"Mrs. Dalloway": Woolf's Time and Ours

I've really been enjoying a spate of recent articles that talk about Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, like this one by Jenny Offill in The New Yorker and this one by Michael Cunningham in The New York Times.  I think that they're all part of a new edition of Mrs. Dalloway, and I've loved the essays so much that I'm thinking of buying the book, just to make sure I always have the essays.  But as I looked, it seems that there might be 2 new editions released in the same year?  And yes, I'm such an English major type that I might just buy them all.  Or maybe I'll just print these essays and keep them with my battered copy of the novel that I already own.

Reading the essays makes me remember why I wanted to be a writer and why the Modernists talk to me in such specific ways.  Offill quotes from Woolf's 1919 essay "Modern Novels":  "Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small."

Offill says, "I loved this idea of recording the atoms as they fell, of registering each one, however small a moment it appeared to be. Woolf’s insight seemed sneakily mystical to me. Many mystic traditions teach that the distinctions between the mundane and the sublime are more porous than we imagine: if one is truly awake, these differences cease to be apparent."

Cunningham says, "Woolf was among the first writers to understand that there are no insignificant lives, only inadequate ways of looking at them. In “Mrs. Dalloway,” Woolf insists that a single, outwardly ordinary day in the life of a woman named Clarissa Dalloway, an outwardly rather ordinary person, contains just about everything one needs to know about human life, in more or less the way nearly every cell contains the entirety of an organism’s DNA.

Yesterday I took several actions to show my writerly muse that she shouldn't abandon me just yet.  I sent my poetry manuscript in for the Wilder Prize competition, and I committed myself to writing 1000 words a week on my apocalyptic novel.  I made a pact with a writer friend who was once my student--we will be accountability partners.

Cunningham's final paragraph seems like a fitting manifesto for whatever time period we're entering, as we all do the writing that will need to be done:  “'Mrs. Dalloway' would be a book about a London that had been changed forever, superimposed over a London determined to get back to business as usual, as quickly as possible. Clarissa would stand in for all those who still believed in flowers and parties; Septimus for those who’d been harmed beyond any powers of recovery. The novel would also mark the early period of a literary career that would change forever the ways in which novels are written, and read. It’s an intricately wrought portrait of a place and a moment, and a stunningly acute depiction of the multifarious experience of living a life, anywhere, at any time."

Our world will bear more than a passing resemblance to the one that emerged after World War I.   I wonder what new writing will burst forth to deal with the issues.

Tilting the Trajectory

I awoke this morning to the news that Jean Valentine has died, and I'm reading various tributes to her.  I feel the same way that I felt when Marvin Bell died recently.  I had an inkling of both of them as people who were kind and opened poetry doors for students, but I hadn't read much of their work.  More names to add to the list.  Likewise the writer Barry Lopez--such losses for the writing world.

When I saw that Jean Valentine was born in 1934, my first thought was, well, at least she had a nice, long life.  Then I realized, as I often do, that my parents were born in 1938 and 1939, and I don't think of them as ready for death, as already having had a nice, long life--although they have.  

And thoughts of my own mortality are never far away.  Let me think about my own long life that grows ever shorter.  Let me think of my writing--I've been feeling that I've been somewhat neglectful.

I turned in grades on December 15, and I was full of ideas about how to use the time.  It's one of the few times in an academic year when I have more than a week off.  Sure, I need to do the prep work for spring term--choosing due dates and entering them into several places in the course shell.  But that still left lots of time.

Now I have one week left, and I'm trying not to fall into the spiral of self-recrimination about all I haven't done.  Instead of listing all the stuff around the house that got done (cooking, washing windows, hanging lights, sorting, sorting, sorting), let me focus on the writing that I have done, the insights that I have had:

--When I was looking through my blog to find my first mention of the new virus (late January, not December) that would upend our lives, I saw mention of a poem I wrote about Noah's wife going to work and having a boss that was focused on ARC (average registered credit).  This morning, I pulled that legal pad out of a pile.  I thought that I hadn't written much poetry this past year.  But that's not true.  How much of it is publishable?  These days, I'm less concerned with that question and more concerned with the practice of it.

