The Millions

Shifty I’s, ‘Ariel,’ and Fandom

In one of my teenage notebooks I wrote the phrase delicious doom just over a hundred times, filling the unlined page with black 0.5mm Pilot Rollerball ink. I later dubbed this particular notebook the Anxiety Notebook, though I hadn’t intended to theme it when I first unwrapped the paper from its plastic and etched my landline number in the inner cover’s top left corner.

I can’t remember for certain, but the consistency of the ink and spacing makes me think I’d completed the dense, unpunctuated litany in one sitting:

deLICIOUS doOM

D E L I C I O U S  d o o m

deliciousdoomdeliciousdoom

Delicious doom remains the pet name I first gave in high school to the startling, awareness-granting electricity that extends from my feet to my brain when my anxiety flares—worse during an attack but crackling even on a good day. The jolt arrives without warning, the way I imagine the Talmudic God once spoke to men: thunderous and certain, nobody else able to hear a word.

When the speaker in Sylvia Plath’s “Poppies in October,” a poem of hers I first read as a teenager, cries out “Oh my god, what am I / that these late mouths should cry open / in a forest of frosts”—this I embodies the delicious doom feeling. The I feels the anxious panic of a certain but unseeable death. The I also marvels at the stunningly real body who must greet it. Despite my frequent desire to reject it, the body—the delicious doom body—is singular, perhaps even perfectly so: “a gift, a love gift / utterly unasked for / by a sky.”

I remember reading Plath for the first time, but I don’t remember how I learned that she killed herself. I considered, then her immediately next. My distinction, back then, between Plath’s life and her poetry was as thin as a sheet of paper.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Millions

The Millions6 min read
The Other Boy and the Heron
The heron has a robust mythological history across many cultures, and while the meanings differ, many deal with death, rebirth, and transformation. The post The Other Boy and the Heron appeared first on The Millions.
The Millions8 min read
The French Cartoonist Who Limned New York City
"While Paris is gray-blue, New York is very, very colorful." The post The French Cartoonist <br>Who Limned New York City appeared first on The Millions.
The Millions9 min read
Language That Lives: How to Translate an Italian Master
Far from being ornamental, wordplay serves a very specific function in 'Verdigris.' The post Language That Lives: How to Translate an Italian Master appeared first on The Millions.

Related