My Virginia Woolf Pilgrimage

 

Last fall, Marilyn brought me a gift, a tall candle of the "Secular Saint Virginia, Patron Saint of Lighthouses, Thursday Evenings, and a Room of One's Own." I laughed out loud when I first saw it and especially when I read the words on the glass. Still, as the new year began and I created a kind of altar to inspire my creative work, I placed the candle in the center, and I light it first each time.

As the candle says, her Saint's Day is today, January 25, Virginia Woolf's birthday.

Back in 2009, I spent the spring semester in England, in Canterbury, Kent. I loved living in a city about which Woolf wrote in a letter, "There's no lovelier place in the world than Canterbury." It seemed just right that it was in that medieval city, in the window of the Chaucer Bookshop, that I found a complete set of Woolf's letters published by the Hogarth Press.

I am in awe of Woolf's writing, laugh out loud at some of her letters, and love to get lost in the long sentences of Mrs. Dalloway.

During that semester in Canterbury, I went on what I called a Virginia Woolf Pilgrimage, visiting as many sites related to her as I could. Because I didn't want to drive on the "wrong side" of the road, I got to the more remote sites by buying gas and lunch for a local friend who liked opportunities to take road trips in her Italian Fiat--but had no interest in Woolf and was merely amused by my infatuation.

Today, on Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday, I'm sharing with you some photos from my pilgrimage. Come along with me to the streets where Woolf lived.

The house where Virginia Stephen was born, 22 Hyde Park Gate, London.

The front door at 22 Hyde Park Gate.

Three of the blue historical markers seen around London mark this house. 

Woolf's father and sister were also significant presences.

A view of the street where Woolf spent her early years.

Across the street from the Stephens' home is the house where Winston Churchill lived and died.

I was on a field trip at the British Museum with my students when our tour guides discovered I love Woolf. They offered to take me to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, where the Stephens moved from Hyde Park Gate. We walked over quickly as it got dark, and went into an art school that was now occupying the space. 

Though I was looking out the window a century after Woolf did, I still thrilled at the thought that I was seeing a view she might have, too.

Two of Vanessa Bell's paintings hung in what appeared to be a conference room.  The guides suggested mimicking the action in the paintings, and the two of them posed with the first painting. 

I am seated here while one of the guides stands next to me.

In the village of Rodmell, in Sussex.

Woolf's desk in her writing lodge.

At Monk's House with my Hogarth Press copy of Mrs. Dalloway purchased there.

The grounds of Monk's House.

Vita Sackville West's home, Sissinghurst, which Virginia Woolf visited. 

The original Hogarth Press, now at Sissinghurst.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf signed the guest book at Sissinghurst in September 1932.

Laughing with my Desi Sisters

Bangles by the dozen in Southall, London, England.  My partner and I spent an afternoon laughing and eating chaat with Anjana and Mina in this "Little India" in the spring of 2009.  That evening, I shook hands with Annie Lennox as she signed a CD for me at the Oxford Street HMV, but hanging out with these dear women ranked as high as meeting the superstar.  Memories of that day came back as I wrote the post below about women I met last week. 

“I don’t know.  Shit!” I replied, as I drove a car full of passengers to a local hotel that I should have been able to find easily.  Laughter greeted me.  I laughed, too, and my passenger, a Tamil woman I’d just met at an interdisciplinary conference about India, chuckled: “You sounded so Indian right there,” she said, repeating my words and my emphases. 

We were returning from dinner downtown: four women and a baby who had met on the first day of a three-day conference.  Over dinner at a Thai restaurant, I had had the unusual pleasure of not being the only desi, the only Indian at the table.  In fact, there were three of us, all academics.  The fourth woman with us, a white lesbian from California, is the mother of the baby.  So I wasn’t the only lesbian either.  It was a liberating experience, one that I sunk into the way my I slide into favorite old pajamas that I had forgotten about but which feel just right. 

Our conversation was loud and wide ranging, joined by occasional squeals from the baby.  We talked about gay people we know in India, about the papers we had heard that day, about the books we read growing up (by Enid Blyton, of course), about whether the only one at the table without a smart phone ought to get one.  We laughed as we took photos of each other and planned reunions—in California or at the Niagara Falls—reunions that we all know might never happen.  “Conference promises,” I think someone called these recently.

By the end of the night, my vowels had changed in shape and my consonants were more sharply enunciated.  I was saying “caan’t” and “baathroom,” though I was mostly still too shy to throw Hindi words into my sentences as the other two Indian women did.   I speak Hindi so rarely that until I am with my mother or back in India, I feel like it will come out all wrong. 

That absence of Hindi is one of the losses I have grown used to, almost to the point of not noticing it—until an evening like the one I just had, when its presence reminds me of what is missing the rest of the time, and the part of me that is missing, too.  The woman who was tickled at my pronunciation of “Shit!” is a linguistic anthropologist and had been teaching me how to say certain “n” sounds in different Indian languages, including Sindhi, my mother tongue.  I almost got them right, too. 

The other Indian scholar and I ended up going to a late showing of the new Hindi movie Kahaaniat the local Art Theatre.  We laughed at the subtitles, grabbed each other’s arms at the scary parts, and talked about the ending of the film when I drove her to the house in Urbana where she was staying.  But neither of us had to translate the film for the other, and both of us were curious where in India the star, Vidya Balan is from.  (She is Keralite and grew up in Chembur, Bombay, I found out on IMDB later http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821480/). 

