The Figs We'll Never Eat
The books we'll never write, the letters we'll never send, the kisses we'll never taste
On the phone this morning with my best friend, who lives in Amsterdam, I was reminded of my scheduled fig tree tattoo (all my sad literary girlies know) and of The Bell Jar.
“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.”
Aside from a word I hate—crotch—this passage is an all-timer for me. And feeling especially sharp and bright for me this spring. Like Sylvia, I am distracted lately, by all this beckoning and winking. By all these figs ripening on branches I could reach, maybe, if my hands were open, if I stretched my arms to them. If I rearranged my body, my time, my attention, my life.
In this moment, the story of my life is feeling shorter and quicker than ever. A slim (but packed) volume, I think, in the end.
I say this not because I am actively dying in any new acute way, but because I am actively dying in the same old chronic way. Because I am watching my baby grow up at a speed I was always warned about, but never saw reflected in the pace of my own or anyone else’s childhood. Because I am witnessing so many other lives begin and so, so, so many other lives end. Because wars are raging and worlds are burning and the work of my life—namely, helping people to have abortions—is becoming more complicated and difficult and that is happening more rapidly than I anticipated.
I am not in danger of starvation. My breath and tongue and fingernails are already fig-scented, and I’m eating now. I’m not paralyzed, I’m always moving and plucking more figs from more branches. But all those other figs, so many of them dangling. Some of those figs, I know, will soon begin to wrinkle and go black and drop (man, I hate the world plop, even from Sylvia) to the ground at my feet. If they haven’t already.
Whenever you say Yes to something, you are saying No to all kinds of other things, things you couldn’t even name or identify yet.
The USB outlet in my car is broken, which means lately I’ve been blasting the radio instead of whatever unhinged “daylist” Spotify has concocted as a personal attack on my taste and demeanor. (Sample titles of recent daylists: Moody Coastal Cowgirl Friday, Doof Doof Rave Afternoon, Nostalgia Sweater Weather Sunday, Pumpkin Spice Journaling Morning. Shut up, Spotify).
MUNA, the band known (at least in my queer little circles) just as much for their unearthly physical beauty as for their music, has been featuring heavily on one of my favorite stations. Specifically, their biggest non-Phoebe-Bridgers-infused hit, The One That Got Away.
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I love this song for many reasons. I have a complicated relationship to this band, because my eating disorder seizes on what they’re serving aesthetically (and maybe moreso on my friends’ and crushes’ commentary on it) and reminds me of a long-rotten fig I did used to injure myself climbing trees to pick. Actually, I nearly died in pursuit of it, if I’m being honest.
But TOTGA is a perfect song, and one that transcends conventional hotness and thinness to describe what I’m pretty sure is a universal experience: non-rejection. A situationship quiet-quitting you. Being the one who loves more, wants more, the one who is ready and willing to be vulnerable when the other person is not (“If you never put it on the line, how am I going to sign for it?”). And about feeling pride instead of shame in that.
It’s a song that reminds me of one of my favorite poets, Richard Siken, answering a fan via Tweet that I want to print out and paste on telephone poles and windows all over my city and also on the inside of my brain, forever:
The most devastating line in the fun, poppy, dance-y, upbeat, semi-revenge (soft revenge?) anthem is just the simple opening of its chorus:
I’m the one that got away, the kiss you never tasted
If I were a good poet, this is where I’d do a whole thing here about figs and kisses, figs and mouths, tasting plump ripe firm soft tender fruity etc. (Poets, hit me up). But I always think of this line extremely literally.
How devastating to never taste a kiss that—on some level—you were curious about, a kiss you chased or craved or secretly thought about but just didn’t work hard enough for. A kiss that wouldn’t have been like any other kiss.
How unbearable to miss an opportunity for pleasure, joy, connection—the only things that matter, in the end. The only things we’re ultimately seeking for everyone, when we fight for safety, justice, peace.
In other words: The devil works hard, but FOMO works harder.
There’s the issue of time—I’m always overbooking myself, in part an attempt to run away from myself and my thoughts and any time spent alone with my grief, and in part an attempt to gather and taste every single fig.
But what I’m haunted by in my own life is not that inevitable limitation—I’ve been running out of time since I was a child. It’s not the sound of the shot clock as I miss that last game-winning basket.
I’m haunted by the times I don’t put it on the line. The figs I don’t reach for because I’m scared to climb a tree in public. The ones I’ll never taste, because I’ve been made ashamed to even say I’m even hungry in the first place.
And where does it end, this curiosity? This open-heartedness taken to an extreme? This willingness and desire to feel and experience it all, even the things that can’t really coexist in one life, one body, one place, one season of life?
My Instagram handle is @HannahSaysYes, for Plath’s (and Molly Bloom’s) sake. In pursuit of never missing out, I’ve gone skydiving, performed on stages of so many kinds, told the truth when it was ugly and maybe unnecessary, exerted myself to care for people who would never do the same, harmed myself, exhausted myself, traded away the time and attention and love and energy I could have said Yes to instead.
As I slowly carve a shape out of this book proposal, I find myself remembering the feeling that permeated the drafting of my first book so intensely: the need for this book to be everything at once.
So I’ve been stopping to add to a list I keep in my notebook, a list named: Books That Aren’t This One.
I had originally given the list a title that is now crossed out, scribbled over angrily. Maybe it’s denial, maybe it’s fantasy. But who couldn’t do with a little bit of both, these days?
The list grows and grows, ideas stacking on top of one another constantly. Research I don’t have the resources or time for, subjects I’m not qualified to write about, parts of my life too private or complicated to publish for public consumption. Under those scrawled black lines of pen, un-erasable, covered up but still and forever on the paper and in my mind:
The Books I’ll Never Write.
Gorgeous.
never not blown away by the poignancy and loveliness of your work <3 thank you