--I have done some poetry writing--mostly shorter, and then a start at my menopausal Jesus poem.  There's still time for a poem or two.  And time to type some work into the computer.

--Let me also remember that the job at the Ft. Lauderdale campus of my school was posted, which means I've spent some time composing a cover letter and thinking about the application.  My job that I have now will be transitioning into a campus director position when the sale of my school is finalized, but my campus will be closing.  My counterpart at the Ft. Lauderdale campus has moved on, so her position is now available.  It's clear to me that if I want to stay with this school, I need to apply for that job.

--I had thought I might return to my apocalyptic novel.  I wrote the first 70 pages in a white hot heat in summer of 2019, and then I lost steam.  I returned to it in January of 2020, and then the virus happened, and I wondered if my novel was doomed--part of the apocalypse in my novel is political, part is a virulent flu.  

But as the virus has progressed, I've figured out how to change the novel to incorporate this virus and the next virus.  So I decided to read the novel again, to see if I was remembering it correctly.  I'm happy to report that it's got potential.

And if I'm being honest, I also stopped writing because I wasn't sure what happens next.  I've got my main character reunited with a grad school friend who is now working as part of the police force of the repressive government--what now?

It's time to find out.  Next semester I have a reduced teaching load because enrollment is down at Broward College and at least one of my classes has been reassigned.  I'm expecting to lose another.  Let me claim this time for writing. 

Holiday Noticings

--My favorite memory of the past week?  Oddly, it may be the night we sat on the front porch, all the candles in the Advent wreath.  A raccoon and a baby raccoon rambled by in our front yard, paying us no mind.  I felt as if we background characters in an illustrated children's book about woodland creatures who celebrate Christmas together, as if the raccoons were returning from Roberta Rabbit's Christmas Eve gift exchange.

--My favorite Christmas week typo (note the last word), from an e-mail I was writing (and happily, I discovered the error before I hit send):  "Program leaders, please stay in touch with your adjunct faculty to make sure they’re understanding our new procedures so that everyone is paid in a timely manger."

--We own a long shelf of Christmas CDs, but we've been enjoying the Classical Christmas station on Amazon music.  About a month ago, my spouse realized that the Alexa feature of our new Smart TV could be used to pull up music, and we've been having fun with that.  I like having a variety of musical approaches to Christmas music in the background without having to change CDs.  And yet we've also discovered how much dreadful music is out there--thus, the constant playing of the Classical Christmas station.

--Sunday as I was cooking a turkey--yes, a whole 22 pound turkey--I wondered why I wanted to do this.  Yes, I like having left overs, and I like the cheap price of a whole turkey (68 cents a pound--protein doesn't get much cheaper these days, even when one buys legumes).  Yes, I like the way the house smells while the turkey is cooking.  But my spouse pointed out that I'm cooking for 10-12 people, and we've almost never had that many people come over.  It's a lot of clean up.  And we're running out of space to store leftovers.

--Monday morning I decided it was time to start walking a bit further--yes, this decision was prompted by my stepping on the scale and realizing that the magical thinking that I could overindulge indefinitely was not true.  As I walked around the lake, from a short distance, a man said, "Did you see that?  What was that?"  I had some suggestions:  a fish, one of the dolphins we sometimes see, the manatee that one morning walker told me she had seen once.  The man was from Salt Lake City and had been up for hours writing about leaving his job.  He had that antsiness of someone making a big decision, but having no one to talk to.  We chatted for a bit, and although we didn't talk about God, I felt that the world was saying, "There's more than one way to be a spiritual director."

--I loved this article that I discovered yesterday.  It's about how the historian Heather Cox Richardson became so widely read and influential.  I needed this reminder that there are many ways to make an impact with one's writing and that it's not too late, as long as we're writing. 

Remembering All the Slaughtered Innocents

Today is the day we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear of competitors.

I remember earlier years when I might have written about searching our own hearts to see how much Herod we have in our own outlook towards others.  This week-end, I thought about writing a post that ties Herod to modern politics, but now that Trump has signed the relief package, that impulse feels less pressing.

