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.

The Urge to Make Things

One of the yarn bowls I painted two evenings ago.  It will look very different once it is fired next week.

Two evenings ago, as the snow swirled outside the large windows of the Illini Union Bookstore, I listened enthralled to a reading by Andre Dubus III.  He urged the writers in the audience to write, that writing was the point, that being published was nice, but that we have to write in the face of the inevitable rejection letters.  He described writing his novel House of Sand and Fog in twenty-minute segments while sitting in his car before he went in to teach at one of several jobs he was juggling at the time.  

After the book became a bestseller, he worked  on building his family home. At his reading at the bookstore, he spoke of framing his daughter's bedroom.   His agent asked him if he couldn't now pay someone else to do that, couldn't he get back to writing?  He was writing, he told his agent, but he also wanted to build his daughter's bedroom, that it was like tucking her into her blanket at night.  

Dubus was describing making things.  He built his novel a piece at a time, and later, he built his family home.  They were both acts of creation.  

When I left the reading, I headed over to the Pottery Place, where I painted yarn bowls with a dozen other knitters.  Yarn bowls are ingenious containers that keep yarn from rolling away under the coffee table while one is knitting.  I had never painted pottery before, but my nephews have painted gifts for me.  As I chose colors and brushes and came up with a design, I felt like a child, playful and ready to experiment.  As I painted, I got lost in the process.  The blank surface of the bowl was like my blank computer screen or a blank page in my journal: an invitation to create something that had never existed before.  

I left the Pottery Place just as it closed, accompanied by another knitter, someone I had met for the first time that evening.  We talked about how remarkable it was that in this world of mass production, we had just painted bowls that were almost certainly unlike any others in the world, and how that was like the knitting we did, too, as we tweaked patterns, chose yarn, and knitted with our very personal tension, so that my stitches and hers would be different.

I came home wanting to write, to knit, to paint some more, and soon.  What I needed to do was to sit down at the kitchen counter to grade a paper.  The next morning, I had to teach, and to give feedback on a couple of dozen drafts.  And that was okay.  The delight and inspiration from my evening lightened the work I had to do, and I went in to campus the next day reminded that my students were creating, too.  

The cardigan I have been knitting and hope to finish before the winter is done.  I had to take apart over forty rows of over six hundred stitches and start the cardigan over in October, when I discovered I had twisted it when I joined it in the round,  but I haven't become discouraged yet.  

I finished knitting this hat last night.  I began it during one of the pauses in knitting the cardigan, when I had to wait to get advice about a next step.  

My favorite chair, where I often read and write and where I am writing this.  The red notebook is my journal.  I went through about half a dozen notebooks last year.  

Poem in Your Pocket

A pocket-size copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's collection.

April 18 was Poem in Your Pocket Day,  when the Academy of American Poets encouraged readers to share poems.  I loved the idea of handing out poems to people  I might meet, so I clicked on some of the "pockets" on the website and found the poem I wanted under the one labeled "Walk": Walt Whitman's "Miracles."

That morning, I distributed copies to the students in my poetry course.  One of them volunteered to read the poem to the class.  It was a rainy, April morning, and I said to the students, "Whitman would probably think our rainy morning was a miracle, too."  

Here is Whitman's poem for you to enjoy:

Miracles

    by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

Why, who makes much of a miracle? As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of    the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night    with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer    forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so    quiet and bright, Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place. To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with    the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same. To me the sea is a continual miracle, The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—    the ships with men in them, What stranger miracles are there? - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20162#sthash.B7QPs2JV.dpuf

Miracles

  by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
   the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
   with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
   forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
   quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
   the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
   the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20162#sthash.B7QPs2JV.dpuf

Miracles

  by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
   the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
   with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
   forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
   quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
   the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
   the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20162#sthash.B7QPs2JV.dpuf

Miracles

  by Walt Whitman

Why, who makes much of a miracle?
As to me I know of nothing else but miracles, 
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, 
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, 
Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of
   the water, 
Or stand under trees in the woods, 
Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night
   with any one I love, 
Or sit at table at dinner with the rest, 
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, 
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer
   forenoon, 
Or animals feeding in the fields, 
Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, 
Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so
   quiet and bright, 
Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring; 
These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, 
The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with
   the same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,
The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—
   the ships with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/20162#sthash.B7QPs2JV.dpuf

Pockets of Rest

After a writing retreat with NatalieGoldberg in 2010 in Taos, New Mexico, I was moved to create a writing practice group.  We meet on Tuesday evenings twice a month, sip on tea, laugh a lot, and write in ten-minute blocks in response to prompts we create.  When the timer goes off, we stop writing and read out loud to each other.  I wrote the piece below during a session with my group in response to the prompt “pockets.”

