moving the tree
So often when writing I tend to focus/obsess on things like....whether paragraph A should come before or after paragraph B. I can get absurdly caught up in decisions like that, which do in fact matter and need to get made. But still. It means that you can be sitting at dinner theoretically talking to other people while ruminating on these things.
Anyone, whenever I get into that frame of mind, it reminds of a hunk of _To the Lighthouse_ where Lily Briscoe spends half her time fussing over whether to "move the tree" in her painting. So I thought I'd share, because who doesn't love some Virginia Woolf. Lily doesn't like her dinner companions....I think I do this sometimes even when I'm around people I like a lot, which is far worse behavior. Solipsism is fun.
I can't remember how to LJ-Cut.
Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse:
He has his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do. That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.
"It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one's letters," said Mr Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals.
.....
She must make it once more. There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters--nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?
"Oh, Mr Tansley," she said, "do take me to the Lighthouse with you. I should so love it."
She was telling lies he could see.
.....
Then her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr Tansley was saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.
....
For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.
Such was the complexity of things.
Anyone, whenever I get into that frame of mind, it reminds of a hunk of _To the Lighthouse_ where Lily Briscoe spends half her time fussing over whether to "move the tree" in her painting. So I thought I'd share, because who doesn't love some Virginia Woolf. Lily doesn't like her dinner companions....I think I do this sometimes even when I'm around people I like a lot, which is far worse behavior. Solipsism is fun.
I can't remember how to LJ-Cut.
Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse:
He has his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do. That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.
"It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one's letters," said Mr Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals.
.....
She must make it once more. There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters--nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?
"Oh, Mr Tansley," she said, "do take me to the Lighthouse with you. I should so love it."
She was telling lies he could see.
.....
Then her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr Tansley was saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.
....
For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.
Such was the complexity of things.