Thursday, January 20, 2011

A Room Of One's Own

"Her mind was like her room, in which lights advanced and retreated, came pirouetting and stepping delicately,...and then her whole being was suffused, like the room again, with a cloud of some profound knowledge..." - "The Lady in the Looking-Glass"
We're approaching the birthday of Virginia Woolf: January 25th. She wrote about having money and a room of one's own in order for a woman to write fiction. I often think that I fuss and decorate the space I want to write in more than I write. But the underlying connective thread holding my life together between the extremes of solitude and communion is the space I call home. Even if my home is a metaphor for my tendency to concentrate more on straightening and decorating than focusing on content and meaning, I rationalize that it's part of the ongoing attempt to make my actions and lifestyle congruent with my values and vision (after all, here I am writing about it).


By nature of the way society is set up, women struggle to find a way to claim their body, mind and spirit while they coordinate career, family and creative endeavors. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in Gifts From the Sea says, "The problem is how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel. For to be a woman is to have interests and duties, ranging out in all directions from the central mother-core, like spokes from the hub of a wheel." Lindbergh's words suggest that women need to give themselves the gift of a place where those elements that create the "balance beam" of life can be realized.
 
Woolf was able to shut herself off from the outside world in a shed in the garden. It gave her the privacy to think clearly, explore and expand new ideas. In her essay, Woolf comments that symbolically a room of one's own means thinking for oneself.

If you're so inclined, talk about (and/or show on your blog) how your "room" shapes and expresses your consciousness.



This is where I do most of my writing. It's my kitchen counter. Since I knocked down the walls separating my dining room, kitchen and living room, this is the most central area in my home. I think it represents good things to eat, being nourished and sitting up high to overlook my handiwork.







This is my study where I do some of my writing, but since I bought a laptop, I don't use it as much. It represents my best-laid plans which pretty much just lie there catching dust.








I do a lot of writing at the little table where Mom used to eat.











This is where my late-night ramblings get jotted down; where I've written most of my poetry, working from pages of my organizer and scraps of envelopes.








 

This is how it will look if my home is ever turned into a museum like Virginia Woolf's House.











What kind of space do you work in?
What is your favorite Virginia Woolf quote?

67 comments:

  1. Thanks for the tour! Your home feels.. Well... Very homey. Comfortable... And warm!

    I tend to leave my work at the office, but my play space is balance between chaos and order... Regimented disorder? With an unlikely assortment of things that reflect my interests and rub elbows, incidentally forming an imprecise mirror of myself. : p

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  2. Nice! Although if you could make some messes and have more disorder it would make the rest of us feel better.

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  3. "Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title."

    Thanks for sharing your home with us ... it looks like a person could breathe there and be real.

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  4. ALESA - An imprecise mirror of yourself. Hmm, that's intriguing. I'd be curious to see what those odds and ends are.

    LOACH - I could do a whole photographic essay on the clutter in my basement. I know exactly what it represents.

    SUSAN - Thanks so much for the lovely quote. I do breathe and practice reality here.

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  5. Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

    I liked in the video she told,"Words do not live in a dictionary, but live in your mind."
    I have made up a few myself.You have good order in your home and writing.i work in a smallarea where I can reach for a number of references and don't go far for others. In better weather I sit outside with my laptop.

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  6. ahh, kass...this is terrific. right on time. the notion of place, our stuff, decorating, fixing, adjusting, poking, prodding the surroundings. yes.
    i'll post something similar, soon...that precious room of our own. (i did sort of an "antimatter" post today; oh well. it's all part of the process.)
    thanks so much.

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  7. I like the idea of having a private space in which to write and, as you know, both Carrie and I have our own offices that reflect our very different ways of working. The simple fact is I can write pretty much anywhere and under any conditions. I can even write while Carrie’s watching TV if I’m engrossed enough in what I’m doing but that doesn’t happen too often. Most of the time these days I work in the living room with my back to the window. Straight in front of me is the bird’s cage, the TV is to my right and the couch where Carrie sits is to my left. I’m comfortable here. For a while I actually worked on the couch beside Carrie with my laptop on a tray. Now I have a wee table, basically a tea tray on legs, just big enough for the laptop and the trackball. I think what I’ve discovered is that once I start writing I’m so in my own head that nothing else really matters and you have to work to pull me out of myself.

