That azure sea I dreamed about on maps in the sixth grade, surrounded by the pink, yellow, green and caramel countries.

On the train: staring hypnotized at the blackness outside the window, feeling the incomparable rhythmic language of the wheels, clacking out nursery rhymes, summing up moments of the mind like the chant of a broken record: god is dead, god is dead. going, going, going.

. . .

Hours leap or delay on the luminous dial of Sassoon’s watch. Between dozing and waking to stare out into the night, straining to see, to evoke the colors locked into the all-comprehensive blackness, France runs past. Secret, hidden, giving only the moon, rocky hills now, with clotted patches of whiteness, perhaps snow, probably not. Then, lifting my head sleepily once, suddenly the moon shining incredibly on water. Marseille. The Mediterranean. At last, unbelievable, the moon on that sea, that azure sea I dreamed about on maps in the sixth grade, surrounded by the pink, yellow, green and caramel countries, the pyramids and the Sphinx, the holy land, the classic white ruins of the Greeks, the bleeding bulls of Spain, and the stylized pairs of boys and girls in native costume, holding hands, splendid in embroidered silks.

The Mediterranean. Sleep again, and at last the pink light of dawn along the back of the hills in a strange country. Red earth, orange tiled villas in yellow and peach and aqua, and the blast, the blue blast of the sea on the right. The Cote d’Azur. A new country, a new year: spiked with green explosions of palms, cacti sprouting vegetable octopuses with spiky tentacles, and the red sun rising like the eye of God out of a screaming blue sea.

SYLVIA PLATH.

I could live in its growing countries forever.

Sometimes, always hesitantly and with appropriate embarrassment, I am a person who reads “readers.” Right now, I am reading The Edward Said Reader, not because Edward Said’s eloquent and impassioned arguments don’t warrant my extended attention and I only want the highlights in a “best of the Beatles” kind of way, but because I am a busy young woman and sometimes I need an in. I read three books at a time, an old habit dating back to my freshman year of high school. Usually, you can count on me to carry at least two of these three books at all times. As I type this, I realize that this week I am reading four at once (not recommended): Edward Said, Noam Chomsky’s Profit Over People, All the Devils Are Here, and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (it seems ominous to relate)—a truly lighthearted assortment. Usually, I off-set two heavy-hearted books with one sillier one. Last week, the mix included Chris Hedges’ Death of the Liberal Class, Dani Rodrik’s The Globalization Paradox and Mary Roach’s thoroughly delightful, can't-recommend-it-enough Bonk.

I am itching to read Chris Hedges’ new The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress. The waiting list at the library is ten deep. I never used to be a book buyer, but my patience for long waits runs thin. There are too many essential (and immediately essential) reads out there. If I’m convinced that I can’t wait for the substance of a book to hit me, I’ll trek to the Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative and buy it.

Rain threatens tomorrow morning’s farmers market but I’m still looking forward to baking bread, listening to The Civil Wars, running errands on dusty ripped-up Willy Street, and catching up on two weeks of missed Daily Show episodes while I scrub my suddy way through a mountain of dishes. I want a garden of my own, but otherwise I'm content.


What do your weekends look like?

I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

The city hung in my window, flat as a poster.

I think this feeling is the one I fear the most—flatness, disconnectedness, being incapable of escaping from my own head. It’s not something I’ve ever experienced. I can only guess at how it would feel. What if one day I couldn’t immerse myself in the world around me and feel better?

The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.

SYLVIA PLATH.