----------------------------

Pockets are resting places—for our hands, for our keys, for the ticket stub not to be parted with just yet. 

Pockets are openings that hold.  Sometimes they can hold us.

Pockets of time.  Is that even an expression?  I wish to inhabit a pocket of time. 

It would be soft and worn, a pocket in an old apron.  The fabric would be a faded calico, the apron worn by a woman like me, only taller, bigger, older—my solid, calm alter ego.  She would be stirring a large pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, her grey hair pulled back out of the way, some of it curling around her face in the steam from the pot. 

Her pocket would be a resting place, a place to be invisible and quiet.  A place to pause.  I need to create such a pocket of quiet contemplation and rest. 

Somehow, doing laundry last weekend was a kind of rest: being able to wash a whole load of towels without checking whether it was sunny out because we once again have the luxury of the dryer, the steady, rotating thump and hum.

On Sunday evenings, when I shower and get into my pajamas and then come downstairs to the aroma of dinner, then the living room feels like a pocket, a cocoon away from it all. 

These pockets of time allow me to be in touch with the solid, no-nonsense part of me, the one that knows it is all okay.  That I’m doing my best, that in this moment, I am always okay.

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.

Falling in Love with a Place

Recently, going through some files on my computer, I came across this fragment of a blog entry that I had written last summer, when I first started toying with the idea of blogging.  I’m posting it for Valentine’s Day, a day dedicated to love.

 

August 5, 2011

Last night, when I said “Iowa City,” I found myself smiling in that involuntary way I used to when I was first in love and had an opportunity to say my partner’s name: Marilyn.  Just saying her name was a joy, a delightful reminder of the new thrill in my life.  I would feel shy and happy and self conscious all at once.  It was as though in saying her name, my love, our love became visible.  Simultaneously, I felt myself enjoying a secret thrill, a physical sensation that no one else knew was occurring.  I’m realizing that one can fall in love with a place in the same way: with the same thrill at the newness, the same slow discovery of loveable quirks, the same pleasure at talking with someone else about the new love.  That this new “love” of mine is Iowa City is unexpected and even a little amusing.  I live in Champaign, a Midwestern, Big-Ten university town, so Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, should not have been novel.  And I arrived there at the beginning of the heat wave of 2011, so I did not explore it as much as I had thought I would.  But here it is: a shy smile when I name the city in casual conversation.

Part of what made this experience unusual was driving west by myself to a place I had never been before.  I am not used to driving long distances alone, so I was both excited and nervous.  However, after I drove around Peoria, which was prettier and more urban than I’d remembered, I grew excited.  Approaching the Mississippi and then crossing it felt momentous.  I saw a sign for the official Iowa Welcome Center just on the other side of the river, so I got off Route 80 to take a break—and to make sure that I was headed the right way.  As I walked around the Welcome Center—a large, unremarkable, pale yellow building that could have been a medical practice in another life—I delighted in the art gallery and the free coffee and even updated my Facebook status to describe these amenities.  The art gallery was simply a section of the Center set aside for a current exhibit, and the oil paintings of the Midwestern landscape were filled with bold colors and large brushstrokes.  The rest of the Center was a store that had some merchandise specific to Iowa, while the rest was a blend of museum-store-type treats and Cracker-Barrel-like knickknacks. 

-----------------------------------------------

That’s as far as the fragment went in my first attempt at blogging.  I no longer feel a thrill when I say “Iowa City,” but I have fond memories of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival (http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest/), where I enjoyed a week immersed in words and surrounded by writers.  I hope to return some day.  I’ll end this post with a few photos from Iowa City at the height of the heat wave of 2011, when it was often 101 degrees Fahrenheit at seven in the evening.

At the Iowa City Public Library

This little girl knew how to handle the heat during an evening concert.  Me, I savored an ice cream cone from Whitey's and listened to the music.

I enjoyed an Italian lunch while reviewing the work of a fellow workshop participant.

On Thursday evening, the clouds foreshadowed a break in the heat, which came on Saturday, my last day in Iowa City.

A souvenir of the week.

It was too hot for dinner, so I ate dessert instead.

I loved coming across quotes from literature on sidewalks all over the city.  This was one of my favorites.

The art museum, located on the river, was closed after the floods of 2008.

Words in the most unexpected places.

I had to get a couple of these for my eight-year-old nephews, who are big Harry Potter fans.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.