Nevertheless, life is pleasant, life is tolerable. Tuesday follows Monday; then comes Wednesday. The mind grows rings; the identity becomes robust; pain is absorbed in growth. Opening and shutting, shutting and opening, with increasing hum and sturdiness, the haste and fever of youth are drawn into service until the whole being seems to expand in and out like the mainspring of a clock. How fast the stream flows from January to December! We are swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shadow. We float, we float . . .
The Waves, by Virginia Woolf, from the Woolf in Bloom blog at http://woolfbloom.blogspot.ca/.
I find that these words of Virginia Woolf's creation do indeed "hit the nail on the head". However, I am always reticent to absorb her perspective. In the end she did lose her way. "Floating" seems to me a chancy way to pass through the world.
ReplyDeleteShe lost her way more times than in the end; she had breakdowns several times and tried to kill herself at least once without success. It seems to have been a lifelong struggle for her to stay afloat. We know from following her logic through much of her writing that she was a person who knew how to paddle — mentally, for sure.
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