst – and found out that it was the glass mr. freeman had gasped a last shot of brandy from before dying, put in the sink to soak: nothing like appropriating a holy chalice . . . oh, well . . .
a sober supper of thick green pea soup, cold meats, potato salad, cake and milk and I wanting to be busy or useful, and so doing what every woman can do in her sleep: wash stacks of dishes – while relatives drove to the funeral parlor: david wiped dishes, and began to talk right where we left off over ten years ago, while ruthie sat out on the porch with her fiancée* . . .
took a walk by my old home, the golden rain trees and shrubs that my botanist father planted now flourishing giants, though the house and yard had shrunken as if unsanforized through years of rain . . . mother and I met an intellectual jewish friend of ours of eld (syn: old bygone days, ages previous, etc.) and drove with him to see his sister-in-laws fantastic modern house pitched on a green sloped lawn, anchored by an enormous ancestral willow before plunging headlong into the sea – all outdoors organic with beige – subtlely textured interior – must describe to you in detail, or show you someday – the young macy* drove mother home, david at denoument insisting on driving me separately: he needed very badly to talk, and we catharsized for hours through a soft vague twilight into a night of red neons and stars – he discussing his ideas of death – our philosophies enough similar so we could really communicate about our mutual revolts and searches for independence and freedom . . .
so strange, after recalling only our childish fancies, afternoons of science fiction, backyard birthdays and elementary escapades – we should leapingly be grown and talking still a similar dialect of a uniquely small tribe . . . on the eve of his father’s death he told me what he couldn’t talk about to his family, and as I left him on the precipice of my doorstep, I felt a surge of joy that I had, at least, helped david a little when he needed someone contemporary and as this verbal merry-go-round slows (somehow its going on two . . . I must have been day dreaming) I say business – likely that mother and I are leaving for my grandparents little place on the Cape tomorrow till July 4 . . .
naturally I want you to come down if ever and whenever you wish – I am sure I could get a room for you nearby for friday, saturday, or both nights, and we could borrow my grandparents’ car for visits to warren, marty & mike & joan cantor, if you cared to be peregrinaceous – all sorts of alternate plans arise – just let me know which, if any you pick – I’m enclosing a sheet* with our address in Eastham & a phone to leave messages over, whichever is best – if you could take the train & bus down either friday eve or saturday a.m., I could meet you at whatever cape station you wished, probably – & you could stay overnight, if (all this so conditional) you wanted – I maybe driving you back to Newport sunday – think of sand, picnics, sun (?) and sea – just know we’d (how editorial!) enjoy you whenever & for how long you could or would come . . .
now, my ho head halls . . . my foos won’t moos . . . I feel as heavy as yonder helm,
night now . . .
hush, hush, whisper who dares . . .
so we’ll go no more aroving . . . down, down to a sunless sea . . .
so late into the night (darkness falls from the wings of)
can’t hear with the waters of the hitherandmothering waters of
though the heart be still as loving christopher Robin is saying his prayers and every night, as I tumble into bed I think of: delphiniums (blue) and geraniums (red)
x
s.
TO Gordon Lameyer
Wednesday 23 June 1954*
ALS on Smith College letterhead,
Indiana University
Wednesday
Dear Gordon . . .
A note that anthropomorphically hopes to get you before you leave the base: to say I am here at Hidden acres, off the road to thumpertown beach in eastham . . . names out of a backwards comic book it seems . . .
An enchanting small cabin in the pines, with a minute interior-new-painted like a jewelbox, yellow, pale green, and oh, one little wall of shocking pink which I love . . .
After a train and a bus trip hot and jolting with mother, grammy & grampy met us . . . and now, no trains, no phones – no mail – no visiting friends – only 9 or 10 books to sate any arising taste, bathing suits, and beaches to be alone on . . .
In the last two days I accidentally chalked up a high list of visits and reencounters – monday it was three freemans, macy, and the young family* (all young, free & amacing!) and yesterday I swam at waban with mrs. aldrich & the 5 little ones, whom I gave rides, tows, and tumbles in the water as they clamored for me to watch their aquatic feats – met dear friend pat o’neil & her mother there, also jeanne woods, acquaintance from high school who went to welles
ley – then an unexpected visit from john hodges & a friend whom I hadn’t seen for literally years – a visit from laurie totten – one of my June Mlle cohorts – then my voluble aunt from Weston who drove me for a delightful session with ruth beuscher – and then: bed. now: vacation – awakening from a long, dreaming earwickerian* sleep on acres of tufted yellow bedspread all afternoon, I drink iced buttermilk and plan to walk miles & miles before I sleep . . .
Never such a rambler as I! First I was going to send a pithy postcard – then a note, now I must needs halt lest you think I have nothing to do but write you how much salt I put on my celery nightcap or to what degree of ebony I burn my breakfast toast – and other monumental inanities . . .