Has Virginia Woolf shown me how to live, what to do?

I'm a fan of Virginia Woolf. I think that woman has a backbone. I have read 'The Lighthouse', 'A Room of One's Own', various essays and critiques, and even 'The Virginia Woolf Writers Workshop' by Danell Jones. I enjoy her very much and applaud her for her courageous efforts with words. She did things in her time women were never doing, and gave a strong and critical voice to females everywhere. I adore her.

But, has she shown me how to live and what to do with her work in 'To the Lighthouse'? I'm not sure how to answer this question. Is it possible for an author to show us how to live and what to do with their work, or can they merely give us one example out of many, one experience to rest our heads on, find comfort in, or find a common bond with? Do writers ever really show us HOW to live?

I think Virginia Woolf has shown me the way I want to VIEW things, but not the way I want to live. She leaves a lot of room for interpretation in 'To the Lighthouse', and I think she encourages readers to grasp hold of that and own that element of the text. Still, I think some of the characters in her novels show me how I don't want to live and what I should avoid!

I read 'To the Lighthouse' for the first time in a class with Susan Kollin and didn't find there was much to it, but I think I either wasn't looking or was being one of the boring readers and just not caring enough to get anything out of it. I do remember, though, the first day of discussion, Susan Kollin told us about her experience with 'To the Lighthouse'. She read it for the first time when she was 19 years old and she WAS Lily! She said everything about Lily spoke to her and who she wanted to be and she felt the urge to break free of her constraints like Lily and just be an artist! Years later, she came back to the text and was able to relate more with other characters than with Lily, but she said we all should do that with different texts; revisit them.

Texts need to be revisited because there are always epiphanies to be found, and those change with time, wisdom, and experience. T.S. Eliot might argue with me and tell me time and experience do not matter, but I think they do. And I think they shape how we view the world and how we view literature, one reason why Susan Kollin was able to find something new each time she read 'To the Lighthouse'. She would read the novel, put it down for a years, and then read it again... each time she found the text was different because she was, in fact, different.

Oh, the things to think about....

Sexsonisms 10 March 2010

'The notion of epiphany has to do with works of art that, when you behold them, read them, encounter them, engage them...they change the way you look at the world.' - M.S.

'How time flies when you're WHAT? READING VIRGINIA WOOLF!' - M.S.

In Memory

I have been meaning to blog about this for about a week now, so I guess I will finally get down to it...
A memory keeps coming back to me, prompted by the day in class when Sexson was talking to Lisa of the Little Legs about a childhood memory still logged in her subconscious. She talked about her best friend, Katey Crystal, and what she was wearing on a specific day... a happy day. That day in class, I thought about Lily, and have since been thinking about her probably every other day. I guess reading the name 'Lily' over and over again in 'To the Lighthouse' does something for the memory, too.

Lily was my best childhood friend. She lived right across the way, about two backyard spans and an alley's width away from my house, and when I was five years old I spent every waking minute with her. For some reason, this memory out of all my childhood memories is one that remains most clear in my head. I remember when I met her... I thought she was beautiful. She looked like a little pixie... very tiny with short, choppy bleach blonde hair and blue blue eyes. She was always smiling, always very friendly, and the most adventurous spirit I had met outside my own family. Lily was six and in kindergarten (I wasn't old enough to go), so I would wait during the week until she was out of class for our adventures to begin. I have about four or five very specific memories of her that I probably will never forget.

She went on a road trip with her family to California, I think, and ended up coming back with this enormous turtle. Apparently their dog found the turtle injured on the beach and Lily just couldn't part with it. Her dad was a biology teacher and they cared for the turtle and nursed it back to health. I think when she ended up moving away they still had it... I remember her compassion. At age 5, I remember her compassion. That seems so strange to me, but I don't think we can ever know what will touch us and what will stay with us, or at what capacity we can consider things at different ages.

I also have a memory of hurting her. We each got a pair of scissors from my moms house and decided we were going to cut the grass on the front lawn ourselves. The grass was pretty tall and as we were going along busily cutting everything up, I accidentally chopped into her finger. I remember her bleeding and running home and how bad I felt about hurting my friend. Not sure why that's still logged in the memory, but it is.

Another memory, my most fond, is of her all in white. Lily and I used to take 'naps' together if our parents would let us. I remember being under white covers and laughing and laughing with her. She was, perhaps, the first woman I ever fell in love with ha ha :). Mostly, though, her mother made her come home for naps, and I would have to take that time to find something else to do. One day I ran over to her house to see if she wanted to play, unaware that it was 'nap time'. It was very strange, but her mom asked me if I wanted to come in and look at her while she was sleeping. She said she looked like an angel and if I wanted to peak in, I could. I went to Lily's room and I remember very specifically the way she was positioned. She was lying directly in the middle of the bed with the comforter pulled up to her rib cage and her arms resting on top. She was wearing white and the comforter was white and she was surrounded by white stuffed animals. They were resting on her sides and all around her head. She looked like she was something in a shrine or some sort of mummy. Now, when I think about this experience, I am a bit put off by it, but then I just remember looking at her and thinking she was an angel. At that moment, in my five-year-old head, I thought we would surely be together forever. I really did love her.

