Quotable Monday

My first hope was that each Monday I would post an inspirational quote as a good jumpstart for the week.  But, let’s face it… I don’t read too many inspirational texts.  So, we’ll have to settle just for the quotes that stand out – whether they be uplifting, depressing, funny, or a little intense.

The quote that I am going to share today comes from Chapter 7 in my favorite novel, The Bell Jar, and is one of the first quotes that I underlined in my text.  I don’t know about you, but this quote more or less sums up an overwhelming feeling that I experience a couple of times each week and experienced on a daily basis at one point in my past.

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 Antila 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 thee 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.

Photo Source:  Mike Bogle, May 2006.  Fig Tree in Centennial Park, Australia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fig_Tree.jpg