The Figs Are Still Mocking Me.
What Does Mary Oliver Have to Say About The Fucking Figs?
The truth is I never finished The Bell Jar. I got to the last ten pages and the content made me have a bad enough panic attack to the point where I couldn’t look at the book without my palms beginning to sweat, my brain going white and fuzzy.
Another truth: I used to think I was unique in my liking of that fig tree quote. It is something I have gone back to over and over again in the 10 years since I read (most) of the novel. I thought I could be one of those people who can quote it aptly for any situation and to be fair, the fig tree analogy can encompass so much of the universal experience of your twenties. But unfortunately for my ego, the quote is not mine alone.
The first time I saw the fig tree quote was at the end of an episode of The Master Of None. The second time, a novel-I forget which- referred to it. After the third, fourth and fifth time, I realized my experience with the quote was not unique. I knew that sometimes we read something that speaks so true to our own personal inner life, it’s hard to imagine it was written for anyone else but I was upset. You can’t have MY fig tree quote! I thought. The flip side to my indignity was my wonder: why couldn’t I be grateful others felt that same churning inside them as I did?
The most recent time I encountered the quote was after my friend Sydney sent me a wonderful Substack post (Between Plath and Didion: The Most Important Lesson I Learned in my 20s).
In the post, it is clear she is living the life I am too spineless to commit to. My unjustifiable jealousy and rage began anew. So much of what this writer, a stranger, was doing was what was supposed to happen to me. A handful of jobs that landed her back where she started before her thirtieth birthday: her original passion for writing. The arc here was all too similar to me: currently in the “English teacher” phase of her specific journey.
The passivity is not lost on me. I thought things were supposed to happen to me. Matters of the heart were not about autonomy, but of divine deliverance from the universe or my highest good! A small (and likely obvious epiphany to others) hit me at some point after reading the post. Despite what the Tiktok tarot card readers and youtube reiki healers would have me believe, I am not supposed to sit idly by and wait for the next fig to drop into my lap. I need to get on the ladder and pluck it from its branch myself with intent and purpose.
Now, after a leave of absence born from from burnout and malaise, I’ve returned to my teaching position. Somehow- yet not unsurprisingly - my listlessness came back in full force quickly and maybe even more distinctly. I feel apathetic. Unmoored.
Why was everyone else able to make the hard decisions? Others are out there, betting it all for their passions - or, even better: not believing pursuing passion is conditional only in the context of a career. How often had I mentioned my disenchantment with my job in casual conversation, in therapy sessions and in my notebooks? Yet I remain in the crotch of the tree, a coward willing to vent to my heart's content and no more.
The current fig I’m holding has been rotten for quite some time, it’s true. From my first few months of teaching, despite the connections I made with students and the sense of helping them become the best versions of themselves, I have known the center cannot hold. In fact the bottom has already fallen through. Again and again, it has. There is no a precipitating event to open my eyes any wider. There is no rock bottom to crawl back, I’ve been there and remain there, frozen.
Perhaps the trouble is there are plenty of signs telling me to run from the ever emptying cup but nothing to run towards to make it full again. If I have to work, I want to do something helpful, productive and meaningful for my community, or else something that makes me feel creative, heard, and seen.
Maybe for a lot of us, the hardest thing is trying to accept our autonomy; that we have to be the ones to make the decision, to alter the course. In “Invitation” by patron saint of the natural world, Mary Oliver, she gives us just that:
it is a serious thingjust to be aliveon this fresh morningin the broken world.I beg of you,do not walk bywithout pausingto attend to thisrather ridiculous performance.It could mean something.It could mean everything.It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:You must change your life.
In college, I wrote a poem (below) about the fig tree analogy that is admittedly not very good. I felt I was the one sitting in the crotch of the tree, seeing all the figs and feeling the decision paralysis Plath writes about. Because of my cowardice or my inability to be perceived negatively by those around me, I couldn’t pick the figs that I really wanted to. Instead, I decided maybe I’d sit under an oak or a pine, or some otherwise fruitless tree.
It’s been 7 years since I wrote that poem and yet the reality is I’m still starving and still ignoring the branches ripe with figs. I can pray that the rotten fig in my palm will ripen or I can accept Oliver’s (And Rilke’s) invitation: to change my life.
A Wonderful Future Beckoned And Winked
After The Bell Jar
The endless figs were mocking me,
The way they said buckle in.
Here it comes. We’re looking–
we’re all looking– to the idle future
and then here it is in front of us.
The year is a glowing bulb until
it’s december again and all the figs
are gone. Then we are jaded things made
to believe we can do better and yet
The world is a dark place. I know
a half-blind singer who has made his own
language, he calls it Hopelandic.
Picking figs is pulling teeth.
Each falling, forever falling, I have seen
the way a person can sit in the center
of their life and grin. It doesn’t have to be
absolute or bliss. You just have to be there for it.
My life, a ripe fig wilting quickly.
Everything is here and I cannot
tell which I will pick. The way they said
we’ve arrived and also there is no backwards.
Recommendations based on this newsletter:
Music: I Wish I Was the Moon by Neko Case
Reading: The full version of “Invitation” by Mary Oliver
Other Links: The Fig Tree Scene from Master Of None
🔥🔥🔥🔥oooo i’ve been waiting for this one!!! fantastic read haley! deeply relatable and i love how you tied mary oliver into it! 🫂🩷