hi stranger

at mudie's corner in oxford street all the red and blue beads had run together on the string. the motor omnibuses were locked. mr. spalding going to the city looked at mr. charles budgeon bound for shepherd's bush. the proximity of the omnibuses gave the outside passengers an opportunity to stare into each other's faces. yet few took advantage of it. each had his own business to think of. 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, james spalding, or charles budgeon, and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all - save 'a man with the red moustache,' 'a young man in grey smoking a pipe.'

her head against a pillar

"somehow it seems to matter."

silver words

talking, talking, talking - as if everything could be talked - the soul itself slipped through the lips in thin silver disks which dissolve in young men's minds like silver, like moonlight. oh, far away they'd remember it, and deep in dullness gaze back on it, and come to refresh themselves again.

virginia woolf

i came across an excellent book sale last week and grabbed jacob’s room by virginia woolf for five bucks. i sort of have an obsession with her, the oppression she dealt with supposedly being homosexual, having some sort of mental illness (dementia, hearing voices), but still seeing the political oppression of being a woman in the victorian age. she was brilliant in her own strange, almost avant garde, way. i’ve read mrs. dalloway three times in college, the first two times for a paper and the third time for another class. by then, i really didn’t need to read the book again, but i did as i saw it as an opportunity to indulge myself. it’s weird to think that i used to read so much.

i actually didn’t care for mrs. dalloway the first time i read it. it’s just about this woman, clarissa dalloway, whose only concern was a party she was throwing. the story takes place in only one day. but in this one day, she comes to an epiphany. another character had been a soldier who suffers from post trauma stress disorder. even though they don’t know each other in the story, they are basically two sides of the same coin. only after reading it again did i begin to grasp the beauty of the book, and even at that time, i could barely articulate why i loved it so much. what i’ve come to conclude is that even though clarissa dalloway seemed so shallow with her only concern about a party, she was a lovely person, worrying about how people would get along. also, it was the style of writing, stream of conciousness, that i fell in love with.

so we’ll see how i feel about jacob’s room. here’s the first excerpt that jumped out at me:

“who...” said the lady, meeting her son; but as there was a great crowd on the platform and jacob had already gone, she did not finish her sentence. as this was cambridge, as she was staying there for the week-end, as she saw nothing but young men all day long, in streets and round tables, this sight of her fellow-traveler was completely lost in her mind, as the crooked pin dropped by a child into the wishing-well twirls in the water and disappears for ever.