This Past Year and Looking Forward

  

“Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.”        —From Jacob’s Room       Virginia Woolf

    In many ways, the days of this past pandemic year seem to have been involved with slowly waiting. But now looking back, they seem to have flown by.  Experiences, sorrows, joys, have been both very public and very private.  All of us---excluding essential workers--- living our days mostly in isolation from others. The memories of those days, my days most specifically, spent creating artists books, reading, writing, working in the garden, agonizing over the election, spending precious moments with family, meeting up virtually with friends, are like leaves of a book, read in a particular way and known to me only. Those days are gone and now part of the past. I look forward to upcoming days--- specifically a cross country road trip holiday without dinners to cook, errands to run, or appointments to keep.  It will, as Virginia Woolf once said, "be a divine miracle"

 “In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.”

                                                                                                                            Virginia Woolf
      In late June 2020, so aware of memories of last June......Christine here visiting, a walk in Muir Woods, ferry ride from Oakland to San Francisco, SFMOMA and lunch at Slanted Door, the Monet Late Years exhibition at the deYoung, sharing tea in the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, painting watercolors in the Tilden Botanical Garden, Hans Hoffman exhibition at BAMPFA, and so much more.

      Now sitting by the raised vegetable beds and herb garden, alone and attuned to specific details all around me......the orange blossoms on the Thunbergia vine, the scent of lemon blossoms, bees sampling salvias, and hummingbirds darting here and there, the late day sun moving across the sky, and time passing.

Dalloway Day, 2020

“All the same that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park...then these roses; it was enough."

                                                                                               Virginia Woolf,   Mrs. Dalloway

     Celebrating Virginia Woolf and Mrs. Dalloway on this day, June 17, 2020. 

During the current world wide Covid-19 epidemic, it does seem that one gets lost on what day it is.  One day follows another.  Is it Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday?  Yet.........here in mid June there is indeed the sun breaking in the east's morning sky, long and leisurely walks under blue summer skies, and white roses in the garden............it is enough.

Marking This Day

    "Now at last plants are beginning to shoot and birds to sing and it is difficult not to think how much happiness there could be if the world would allow it."    Vanessa Bell

      Today, May 30 is Vanessa Bell's birth day.  She was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate in 1879. One-hundred and forty-one years ago today.  I'm thinking of her, and what she was experiencing in 1940.....the year of this quote.....the lingering effects of her son Julian's death in the Spanish Civil war; her daughter Angelica leaving Charleston for Yorkshire with Garnett; the ongoing war with Germany, and constant fears of invasion with aeroplanes flying regularly over the Sussex countryside.  

      Amid a beautiful 2020 Spring, I'm also thinking of the current times we are living through---a devastating world-wide pandemic, unceasing brutality against people of color by those who should protect, and an immoral  administration that seems bent on destroying our country and its democracy.

     Sitting in my garden, I am comforted by thoughts of you, sitting in your garden, noting new plants budding and blooming, and birds singing. So much to witness and appreciate in the natural world, so much potential for happiness,  if only the world would allow it. Nevertheless, I will pin down and mark this day and this moment...........May 30, the day of your birth.

Unsettled Times

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."
                                                                                            Virginia Woolf

In these unsettled times of Spring 2020, the creative power of making art and making a garden does indeed seem to bring a semblance of order to days, to weeks.  With few commitments and events to attend, I can instead leisurely work on my artists' books, some collage, assemblage, and my website.  Open ended time to garden---plant peppers and tomatoes, dead-head roses, keep the lettuces and tarragon watered.  I appreciate not feeling rushed or obliged to be somewhere.  To just be.

I've also been reading through the Letters and Diaries of Virginia Woolf for the years 1918---1920, trying to discover some of her thoughts, impressions of, and any experiences with the Spanish flu epidemic.  Still searching................

Illness 2020

“Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language.  English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache."
                                 Virginia Woolf

 Spring blooms in my 2020 garden.  It has been a year since I was planning my 2019 trip to Lewes to read through Vanessa Bell's letters at the University of Sussex and then attend Cambridge to study Virginia Woolf's gardens.  Such an incredible and enlightening experience.


There will be no trip this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  So many sick, so many lost worldwide.  There truly are no words to adequately express the grief, the human suffering, the despair.


