Virginia Woolf's Bedroom

It's the blue one at the end of the hall ―
cover it with poppies you bought yourself,
let pollen drop from your hair like wedding rice.

Lie on the child-like bed
under the narrow eyes of portraits.
Let your wasp eyes unhinge, draw honey.

Be made a woman here.

Slip endless stones from your pockets ―
raise the window against the rush of the river.
You prefer men to cauliflowers (and hours).

Let life stand still.



tk/June 2013

Thanks to R.A.D. Stainforth for this excellent read.

Charleston Farmhouse Door 

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pieces of themselves

Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.

― Haruki Murakami



The brilliant Murakami leads the race in the Nobel Prize for literature...I wish him the best. 

Virginia Woolf's bedroom
photographed by Annie Leibovitz

doppelgängers

A man's face is his autobiography.

A woman's face is her work of fiction.

Oscar Wilde

The last time I was at one of my favorite bookstores, not the one with the creaky hardwood floors, but the other one, in the old church building, I picked up a lovely soft cover book Virginia Woolf by Ruth Webb. Not only is it full of wonderful photos of Woolf, but excerpts of her handwritten pages, as well. I've always maintained much can be gleaned from one's face and hand.

One thing about her face, that especially struck me, was how much she looked like Oscar Wilde. Intriguing, how both writers, in their own particular styles, used settings in English polite society to discuss human relationships in class and gender. I was also compelled to compare their handwriting, which happened to be amazingly similar, not to mention their names both begin with "w". Curious, don't you think?

Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway manuscript, left, and Wilde's correspondence, right
(click to enlarge)