Or perhaps, to be more accurate, I am tired of thinking about Trump, tired of thinking about his narcissism, tired of the wreckage in the wake of this administration.  And yes, I realize that I have the luxury of feeling tired and deciding to look away, to write about something else.

Let us take a minute to think about the Holy Family, transformed into refugees, fleeing for their lives with just the clothes on their backs. Here in our modern world, we see no shortage of people transformed from regular citizens to refugees in just a matter of hours.

Maybe we don't want to think on a huge, global scale. The human brain was not meant for such horror. Some of us become immobilized. But we could help refugees on a smaller scale.  We could donate money to groups that help refugees or we could write letters to legislators on the behalf of refugees.  We could work more closely with those groups that help refugees:  tutoring or cooking meals or helping with relocation.  At the very least, we can pray.

Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: "We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you , in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

Holiday Cooking

I have the small cast iron skillet in the oven; I'm making cornbread, which I'll later turn into stuffing for the turkey.  Yes, the holiday cooking continues.  It's chilly here, so it's a good day to have a turkey in the oven.

Stuffing is such a strange thing:  I'll be disassembling a loaf of homemade sourdough and a pan of cornbread to create stuffing for the turkey, and I'll likely have some left over for a pan of dressing.  

I'm planning a repeat of Thanksgiving:  a turkey, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, both the jellied and the chunky cranberry sauce.  It's one of my favorite meals, and tomorrow, I'll make soup out of the bones.

Today I'm feeling a bit of sorrow as my favorite time of year, mid September to late December, comes to an end.  I'm enjoying these days off, while at the same time wondering if I should be doing more with this time off instead of just cooking.  And yet, the cooking brings me joy.

Let me capture some of my cooking of the past week, and the Facebook posts I made of them.  I did make some Santa Lucia bread and brought some to work.  On Dec. 23, I made this post to go with the picture below:  "She wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him on a bread board--wait, that's not how that Gospel goes?"

I thought about making a later post with a picture of the sliced bread, with a caption "Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded," but I worried I would fall on the far side of the disrespectful line.  

Later in the day, I made this post:  "When I bring baked goods to share with colleagues at work, I always list the ingredients, in case anyone has allergies or other reasons for avoiding ingredients. When I think of annual reviews, let me remember this one:"

When we did the kitchen remodel for our last house, back in 2003, we thought about getting a double oven, but at the last minute, we changed our minds.  I realized that we would only use the double oven a few times a year, and so it wasn't worth the extra expense.

It's the time of year when I'm surprised by what I haven't cooked yet.  This year I've cooked lots of bread, but not as many cookies.  Still, I'm filled with the contentment that comes from pans waiting to go into the oven, with stock simmering on the stove top, with the knowledge that good meals are ahead.

The Christmas Report

The cold front has finally arrived.  This morning is downright cold, at least in South Florida terms.  Any time the temp falls below 50 degrees down here, I say it's cold, and this morning, it's 47 degrees at the airport.

Yesterday some of our local family members were coming over for brunch, so we had some manic cleaning in the morning.  We threw some salmon on the grill and put some potato chunks in the oven to roast.

It's nice to have a cleaner house this morning with leftovers in the fridge.  We also have an uncooked turkey in the fridge.  I found whole, frozen turkeys for 68 cents a pound, which is not that much more than what I paid for the first whole turkey I ever cooked, back in 1990 or '91.

We had thought we might assemble outside, but it was chilly and windy yesterday.  Happily, our gathering was small, and it was easy to spread out inside.  We had my spouse's brother and his wife come over; we've seen them twice since the pandemic started.  My brother-in-law is a surgical tech in a South Florida hospital, and we were happy to hear that he's gotten the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.  He's had plenty of protective gear during this pandemic, and they don't go out and about much, so we've felt fairly safe seeing them.  Our adult niece also dropped by.

We tried doing a group Facebook video chat with my spouse's family members who are in the Memphis area, but we had some trouble with the audio, so we signed off fairly quickly.  Our niece had another engagement, so she left about an hour later.

