Born-again bather?

(Aya Kanai in The Selby)

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath..."

I lay in that tub on the seventeenth floor of this hotel for-women-only, high up over the jazz and push of New York, for near onto an hour, and I felt myself growing pure again. I don't believe in baptism or the waters of Jordan or anything like that, but I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

To be honest, I've never had a relaxing bath. I tried once in a tall, cramped bathtub in Japan and then I decided to give it another shot this morning after reading this passage, and probably also because I was feeling a bit hungover. Becky called me later to fill me in on the art of bath-taking. I think she should write a book.