I Am Still Raw. I

But I Wasn't Sure. I Wasn't Sure At All. How Did I Know That Someday―at College, In Europe, Somewhere, Anywhere―the Bell Jar, With Its Stifling Distortions, Wouldn't Descend Again?

Sunday-the Doctor's Paradise! Doctors At Country Clubs, Doctors At The Seaside, Doctors With Mistresses, Doctors With Wives, Doctors In Church, Doctors In Yachts, Doctors Everywhere Resolutely Being People, Not Doctors.

The Lyric Abstrusities Of Auden Ring Mystically Down The Circular Canals Of My Ear And It Begins To Look Like Snow. The Good Gray Conservative Obliterating Snow. Smoothing (in One White Lacy Euphemism After Another) Out All The Black Bleak Angular Unangelic Nauseous Ugliness Of The Blasted Sterile World: Dry Buds, Shrunken Stone Houses, Dead Vertical Moving People All All All Go Under The Great White Beguiling Wave. And Come Out Transformed. Lose Yourself In A Numb Dumb Snow-daubed Lattice Of Crystal And Come Out Pure With The White Virginal Veneer You Never Had.

Yes, There Is Joy, Fulfillment And Companionship But The Loneliness Of The Soul In Its Appalling Self-consciousness Is Horrible And Overpowering.

Doing All The Little Tricky Things It Takes To Grow Up, Step By Step, Into An Anxious And Unsettling World.