Still, there is so much to be thankful for here at home. Birds at the feeder, hummingbirds sipping from salvias and abutilons, sweet valencias to enjoy, and an abundance of colors and scents in the garden.  I look forward to June's Santa Rosa plums, ripening figs and pears, and long warm summer evenings.
 

Woolf and Gardens.......Literature Cambridge

“The compensation of growing old is that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”
                                                            Virginia Woolf
The experience of reading, studying, and discussing various aspects of Virginia Woolf's use of gardens in her novels was exhilarating.  The Cambridge Literature course provided a wonderful opportunity to meet other Woolfians, explore Cambridge, and then visit Woolf's garden at Monk's House and Vanessa Bell's Charleston garden. Her garden in mid-July was a riot of color, attractive shapes and lovely fragrance. Mauve, scarlet and pink hollyhocks were everywhere, as were dusty millers, foxgloves, lavenders, orange and red poppies, yellow tiger lilies, purple and white iris, red hot pokers, burgundy mallows, purple artichoke flowers, white roses, and an abundance of ripening apples on numerous apple trees. Taken in its entirety, it all added a supreme flavour to existence........

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To Be Silent...... To Be Alone

“For now she need not think of anybody.  She could be herself, by herself.  And that was what now she often felt the need of—to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others...and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
                                                                                             Virginia Woolf

Adventures...alone enjoying a latte and a good read—Between the Acts—at the Depot in Lewes; quietly riding the daily bus from High Street to the University of Sussex; silently reading over 500 of Vanessa Bell’s letters at The Keep; discovering Bell’s subtle sense of humor in relating the challenges of being British and traveling by automobile throughout Italy during the 1940’s and 1950’s; visiting Anne of Cleves 15th-century timber-framed Wealden house on Southover High Street; touring the curious medieval, limestone and flint blocks Lewes Castle and taking in the view across the South Downs and Sussex; browsing the antiquarian bookstores along High Street; strolling the many gardens.......and sitting with watercolors, brush and paper, painting an old stone arch and abundant summer flowers;  being oneself, something invisible to others.........

Saint Anne’s Church and Cemetery......Lewes

”The colour of everything is curiously lovely.”
                                                      Vanessa Bell  

After dinner, and on my way back to the Orchard B&B in Lewes this evening, I strolled through Saint Anne’s Church cemetery, enjoying the summer flowers and fading light.  The color of everything was indeed curiously lovely, from the warm sunlight hitting the old stones, to the deepening blue early evening shadows and the pink roses climbing lazily over aged grey headstones.  Lately, being so immersed in Woolf’s novels—To the Lighthouse, Jacob’s Room, Orlando, and Mrs. Dalloway—in which death is such an abiding element, I found it oddly coincidental and pleasant to find myself wandering here.

Virginia Woolf’s Gardens

                   

“For the moment how sweet life is….in its regularity & order, & the garden & the room at night & music & my walks & writing easily & interestedly.”              Virginia Woolf

During the month of July, I will miss the order of my Orinda days: the ever changing summer garden, the still rooms, Brahms in the air, and putting pen to paper.  Traveling to the University of Sussex, and accessing a selection of Vanessa Bell's unpublished letters held in the Special Collections will be an intriguing adventure.  I hope to discover, in her own words, some of her experiences and impressions while traveling throughout Italy over a number of years. And then....on to Cambridge for a week long Literature Cambridge class---Virginia Woolf's Gardens.  Looking at how Woolf used colorful gardens, parks, and flowers in her numerous works will be an absolute delight, as well as meeting fellow Woolfians from around the world.  What a wonderful opportunity, and occasion to say "how sweet life is......"

Miner's Lettuce in the East Bay Hills

"A great sense of the brutality and wildness of the world remains with me...." 

                                                                                           Virginia Woolf

How to explain a small child looking up in a clear blue sky and seeing a plane suddenly a bright fireball in the sky, breaking up, hot metal pieces falling on cars, roofs and gardens, instantly killing five.  Or, a father and son, tracking a mother bear and her cubs, finding them in a sheltered cave, and killing them every one.  A clap of thunder and lightening strike hitting an ancient oak, setting it aflame and splitting the deeply ridged trunk.  Against this, Miner's Lettuce in the East Bay hills following spring rains, seeking sunlit quarters and multiplying, resembling so many carried on the wind, then rooted, upturned green umbrellas.

