“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.”

“I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week.” It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.” “But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn’t do it. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart.

The bell jar i am i am i am