    I liked the setup we had in out last flat actually. I was a big living room which we divided into three areas, two workstations for each of us and a TV-viewing bit. I’d go back to that. Before that we shared a single office. We even shared a computer for about a week – like that was going to work out.

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  8. PRAIRIE BOY - I'm glad you watched the video. She says some pretty interesting things. Sitting outside with a laptop sounds pretty good. I have a book called Writing in Restaurants that suggest different ways to stimulate our writing.

    SUSAN - Anti-matter, matter, what does it all matter? It's all stuff.

    JIM - I kind of figured you could tune just about everything out while you focused on writing. Sometimes my distractions are more interesting than my writing and I just go with it.

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  9. 'Even if my home is a metaphor for my tendency to concentrate more on straightening and decorating than focusing on content and meaning, I rationalize that it's part of the ongoing attempt to make my actions and lifestyle congruent with my values and vision.'

    I had to repeat your quote because it's so good! I am privileged to have a study where I surround myself with good books and artifacts, and solitude if I need it.

    I found this one: 'I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again - as I always am when I write.'

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  10. PAUL - I envy you your surroundings. Thanks for the good Woolf quote.

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  11. I had a college professor who asked us to "sketch" our writing place, and our process of settling into writing. I recall procrastinating showed up quite a bit in mine... sigh :)

    I love where you sit and that it is an area that to me, feels like the heart of the home. I sit in my kitchen too. Thanks for sharing these lovely photos and thoughts with us.

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  12. i'm not a writer, by any stretch. most days i have trouble putting together a coherent blog comment. so i don't have a writing place. i do have the place where i process my photos, a shot of which i'll put on my blog. i have a table where the flowers of the week reside, where the dead ones come to rest, where the bits and pieces of broken glass, rock, wire, and other detritus await their turn in front of the lens.

    your home, kass, looks so welcoming and nurturing of the creative process.

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  13. My work, like my creative practice, has less walls than my home. One day I hope to have open plan circumstances, too.

    Your home is like a magazine article or a film set - please tell me you tidied for the photographs. I'd take photos of my place but I can't risk damaging the camera when I invariably trip over the clutter.

    I'll be back to listen VW when my little man wakes from his nap.

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  14. I'm really going to have to read something by Virginia Woolf, since first Limes and now you have both referenced her. Whenever I hear the name I immediately think of the Richard Burton/Elisabeth Taylor movie, which I realize isn't the same thing.

    I do most of my writing at various branches of the Cuyahoga County Public Library. It's a fascinating writing experience. Right now at the computer next to mine, two teenage girls are giggling rather loudly at something on YouTube.

    Virginia, it ain't just women who sometimes need solitude.

    You have a lovely house, Kass. Hang onto it.

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  15. My son and I share a computer (laptop) at the end of the dining table next to the kitchen. For the past year, that is where I have written. Today I am back doing new writing in a notebook, sitting on my bed with a second-floor, room-wide view of the sky...tops of palm trees or clouds or, depending on the wind, planes flying west to east to turn and land at LAX. This is also were I draw. Order is not my greatest strength.

    "If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people."

    Thank you for letting us know you and your space in a new way.

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  16. Dear Kass, an inspiring and important post. It's always been hard for women to manage all the pressures she or society put on her selfhood, her mind, her soul. That precious place--whatever and where ever it is--is in all ways her sanctuary, her true home, where solitude will allow the writing to be available, to let her hear her own self talking to the world, to her loved ones. Lacking a space of my own for decades, I imagined inside myself two white rooms where language and music and painting could live unmolested, as there was no place for them in my real world. And now, finally, I have my two white rooms in the real world--I write at my desk, in bed, at the kitchen table, in my granny's 'lady's' chair, at a three-cornered oak dressing table. It's a small apartment, and 'stuff' I thought was important had to fall away, but I love my two white rooms. The quiet, the privacy, the quiet--oh, joy! Thank you for showing us your sacred spaces. xo

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  17. VICKY - I have a hard time believing that procrastination is part of your make up. You get so much done and your writing is very skilled.

