Friday, February 18, 2005

Reading Mrs. Dalloway...

Page 48... and already I am blown away. Oh, how does she do it?! After writing this, how could she write another word? It is all there. What more is there to say? But then again, this is only the beginning of the lives, the lives, the lives... each one connected to the next to the next to the next... in a glance, a question, an exchange; in love, in jealousy, in comfort, in aloneness.

What is it about Virginia Woolf that makes me feel like I could write the world and at the same time as though I do not dare put down another word again? She inspires me and makes me feel as though I will never even touch the surface of her depths-- all in a single breath. But this is the exhilaration of finding one's voice. And as I read I begin to realize just how far away from that I am. If ever I felt that I was getting there, I feel it flying away from me, further and further away. Maybe when I'm 40 the world will settle itself in my thoughts just long enough for me to capture even a second of it. But that is only ten years away... and I can't imagine how so much could change as to make that possible. Life flying, flying by and me being spun out into space along with it. Then 52...62...72... and I will be an old woman with the same thoughts rattling around in my head. A bird, knowing not what kind. Sometimes a bird with no sky.

My mind haphazard, reckless, flailing with both arms, my nose just above the water while I stand on tip-toes.

I am feeling very dull. Dull indeed.

2 comments:

nrlaumei said...

hear, hear!

Anonymous said...

OMG! I know EXACTLY how you feel! That is the same way I feel about her writing. I've been feeling as though I could write the world lately ... Is it a reality?