At last nights Consequences session this segment from The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath came up: 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 famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. 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. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
It was used as an anology in the consideration of being overwelmed and how this stalled us and made us sad – too many figs. The story was relevant too in describing life disappearing before our eyes, the unhealthy problems of comparision and the pressure many women are under to do and have everything [ahh the problems of the priviledged!]. However on reflection I asked if its not useful to let things fail, fall, drop and what might an alternative meaning or possibility be? What if there is good to come when collapse happens or we are truely without? Can the Consequences of wrinkled figs be positive?….It’s a pondering I continue to grapple with.