Of course, life happened and Lily moved away with her family. Her mom got a job in the Flathead and she disappeared. We tried to keep in touch, but that faded away. She wrote me once when I was in junior high school and sent me pictures... she was so vastly different at that point that it made me sad, because I still had this image of the little pixie haired angel in all white. This reminds me of the 'life in death' situation I blogged about last time, because people go through little 'deaths' all their lives. Birth exists and death exists, but there is also the death of a past life, a stripping away of who we used to be and accepting and growing into who we become (and this happens several times in one lifetime). I had to deal with the death of my old friend and try to adjust to the new, and I was unable to do it. Actually, I haven't had contact with Lily in over 10 years and probably never will again. It's funny how someone so logged in my memory can be so absent from my life.

Next up...blogging about the BIG picture... has Virginia Woolf shown me how to live and what to do?

To the Lighthouse 5 - (well, 2 really)

Our assignment this week is to blog about 5 existing moments of epiphany in Woolf's To the Lighthouse. I have already blogged about the epiphany of sudden death, which is to say death brings about moments of clarity unlike any other experience, not just for the dying but for the grieving. There is a certain life in death... the life that happens afterward, the moments of pause and reflection, picking up the pieces, making sense of it all, putting things back together and continuing on with something of a 'normal' life again. This is an overriding theme in To the Lighthouse, and after GOOGLE-ing around a bit, I found out that the novel is based largely on Virginia Woolf's personal experience with the idea of life IN death and life after death (specifically related to her own family). Conflicts between the characters apparently mirror conflicts within Woolf's own family.

Perhaps one of the most obvious moments of epiphany is the one that comes to Lily at the end of the novel, prompting her to make the last brush stroke and complete her painting. Lily experiences some sort of vision that leaves her thinking about the world and her 'final destiny'... full of compassion and void of the suffering of man-kind. In the last paragraph of the novel she seems to come sudden divine manifestation of her work, the meaning of her work, and the way some things may be more finite than she will ever be.

'Quickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was - her picture. Yes, with all its greens and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in attics, she though; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked her at canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.'

Lily Briscoe made a surreal connection between her existence in the present, the finiteness of her own being, and how lasting her own work would be. Even if the painting would spend its days living in an attic and ultimately destroyed, it was important that she knew at that moment it was finished. It was finished for her, and she could move on. Isn't that how everything works in life? Often times, SOMETHING has to tell us we're finished with one thing in order to move on to another. It's not always presented to us clearly; sometimes it's not even fully understood, but it has to happen. Perhaps she is able to find comfort in knowing that eventually everything will 'lay at length up on the earth'. Even her. Even her painting. Everything.

Another moment of epiphany is when Lily sits bolt upright in bed and asks 'What does it mean then, what can it all mean?' I kind of laughed at this particular part because I swear I have had so many moments like this one... not being able to sleep, thoughts racing chaotically through my head without a single 'off' switch in sight. It's those moments of epiphany that scare me, in a way, because all you come up with is that you don't know what you thought you did and you will never know what you hope to know and it's terrifying. Truly. You spend a majority of that time trying to come up with an answer that you know you will never come up with, and all you can do is finally make peace with your own mind, if only for a second, or until the next time you have one of those moments again. I can never tell when it's going to happen, but when it does it seems like the universe opens itself up and wants me to grasp something and I never can. I just think about how infinite things are... how small I am... and how scary the 'unknown' of death is.

I think I'm done with 'To The Lighthouse' for the day, but I'm sure I'll have some more ramblings to post after Wednesday's discussion. And more Sexson-isms, of course. :)