Throughout the afternoon, I watched neighborhood kids go by, some of them learning to use new bikes or skates.  I watched people walking their dogs or just enjoying a jaunt in the neighborhood.  I take great comfort from these signs that life as we once knew it continues.  In this week of hearing of a new strain of COVID-19, one that's even more contagious, I needed a sign like the view from my front window on Christmas afternoon.  Happily, the vaccine will likely protect against the new strain too.

As I was thinking about Christmas and the most hopeful news of the past week, this haiku like creation came to me:

Now yet not complete
Inbreaking kingdom of God
First vaccines given

Later in the afternoon, my spouse, his brother, and I played some hymns.  My brother-in-law had viola lessons as a child, so he was able to pick up the violin fairly easily.  I started on the mandolin and then switched to the piano.  We worked on "What Child is This," which is not the easiest song to pick up and play with no rehearsal--fun! (and I do mean that literally--it was fun).

After all our guests had left, my spouse and I watched some science-y specials on quantum mechanics.  At first, watching physicists talk about all the unexpected ways that particles can move across space and time might not seem like the best choice for Christmas.

But this year, hearing about both quantum mysteries and cosmic mysteries in the same 24 hours struck just the right amount of wonder and awe.

Christmas Eve

I knew it would be a topsy turvy Christmas Eve:  just one church service instead of several, outdoor church with no decorations and no congregational singing.  I thought I would make a pot of clam chowder to have after church.  I thought I might have a restful day ahead of church, a day of reading and contemplation.

But first, I knew I needed to get to the grocery store, so I decided to go early.  As is often the case, I bought more than I anticipated, which meant that the putting away of the groceries took longer than I thought.

I came home to discover that my spouse had finished hanging the pendant lights over the kitchen sink.  Is it just us or are home repairs/improvements going at a much slower pace as we age?  For example, we knew that we would have pendant lights over the kitchen sink; it was always part of the kitchen remodel.  But it took us a long time to decide on the exact lights, to order them, and then to get them hung.  Of course, we have more to choose from in terms of the pendants, the design of the light itself.

And can we talk about how impossible the directions were?  My spouse needed extra time to figure out exactly how to hang them, and it was hard to tell which wire was which.

And then we washed the windows of the living area.

That sounds like such a simple thing, but our windows aren't, which is why we don't wash them often, which is why they get so dirty, which is why we get overwhelmed and don't do them at all.  Yesterday, we finally cut out the wiring from an old alarm system so that we could remove the screens and get to all of the windows.  We spent much of the middle part of Christmas Eve day removing screens, washing screens, and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing windows and frames and window sills.

Then we tried to recover.  Washing the windows means a lot of stretching and bending--the outside glass of all of our windows are not easy to access--another reason why we don't do this often.  I took a handful of ibuprofen, took a shower, and off we went to church.

We arrived to church to find this, which made me gasp with happiness:

My pastor made the call in the early afternoon to move the 5:30 worship inside, which gave him limited time to decorate the stripped down sanctuary that hasn't been used for worship since spring.  He said he got the last 3 poinsettias from the grocery store and 2 small pine trees from the Home Depot at 25% off.  

He dug the nativity scene out of storage, along with some red balls and pine cones, and voila, a beautiful altar.

I found the service moving, but I am always moved by Christmas Eve, with its nostalgic elements and that message of the good news that God has come to be with us.

We came home to eat the cooked shrimp that I got when I went shopping.  Earlier in the day, I decided not to make the chowder, since it wasn't going to be cold outside.  We ate the last of the delicious popcorn that arrived earlier this week.  I thought about tuning into other services, but in the end, we watched the recording of our own church's service again--my spouse analyzes the music because he's part of the choir, and I control the rudimentary camera, so I'm interested to see how that looks to the people at home.

It was a different Christmas Eve, but I'm not sure I have a regular set of Christmas Eve traditions, the way I have Thanksgiving traditions.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that every Christmas Eve feels odd, now that I am grown.

But odd doesn't mean bad.