Syliva Plath

So last nite I laid in bed to read the book I am currently in a relationship with and an hour and a half later, I ended up finishing the book. It is not like me to stay up that late, but I kept reading another chapter as if it was just one more pita chip, until before I knew it, the whole bag was gone. I read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and I knew it was somewhat autobiographical so I continued on in the end of the book to read the "About the Author" section. Culminating this informative bunch of pages was the inclusion that she had killed herself, at the age of 31, on February 11, 1963. I though how unfortunate that was and she must have been tortured, much like the main character in the book. Then I thought, wow, the day of her death is really close to today...is today the 11th? Lo and behold, I read an inordinately large chunk of her book to finish it coincidentally on the very day she died.
I have always been intrigued by books about lunatics and the varieties of mental disability, and I have read quite a few of them. I think that many see life and interact with life in a different way from perfectly sane people, and it is a very interesting perspective. At one point, as she was descending into her breakdown the character hears the phone ring and in an almost cursed, unenthusiastic manner she describes the phone as such:
 "The black instrument on the hall table trilled its hysterical note over and over, like a nervous bird."

I like the way damaged people see the world and maybe without the affliction of the mental disease, sane folks just don't notice the impact of each piece of life. The phone rings, I pick it up. And 95% of the time, I am not disappointed to hear it ring and unsuspectingly invade my life like that. Though, I must say, that if I have a quiet, reflective moment, I too can see the world like a mild lunatic. I am a poet after all - a convention of words, often unconventional to a spoken thought. A deeper disrobing of life to find the naked truth of feelings that lies beneath.
Or maybe its the talent of the authors who write about the mad and sad who may have a bit of lunatic in them to write it so well.
I like Sylvia Plath.