              

All this happened last Friday.  Since then, I have missed my new friends and the ease with which we shared our meals and told our stories.  Yesterday, I received an invitation to a cha, a tea being given for a group of queer desis up in Chicago later this month.  I could connect with old friends there and laugh some more and hear my accent change again.  April is a demanding month at work, and the drive up there is tiring, but I am considering it seriously.  Now that I remember the familiar, comforting feeling of being among my desi sisters, I don’t want to forget it again anytime soon.

Always a surprise

Every year, spring arrives.  And every year, I am a little surprised.  

Intellectually, of course, I understand that spring will follow winter (though in 2011, for the first time, I began to doubt it, as winter persisted mercilessly).  I like the changing of the seasons here in the Midwest and have grown used to this cycle since moving to the northern United States.  I understand now why people talk about the weather.  In India and Kuwait, seasons changed, but except for the occasional monsoon flooding or red-tinted sandstorm, there wasn’t much to talk about.  In central Illinois, in contrast, change is the one constant.

So, why does spring surprise me?  I think it’s the boldness of the season, the audaciousness with which brilliant yellow daffodils and rich purple crocus pop up out of last year’s mulch, the glee with which the daffodils bob their heads in the central Illinois breeze.  Nature uses bright colors, colors that complement each other, almost as though to get our attention, to demand that we notice the earth is changing, that it is waking up and greeting the spring sunshine and the lengthening days. 

As a sixth grader in India, I memorized Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils—long before I had ever seen a daffodil in person.   I loved the image of flowers “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” on the shores of a lake.  Years later, as a grad student at Penn State, I thought of the line “Continuous as the stars that shine/and twinkle on the Milky Way” after spending a late night lying in a field with friends, watching the Perseid meteor showers.  I had just come out as a lesbian and felt very alive.  My friends and I had not planned on our outing to the fields, so we were cold in our summer clothes, and the four of us were sharing one thermos of hot coffee.  We were all graduate students in English, so we tried to think of poems about stars as we watched the meteors; Wordsworth’s line came to me only after I was back in the warmth of my studio apartment.

I thought of Wordsworth again as I walked among the daffodils in Canterbury, on the grounds of St. Martin’s Church, the oldest church in England, established in 597 AD.   The church was just up the street from where I lived for the semester in 2009, and I often walked in the cemetery surrounding the building, admiring a spectacular view of the cathedral.  That morning, I was listening to music when a particularly catchy song came on, and I found myself dancing and singing among the daffodils and gravestones, and then ducking behind a bush and quieting down as some workers came to tend the grounds.  That spring in England, seeing yellow flowers adorn open, grassy spaces, I understood why daffodils moved Wordsworth to write poetry. 

Now another winter has come to an end, and daffodils offer themselves as gifts to our eyes, while their dancing forms inspire our bodies, inviting us to dance in the sunshine.

Sometimes, it is enough

 

 

My kitchen windowsill in Canterbury, England, early in 2009.

Last night, I was reading Malena Morling's poem "Simply Lit" (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/11/13) in which she asks, "Isn't it enough to be a person buying/ a carton of milk?"  My answer is, "Yes."  Sometimes, it is enough just to be alive, just to able to put one foot in front of the other to take a walk, to slice a piece of cheese, to peel an orange. 

A couple of weeks ago, browsing among the photos on my laptop, I came across this one taken during my semester in Canterbury, England.  I often ate breakfast standing at that kitchen counter, looking at the flowers that took me through the grey days into the unusually sunny spring.  I bought the flowers at the Wednesday market, where I also bought Brussels sprouts and tomatoes.  My life in Canterbury was simple.  I had arrived for fifteen weeks with two suitcases.  My clothes took up only a small section of the narrow wooden wardrobe and barely filled the drawers in the dresser.  I shopped often because the grocery stores were only a short walk away, and I bought little because I carried my groceries home.  And because I needed little.

The simplicity was freeing and comforting.  It allowed me to clear my head.  Living in a medieval city with a famous cathedral outside the kitchen window--I had only to look up above the brick wall--was both exhilarating and overwhelming.  Sometimes  I focused on the flowers on the windowsill instead, and on the breadbox.  And I felt that it was enough just to be a person drinking her cup of tea on a February morning. 

Happy birthday, Virginia Woolf!

I have missed writing the past few days.  I have been teaching, and preparing to teach, and thinking about teaching, and I have also been reading applications for the search committee on which I am serving.  

But today is Virginia Woolf’s birthday.  Today, I must write.  

I love Woolf’s writing: its elegance and verve and humor.  When I spent a semester in England three years ago, I went on what I considered a Virginia Woolf pilgrimage.  Included in my visits were Monk’s House (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/monks-house/) and Sissinghurst (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/sissinghurst-castle/).  Below, I include  photos I took there of Virginia Woolf’s and Vita Sackville-West’s desks.  May they inspire us all. 

Woolf's desk in the shed at Monk's House, Sussex

Woolf's photo on Vita Sackville-West's desk at Sissinghurst, Kent

 

Since it’s her birthday, we must hear Woolf’s own voice.  It somehow comforts me to know, that like most of us, Woolf also worried whether her writing was good enough.  And she loved being at home with her books.  She wrote this in a letter to Violet Dickinson  in early January 1905.  She was nearing her twenty-third birthday. (I am leaving her quirky punctuation intact): “I shall be rather—in fact very—glad to be home, in my own room, with my books, and I want to work like a steam engine, though editors wont take what I write.  I must show you what I have done, when it is typed, and please be very kind…and please don’t say you want to alter heaps of things or I shall give up writing altogether and take up drink or society.”