    STANDING - I don't think I realized that your camera wasn't digital. You print photos?!! Amazing.

    RACHEL - You have to realize that you're only seeing half of each room. There's lots of clutter in the part I didn't photograph.

    KIRK - I love that movie, especially when Elizabeth Taylor imitates Betty Davis with, "what ta dump!"

    I used to use the computers at the Palm Desert Library and it was pretty trippy. I dealt with a lot of old folks next to me, but they weren't giggling. I'd better be careful what I say. I'm fast becoming one of them.

    MARYLINN - You picked a great quote. Your views sound inspiring. Did I know you drew? I'd better scroll through your blog again.

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  18. Well, lets take the nearest shelf to my left, which is representative of my space (on a miniature scale).

    A big hardcover "The world of Chas Adams" broods -in good humored kinda way- next to "The ultimate hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" by Douglas Adams, next to the complete works Shakespeare, next to Garfield #3, next to the Tao of Jeet Kune Do by Bruce Lee, next to a couple of cooking books... With a cheap ocarina and a bucky-ball cube sitting in front of them.

    Who was it that said that "books are the mirrors of the soul"? Well, many people have, but Virginia Woolf was one of them, apparently. If the internet is to be believed. : j

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  19. Ah, Kass, how many of my buttons can you push in one blog post? You know of my V. Woolf obsession, of course. In dark December I began reading her again as preparation for her birthday. A few Christmases ago I was presented a set of each of her published novels and one of her biographies . . . although the book inscriptions tear at me, I do enjoy the reading. My favorite of her quotes: "On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points."

    You also reference Anne Morrow Lindbergh whom we've never discussed before, but about whom I know much. I've spent many an hour with my heinie parked right on the coral beach outside the "Tween Waters Inn on Captiva Island where she wrote A Gift From the Sea, but - alas - I have not become a writer.

    I'm even worse than you are about my writing place. I require "just-so-ness" in ALL of my surroundings. I feel the placement of things from the pen to the speakers for my music, from the decor items to the fruit in the bowl. If it's "wrong", I can't work. If it's "right", I am serene.

    WV= dinfast. It's been a long day and I'm fa-dinfast.

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  20. no, no, i'm digital. i shoot RAW, which is not a naked comment. the photos have to be converted to jpg, then tweaked however i want. the printing of such comes later.

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  21. I have to have a room of my own, a studio, because if I couldn't contain all the paper, paint, brushes, bit and pieces I wouldn't be able to walk in my home.
    I think one works were you feel the most comfortable.
    I love the photo of the shed in the garden you posted... I'll take one doubled please !

    cheers, parsnip

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  22. My favorite VW quote is the same one Marylinn selected.

    I like to think I could write best in clean, organized, creative and artsy spaces...but often some of my best work comes when I push off the mess on my desk, wearing my pjs amd I write until my stomach grumbles for food...

    I have a lap top and often think about writing in bed...but I always fall asleep. When at home, I am usually on my desk top, in my office...or writing in my journal when the mood strikes.

    GIFTS FROM THE SEA is one of my most favorite books. I read it every February...LOVE that book.

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  23. MELISSA - "...stuff I thought was important had to fall away." - This is so true for the rigid maxims we used to live by, along with the brick-a-brack. I'm glad you have your two white rooms. I'm wondering if they represent the whiteness in your mind as a result of having been through the refiner's fire.

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  24. ALESA - I googled some of the Tao of Jeet Hune Do:

    -Art reaches its greatest peak when devoid of self-consciousness. Freedom discovers man the moment he loses concern over what impression he is making or about to make.

    -Do not run away; let go. Do not seek, for it will come when least expected.

    ...now I think I have to buy the book. The darkness of Chas Addams of Addams Family fame - that's another surprise - Garfield, Shakespeare, Hitchhiker's Guide, Cook books. Your interests are so diverse. No wonder you produce the fiction and photography that you do.

