Arrow

Sylvia Plath, in The Bell Jar, wrote: “What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”

Of course that was the staid and archaic view of a character.  In that view, a woman (a wife) simply keeps a fine nest for a man who goes forth to provide for both of them.

For whatever reason, this fragment from The Bell Jar floats up inside my thoughts on a fairly regular basis.  And I know better.  I know a woman can be both the arrow and the place the arrow shoots off from.

I know because I have been hanging on and have been carried into this very future by arrows in flight.

--Mitchell Hegman