“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
Sylvia Plath.
There is nothing more magical than escaping the real world and delving into another universe, whether you become a persona of someone you would never encounter or travel to place you’ll never go, books are a portal that offers freedom from the everyday.
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut and especially with todays society we glue ourselves to phones, tablets, computers and TVs, we are entertained by images put in front of us rather than building our own in the minds eye. For me, reading is a huge part of my life and it’s a way of expanding your creative mind and lets you build a world to immerse yourself in, even if only for an hour or two.
My love of literature started when I was in primary school and my year 5 teacher was obsessed with Harry Potter. She inspired me to read and I was hooked from then on, those books became my world and I was obsessed. To this day without a doubt. I even have a Harry Potter tattoo! My love of literature was expanded further when I got to high school and studied so many varieties of authors and genres. I adored Sylvia Plath and her emotive and dark use of words, I found it incredible to feel so much power behind each line and loved to delve deeper into the meanings behind each.
The Moon And The Yew Tree
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky —
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly bong out their names.The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness –
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness – blackness and silence.
My love of the classics has continued and I love to reread those despite knowing the plot, I just love the feeling they give and being transported elsewhere, there is something to magical about a good book.