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  25. LES - You've read a lot more Woolf than I have. I find her fascinating. This letter haunts me:

    'Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

    I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

    V.'

    I wonder had she had modern bipolar medications, what more she could have written, done with her life.

    I've missed the word verification play. Glad to see WV back

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  26. STANDING - Now I'm curious about your tweaking - photoshop? I have a small program that came with my HP printer, but I think to get the results you do, I need a macro lens and some instruction.

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  27. I really wouldn't recommend the tao of jeet kune do, unless you want to take up martial arts.

    It's essentially a manual to optimal booty bashing peppered with borrowed Confucian expressions and ideas as interpreted by Bruce Lee.

    If you'd like to check that it interests you, I also have an E-book version somewhere that I could send you?

    Which brings me to another thought, perhaps Virginia Woolf meant the books/things that people write are mirrors of their souls; out of context there is no way of knowing. Both are true...

    In this case the Tao of Jeet Kune Do is an excellent reflection of who Bruce Lee was and what he was trying to achieve with his life.

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  28. PARSNIP - The shed appeals to me too. But take a look this. A traveling shed appeals to me even more:
    CLICK HERE

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  29. DONNA - The quote Marylinn selected haunts me because authenticity is something that if you try to achieve it, you've missed the point

    "...my best work comes when I push off the mess on my desk, wearing my pjs and I write until my stomach grumbles for food..." - LOVE THIS!

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  30. ALESA - This is so weird. While considering whether or not I wanted you to go to the trouble of sending me the E-book, a Jehovah's Witness came to the door and tried to talk me into reading his material. I politely rejected the offer, explaining how many piles of things I have selected to read which I feel strongly about. So...while I have a great interest in Eastern philosophy, I hesitate to have you go to the trouble of sending it. The Tao is something I never tire of and I have accumulated quite a few books and translations. Tell me about the E-book. Maybe I'll download it myself.

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  31. I like! I am very much the same way- I love to straighten, decorate and straighten!

    You've brought to light that regardless of having a set space to "work" in, you always end up creating in the space that's most fitting at the time. As long as it feels right.

    Thanks for the look into your home!

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  32. STACEY - The decorate/straighten thing is part of my OCD. I was in a friends home the other day and he said, "Oh, don't you ever get tired of straightening the kitchen?" And I had to answer, "Honestly, no." I get real satisfaction in my obsessive need to order and arrange.

    I'm just sorry that my pictures didn't show your crocheted stuffed and mounted doughnut. It was just off screen in the shot of my mom's table.

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  33. I love that recording. I was perplexed by something she said, in a delightful way: she spoke of some people using "uneducated words" alongside "educated" ones. What did she mean by that?!

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  34. The tao of jeet kune do really is almost entirely a how-to manual for barehanded combat: how to kick, punch, grapple, and think in order to fight optimally.

    And as such, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone not specifically interested in martial arts.

    Its relationship to Taoism is loose at best. You'd be better off rereading To Te King or the Analects if that's what you're interested in. : j
    -
    I was in no way trying to proselytize in offering you the ebook... Just thought I could help quickly satisfy your curiosity without your having to go out and get a book that might not have interested you as much as you might have expected from carefully selected excerpts you saw online.
    Incidentally shooting you an email with an attachment would have been no trouble at all, indeed it would have taken me less time than it did to write this comment. And in scanning it for a few minutes you'd have recognized the book for what it was.
    -
    Heheh your Jehova's Witnesses encounter reminds me of this one time when they came to my doorstep... They were pleased to meet someone capable and willing to speak to them in English... But they quickly lost interest when I started countering their sales pitch with zen philosophy.

    The abrupt realization that fundamental parts of my thought processes were utterly irreconcilable with their faith spurred them to throw in the towel. It was fun and amiable.

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  35. RACHEL - You ask a very interesting question.