Equilibrium

I read 'To the Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf last semester and I'm trying to re-read it again this semester. What a snooze (and I hate saying that because I absolutely adore Virginia Woolf and usually read everything she has with enthusiasm). I have been thinking a lot about the notion of identity and the equilibrium that exists between all human beings, one of the defining characteristics of 'To the Lighthouse'. Let me explain...
Equilibrium, by definition, is the condition of equal balance between opposing forces; that state of a material system in which the forces acting upon the system, or those of them which are taken into consideration, are so arranged that their resultant at every point is zero. (oed)
In every physical phenomenon exists an example of equilibrium, some more prominent than others. Equilibrium often defines the relationship between two entities, and the effects of that relationship on the surrounding world become the subject of analysis. Woolf represents the system between a married man and woman, their children, and the weight a married couples places on one another.
Virginia Woolf gives equilibrium definition by examining a relationship between a husband and wife and their eight children. While living under a slightly faulty system, the characters portrayed in the novel are decidedly happy. Hosting a number of guests at any given occasion, adhering to a strict familial guideline, and trying to satisfy the whims of their children, Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay are together an entity holding the rest of their constructed world in place. Mrs. Ramsay is represented as a woman of incredible kindness and strength, seemingly the stronger half of an equal entity. Primarily, Mrs. Ramsay keeps the household livable, her husband tolerable, and her children at bay. Mr. Ramsay comes across as almost Mrs. Ramsay's ideal opposite, always ill tempered, selfish, and engrossed in life outside of his family.
As the definition of 'equilibrium' describes, the two opposing forces of this material system have to merge to ensure a positive level in the household. Curiously, Mrs. Ramsay seems to be the driving force behind the neutrality, a force Mr. Ramsay depends on for his own peace of mind, represented in the following passage:
'It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life' (87).
Mr. Ramsay's insecurities are brought to life in this passage and his female counterpart has to bear the weight of his ongoing neurosis. Without Mrs. Ramsay to make him feel level, Mr. Ramsay would withdraw far within himself and possibly never re-emerge. The woman in the system of 'husband and wife' acts as the catalyst for everything to keep the natural level of the household at a relative zero.
The men in To the Lighthouse are all given an incredibly strong voice, their problems and issues some of the most speculated in the novel, especially those of Mr. Ramsay. His issues are always a catalyst in the novel, and Mrs. Ramsay is always the form of resolution. While the men in this novel are given a more prominent direct voice, the women in the novel emerge as the stronger characters, especially the character of Mrs. Ramsay. She acts almost as if she believes she has to protect the opposite sex. She believes men have to carry the burden of the outside world and their work is of great importance, leaving them in an extremely vulnerable position amongst their families. Mrs. Ramsay finds strength and resolve in the fact that she can carry the burden for her husband and she can manipulate the system however she desires. The characters abrupt death in the novel is the defining, disturbing force that interrupts the equilibrium and makes the lives of all the characters unstable.
I suppose this is more analytical than any blog I have ever written, but I do have a point in all of this. Perhaps some of the most important moments of 'epiphany' in life are those realized in relation to other human beings. 'To the Lighthouse' plays on the forces existing between men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children. Perhaps the epiphany does not come until death interrupts or halts life. I know I talk a lot about the notion of 'death' in my blogs, but it seems there is nothing in this world that compares to the closeness that exists between human beings and what happens to the mind when death intervenes. It is a sudden and often brutal form of epiphany, because men and women the world over exist on the pendulum I base this blog around.

Random Sexson-isms!! (since I haven't blogged in a coons age)

'If you think any of your teachers are clear, concise, and organized, get them in a bar on a Friday night and they're just as confused as everyone else.' - M.S.

'We happen to be very young and wild!' - M.S.

'9 minutes? WATCH ME GO!' - Sexsons response to how much time was left in the hour

'We need to spend more time with the negative. If we don't we will never have a fully developed idea of what epiphany is.' - M.S.

'We should be continually responsive to the presence of the world.' - M.S.

'I KNOW BECAUSE I'M OLD!' - M.S.

'When your life comes together in interesting ways it is also coming apart in other, more interesting ways.' - M.S.

'It is not so much important to visit a place as to RE-VISIT a place.' - M.S.

'Nothing is ever lost. It is just hiding, waiting there for the great, aesthetic hero to bring it back to you' - M.S.

'What happened to twenty minutes?! It all went into a cup of tea?!' - M.S.

Like Roethke, 'I take my waking slow'

Dr. Sexson told me to read 'Total Eclipse' because something would jump out at me, specifically for me. Earlier this semester, I blogged about a poem by Theodore Roethke called 'The Waking' and the experiences I have had since discovering the poem. Annie Dillard references the poem and Roethke in 'Total Eclipse', saying 'Like Roethke, I take my waking slow'. I think I may have fallen in love with Annie Dillard, and she plays with the idea of 'The Waking' throughout the entire piece. I am happy to see that someone else was touched by that particular Roethke poem and even more thrilled that Dillard mentions it in her work. As Sexson would say, 'This is good stuff, IS IT NOT?' :)

Roethke says, 'I wake to sleep and take my waking slow'. Dillard talks about this act of moving through life in a specific pattern, habitually and wholly unaware of what is actually going on around us. We have talked a lot in this class about the idea of time and experience and the importance of experience in the span of human life. Is experience useless, because, as Helena mentioned in her blog, we never really learn how to fully incorporate these experiences into our lives? I think Dillard is trying to say that each day we begin again, waking slow to our own actuality, but never really being able to understand. Dillard says 'we live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall'. We are constantly told and taught to 'wake up!' and 'pay attention!', but what exactly are we paying attention to? Why is it important to pay attention when most of our experience is lost or forgotten? In death, experience ceases to matter. Dr. Sexson said once that we should all be optimally receptive to everything in the world, but are we capable of doing that? No matter how traumatic, wonderful, frightening, or memorable an experience, does it REALLY matter?

At the end of the piece, Dillard says 'From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounch back and hurry for the latitudes of home'. It's as if Dillard is saying we are constantly teetering on the edge of 'knowing' and 'seeing' in a different way than we are accustomed and just when we have a 'sudden manifestation of something divine', we retreat. We always retreat. To Dillard, it 'is everlastingly funny that the proud, metaphysically ambitious, clamoring mind will hush if you give it an egg'. This is what human beings do. We so quickly replace one experience with a different experience, and what are we left with? Am I making any sense? Maybe not...