My very own Bell Jars! ;)
The Bantam is my first copy from 1998, then the German translation (Die Glasglocke), the Polish translation (Szklany Klosz) and my newest acquisition, the Faber Firsts edition (because I love the cover so much.. I know, I’m a freak!: D).
“The moment in The Bell Jar when Esther Greenwood realizes after thirty days in the same black turtleneck that she never wants to wash her hair again, that the repeated necessity of the act is too much trouble, that she wants to do it once and be done with it, seems like the book’s true epiphany. You know you’ve completely descended into madness when the matter of shampoo has ascended into philosophical heights. ”
- Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Chorizo, baked beans and poached egg on sourdough. Made by The Bell Jar, Melbourne.
Congratulations to Mike and Jess!
The Bell Jar-Week
Another week, another theme… this week, I would like to dedicate to The Bell Jar, my all time favorite book ♡
Enjoy! :)
via ecstatic and insatiate @ Flickr
“i am i am i am
my sylvia plath mantra, permanently inked above the bray of my heart”
While based on a book, this is a recovery tattoo. I read The Bell Jar for the first time right around when I started treatment for anorexia in high school, and it was a book I could really relate to. I fell in love with the quote, “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am. “ and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into a tattoo at some point. I chose the handwriting of my dad, my mom, and my boyfriend because they were (and are) all very important in my journey of recovery. Not that they were the only people…but there was only room for 3.
I went back and forth for over a year about what to get with the quote, but finally settled on a fig. In The Bell Jar, there is a part where she says, “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children…and another fig was a brilliant professor…and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America…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.” So to me, the fig represents the path of life I have chosen.
It was done by Dana Powell at Ink Junkeez Tattoos in White Plains, Maryland.
I L♥VE THE FIG!!!!!!
This is my fifth tattoo, first submission. It says “I am, I am, I am” and is a reference to The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. At one point, she refers to her heartbeat as sounding like “I am, I am, I am.” I’ve struggled with chemical depression throughout my life, and really connected with Ester’s struggle in the novel. I got this bad boy at Renaissance Tattoo in Buffalo NY