    I think Woolf with her anthropomorphic device of using words as if they had a mind and will of their own is alluding to the fact that she very much resented not being formally educated. Do the words she uses notice her lack of schooling? Is she looking for some kind of ALL-ACCEPTING-IN-THE-BEGINNING-WAS-THE-WORD-GOD?

    The essay was entitled Craftmanship and she talks about convention and unconventionality along with education. As a Victorian woman, she lived in an oppressive social system with a keen desire to revise that system. In A Room of One's Own she talks about genius not being born among labouring, uneducated, servile people, except with the rarest exceptions—and even then, she notes that "...social condition glares through as a limitation of the art. In that age, genius engendered witches and lunatics among women, and 'Anonymous,' she argues, was most likely a woman as well." In Craftmanship she links literature to the human capacity to empathize, to recognize the other as our equal. She relates it to our "defiance of conventions: conventions that forbid miscegenation, enforce matrimony, exclude the 'illegitimate.'" Words, she says, “are much less bound by ceremony and convention than we are. Royal words mate with commoners. English words marry French words, German words, Indian words, Negro words, if they have a fancy.” And she insists that they are highly democratic too; they believe that one word is as good as another.

    These issues of gender, class, racial and national identity caused more confusion and dislocation in Woolf, perhaps because of her bi-polar disorder. With the threat of a violent change of mood her choice of words reflects this displacement, her mind's ability to inhabit two places at once.

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  36. Yes, her personification of words really struck me. Thanks for a wonderfully engaged/engaging answer.

    "Do the words she uses notice her lack of schooling?"

    The very words we use DO betray our social and educational privilleges (or lack of). Words may forgive us our social standing but society may still judge us upon our lexicon.

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  37. Kass -- I have a cocoon type of workspace accomplished by surrounding myself with; loads of books, old primitive tables and bookcases, antique wall cupboards filled with nature's nests, rocks, et cetera, walls filled with old family photos placed tightly together all the way to the ceiling and last but not least a window to look out while I work.

    Your rooms look peaceful and serene -- perhaps providing a settled place to write?

    -- barbara

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  38. Dear Kass: Definitely one needs a room of their own in all senses of the word. Your remake to create a great space is inspiring, as that is what is needed to create; inspiration. The muse can be evoked by simply finding comfort, usually. The simplist of things is preferable for me. A walk, clean linen, feng shui-like neatness which is so atypical can make me think I am someplace else, maybe even portraying someone else if the moon is just right. Since everyone is quoting Virginia Woolfe here's one from "To The Lighthouse"She felt herself transfixed by the intensity of her perception..." (so many gems difficult to choose!)Kass you have indeed inspired me, may I borrow your room for an hour or two; it is awesome!

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  39. It's fascinating to compare where and how writers write or painters paint. You made your account extra fascinating by the light you shone on it in terms of your feelings about it. Much thanks for the insight.

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  40. kass, yes, a macro lens. some software came with my camera, to convert to jpg. there's other uses in which i am not well versed. i use photoshop only sparingly, mostly to adjust brightness on underexposed shots, and to adjust resolution for downloading to the blog. i don't really know how to use it. i'm trying to learn the technical stuff that the camera can do before i start playing around too much on photoshop.

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  41. Thanks, Kass, for sharing this intimate look at your creative process. I remember your home as being beautiful, charming, and original. Now I can imagine you creating your beautiful works in it!

    I like Woolf's quote: 'For most of history, anonymous was a woman'.
    I'm pleased to see you remedying that absurdity!

    I also like the quote of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: 'I do not understand how anyone can live without some small place of enchantment to turn to.' The film "Crosscreek" (one of my favs) featured her bio. I loved how they portrayed her typing her novels on her front porch. I'm such a romantic! :-)

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  42. BARBARA - I love the description of the place you write. Antiques and nature - all the things that keep us grounded. I can almost see it.

    VIRGINIA - "...transfixed by the intensity of (her) perception.." Oh, I think I do this a little too much. Thanks for your comment. I like the idea of stark simplicity. Today I'm cleaning the clutter out of my basement so I can feel more simply grounded.

    DAVE - Would love to see where you create. Thanks for your comment.