My Father Spoke in Aughts

  “I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.”

                                                                                                                     Virginia Woolf

    At Monday's Poetry Circle, our invited poet Brenda Hillman read from her recent book  "Extra Hidden Life among the Days".  What a revelation............... Can one  really write so honestly about one's father, examining their strengths, weaknesses, values and more?  Brenda certainly does in the Elegies section of this insightful and inspiring book.

As I was listening to her read about her father, I was thinking of my own father, his

hi    strengths and weaknesses, his values, the words he used.  I have carried some of the words he spoke deep within me.....the appalling east Texas racist expressions..... and have been so disturbed by them.   And ashamed.  And confused.  How could my gentle, loving, and affectionate father have used such words?  

Clearly, for so long I have been as Virginia says, overwhelmed by what I ought to have written.  Listening to Brenda read about her father freed something in me about my father.....and I found the proper words. In two days I wrote the poem, My Father Spoke in Aughts. 

To Get the Full Sound................

“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
                                                                                                                                                    Virginia Woolf

 In August, it seems there is less to do in the garden; and the strong sun and heat of the day drives one indoors.  This respite though, provides an opportunity to focus on other projects. 

In an effort to continue my research on Vanessa Bell,  I am reading (and for several, re-reading) six books at once---Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant a Biography, The Art of Bloomsbury, Vanessa Bell: Sketches in Pen and Ink, and the Letters of Virginia Woolf Vols I and II.  My current research involves seeking out letters, diaries, memoirs, and reminiscences that provide details about Bell's experiences, impressions, and insights while traveling and painting in Italy.  Indeed, in order to avoid "a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound" will require reading materials far beyond my own Bloomsbury library. A trip to the the Sussex University Library, and the Modern Archives at King's College Cambridge to access Bell's original letters, seems in order, doesn't it?

Time Alone..........

    “The truth is I like it when people actually come but I love it when they go.”
                                                                                           Virginia Woolf

   

   Like Virginia, I like it when people.....friends, family, grandchildren..... come by, visit, stay awhile.  But I also love it when they go.  Quiet mornings inspire, tending the garden energizes, and having time alone to write is absolute joy.



 

                                                                                                   

Hope Springs Eternal..........

   

  “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily.  Doubts creep in.  Then one becomes resigned.  Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.”

                                                                                                                        Virginia Woolf

      The creative power to create this blog (as with many endeavors), did indeed bubble up so pleasantly in the beginning.  Sustaining the creative power, energy, and enthusiasm has been quite another matter.  Doubts do creep in and resignation.  However, I am determined to not give in, and instead put hands to keyboard, shape my words, and move forward.  This determination will hopefully bear fruit.  

I was reminded this morning of just such determination in my attempts each summer to grow purple Japanese eggplant.  For the past four years in early summer, I've added amendment and worked a particular spot of ground near the raised vegetable beds, carried one or two 4" eggplants home from the nursery, and optimistically tucked them into the soil. Then diligently watered and waited.  Whether due to the local family of squirrels, smart, beady-eyed scrub jays, or the incompetence of the gardener, they've never grown, flourished, and made it to the kitchen table. This year may be different.  Hope for this eggplant and this blog, springs eternal............

Cambridge by way of London

“By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream.”

                                                                                                         Virginia Woolf

Having spent the morning doing some planning for my July trip to Cambridge, I appreciate having the ability (read money) to travel, to dream of idling on long expanses of lawns or loitering---books under arm---around centuries old doorways at Homerton College where I will be staying for two weeks.  I am looking forward to the lectures and discussions during the two Literature Cambridge classes---Woolf's Rooms and Reading Bloomsbury; to contemplating the future and the past through the course readings; and as always, meeting others interested in Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and all things Bloomsbury.

I have just now booked my hotel in London, the Morton in the heart of Bloomsbury.  Before training up to Cambridge, it will be lovely to spend a few days in this London area where I spent my sabbatical......letting the line of thoughts dip and drift, remembering walks, and re-visiting old Bloomsbury haunts, beloved bookstores and libraries, and leafy gardens and squares.