The Sad Days of Winter Must Be Coming

Just ordered Faces in the Water by Janet Frame and the original version of Ariel by Sylvia Plath.  There’s a sad dark string connecting these two choices…Faces is a remarkable book disguised as fiction.  It’s actually the story of Frame’s own stay at a mental institution.  This is one of the first books that actually is written the way people think - the language is beautiful and haunting and her descriptions of the treatment and her own thoughts are just magnificent.  Anyone want to book club this?  I’ve read it before, loaned the book and lost it. Ariel is the last collection by Sylvia Plath before her suicide.  It’s actually a collection of her best work…strangely, I think Anne Sexton was tight and on point early in her career and then lost it and Plath was the opposite…by this last collection she was sharpened to a dangerous point.  The version I ordered is the final collection ordered the way she intended…not the way her husband ordered it after her death.  I’ve read his version…I want to read her version.   Winter Mania is starting to set in…combination of cold days with shorter daylight, holidays, the approaching end of a year (leading to reflection on all that was not acheived and how little your own life can mean) and the coming new year with all its promises that you just don’t have the energy to fulfill. Still, I want to read these books and talk about them.  I’m developing a collaborative project with a photographer friend and an artists advisory committee I almost quit tonight had the best meeting in a long time and changed my mind.  And apparently the mind of another person who intended on resigning tonight but did not.  So, those must be signs..right?  Or not.   But in November, I’ll take what I can get.