    STANDING - I feel the same way about Photoshop. It's overwhelming. Someone told me that Photoshop has so much in it, you could study it for 4 years and still not have a degree in it.

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  43. MARY ANNE - Thanks for the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings quote. I guess we are both hopeless romantics. When I picture what I'm doing in my old age, which is one of the exercises we did with Marie in The Artist's Way, I see myself in a flannel shirt, writing in a cabin in the woods. After your comment, I think I'll take that vision outside on the porch. Thanks.

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  44. Your house is so fresh, bright and spacious.

    I write, read, everything but cook, in the room I call 'my room'. It used to be the dining room but when I realised we only used it about twice a year, and ate at all other times in the kitchen I nabbed it for myself. It's currently so cluttered that I can hardly think. Books are piled up on every surface, papers, pens, and bits torn from magazines litter the table. The little cubby holes in my desk are shedding index cards, postcards and goodness know what all else. Camera, headphones, telephone, iPods, and an empty chocolate box (!) share the surface of my desk with my keyboard and mouse. The list goes on. Tomorrow I will reorder everything so as to start the week with a bit of clarity, but by next weekend it will be back to this again. I don't know why I can't just put things away as I finish with them. Actually, I think it might be because I don't know I've finished with them until they're driving me insane.

    I can never remember quotes exactly but the thing Woolf says about cleaning the oven to clear her mind (?) in her diary has always resonated with me. Not that I ever clean my oven!

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  45. ERYL - I saw a documentary about Isaac Singer years ago and the camera showed us the incredibly cluttered room he wrote in. He said he couldn't find anything when his wife straightened it. Your dining/writing room sounds like his study looked - must be an indicator of true genius.

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  46. I'm guilty of being a slow responder to your last comment to me. I am guilty of slithering off for a little get-away with limited internet access. Imagine!

    You know that Woolf haunts me, too. Deeply. I know the letter you quoted,and many others between her, Leonard, her sister Vanessa Bell, etc. Leonard wrote some wonderful pieces about Virginia after her death, about their wonderful marriage/love which was anything BUT traditional.

    One of the most haunting things to me is that she almost always knew when she was about to crash again. I think that would be far more difficult than simply waking up one morning batshit. To know it's coming, to feel the dread ... it makes me tear up.

    I'm going to reframe your question about whether bipolar meds would have been her salvation to "would modern day meds and therapy have helped her?" Not to take anything away from the very complex illness bipolar syndrome is, I think Virginia's problems went far beyond that. I think she would have been a (what's a nice word? Difficult?) very unusual person even today, even with help. She was marked too young. She didn't get help in time. She was damaged. And brilliant.

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  47. Yes...damaged. In Louise DeSalvo's very illuminating work regarding the sexual abuse (step-brother) one can see how Woolf's writing continued to try to work out this issue. Her views on British patriachy, whether to publish or not publish (to keep her works locked up in her desk, to maintain her silence), The Voyage Out.."I'm terrified by my boldness". Could her apparent need to encode her writing with allusion, etc., act as a self-protective mechanism? Could something more than the BiPolar dx have been at war within? Imagine how her female subjectivity could have flowered had she had some tx for the abuse?

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  48. LES - I envy your 'get-away.' I'm glad you were able to take a break. Your comment opens some interesting avenues and discussion as my friend, Mary Anne has noted. Here we are, at our respective ages, still musing about Virginia, life and the effect our childhood has had on us. Do we ever get to roam free from the thought-encasing prisons in our minds?

    MARY ANNE - As I've said to Leslie, there are so many things at play here. I know women who have suffered similar and even worse abuse and even with all the meds and counseling they've participated in, they still struggle with the effects of the huge impact that kind of abuse imprints on the psyche.

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  49. Kass--I did not have a room of my own until my husband left me. That book and May Sarton's "Journal of a Solitude" were by my bed for YEARS. I was on my second copy of "A Room" by the time my husband left. Your blog entry has inspired me for my next entry, I think... we got a 2400 square foot house, after raising the kids in a two-bedroom apartment which we converted to three by using bookcases in an alcove. In the new house, everyone got a room but ME. My husband took over the spare room and once again, I was working in the dining room, using a word processor on a rolling tv table... What a marvelous entry.

