the fig-tree and the pink cosmos and the edge of infinity

 I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig-tree... 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 off-beat 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." 

 --Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I cannot be born

On solid ground,

Only where everything flows.

To enter my dawn

You must be unbound

From how the fixed world goes.”

“Leave behind

your maps and losses

Let dreams be all your law.

Trust the wind

When the ocean tosses

Burn your boats on the farther shore.”

“Make new songs

And your floating island

Will be rooted beneath the waves.”

“Drink my sun

And you dance on the high land

Your heart, remembering, craves.”

~Robert Moss from Dreamways of the Iroquois: Honoring the Secret Wishes of the Soul

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