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  50. JEANNETTE - A sense of place is important, I think, even if we have to invent it in our heads. I'm looking forward to what you write as a result of reading this.

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  51. Join me in a click of the champagne flutes to celebrate Virginia's birthday? Then you may drink my champagne [WV = dente] while I give you my trademark homemade red sauce with pasta al dente.

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  52. I have a shed...but it looks like a cottage. I don't write words there, but music...yes. And I create jewelry and other crafty stuff in it. It's odd....because I started blogging first, then writing, then poetry a year after that...and writing doesn't seem to flow unless I am sitting at a computer. Strange isn't it?

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  53. LES - I click with you and celebrate the enigmatic in all of us.

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  54. Fascinating to see the various stations from which you venture forth out of real space and into the blogosphere!

    Some of us ran a meme back in the early days of blogging in which we posted illustrated accounts of our writing locations - just as you have here. I'm now minded to revive it. I shall do a spot of tidying and then get busy with the camera!

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  55. ANNIE - You write music?!!
    Are there examples of it on your blog? How wonderful your shed sounds. Would love to see your crafts. I'll have to scroll through your blog. Thanks for dropping by.

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  56. DICK - Looking forward to that photographic post. I've seen your countryside and that alone would be inspiration enough.

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  57. Annie has secretly started another music themed blog in which she shares tunes that she digs...
    (http://musicallypromiscuous.blogspot.com/)
    If my explorations into her archives are anything to go, she hasn't put up any of her own music. But it does feature a rocking (and tantalizing) picture of her next to a piano...
    C'mon Annie, spill! : j

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  58. Not a huge Woolf fan. But, I get the need to be shut away to write. I have this fantasy that I have held since I was in my 20's. One day, I want a small little house in a small New England town. I want enough money to be able to just write, listen to music and not have to talk to a single soul all day long.

    My life right now is so...verbal. I feel like I will scream sometimes from all the voices flying around me. The last time that I was completely alone for long periods of time was this summer when my daughter was vacationing with her father and my partner was in Africa on a Fulbright. I adored my privacy, adored it. And it spoiled me because now I crave it.

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  59. I have only one place to write since I use a desktop--that has a natural keyboard--and wouldn't dream of writing with a pen.

    I know little of Virginia Woolf other than that she had a beautiful daughter named Julia who married a Jackson, I believe it was. Anyway, she was often photographed by another Julia whose last name, I think, was Duckworth. This latter Julia finally moved to India along with her coffin, and that's where she died.

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  60. Oh, how cool! I love doing this too; I am a nester!

    Thank you very much for the tour. Your house looks very welcoming! I think I might just have to take you up on the suggestion to share my work space. But... I have to clean/organize it first! hehe

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  61. Sending you a big, warm HUG. thanks for sharing so much of your soul. It touches me deeply.

    one love.

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  62. I do most of my writing on my bed with my little dog tucked up beside me. Great to see the inner workings of your home sweet home :)

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  63. Found you! You can ignore my message.

    The places you write in are pretty cool. Love the high counter. Thanks for stopping by my blog.

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  64. Hi Kass, this is a beatiful post, thanks for sharing! If I ever get my writing areas cleaned up I may post about them. I really enjoyed learning about your writing spaces.

    Also, I left you an award on my blog: http://alannaklapp.blogspot.com/2011/02/chipper-writers-first-award.html

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  65. What a wonderful post! I'm a firm believer in having a room or space of one's own, adamant even. I'm not terribly familiar with Virginia Woolf, but Gifts From The Sea is a precious favorite. Thanks for joining in over at Moonbeam and Sunshine; it's fun to have a place to play like a little girl again!

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  66. Hi Kass - it's been a while since we last heard from you. I hope everything in your world is steady and that all is well. Take care over there - Claire

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  67. I like that that you say {as|like} my friend thanks

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It's nice to know you've stopped by. Thanks.