Pursuing another self-imposed deadline, I plowed through Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. (Keeping up with a book club often calls for such bouts of efficiency.) Thus, I read the book the way an old farmer would approach a fallow field: I set my eyes on yonder fencepost and deviated not from the course set before me. Page 191 in my edition.
I let the words wash over me, and with them the insecurities, the disillusion, the youthful hopes and dreams dashed — but not forgotten — as the key characters shambled into their fifties. I didn’t have the time to read it as I should: like a long-form poem, nor to study it as a nervous map of class-aware minds. I could only read it as I must: like a harried underling brushing up for a meeting, with talking points a-ready.
But if I had the time, would I have the patience? Would I carve out the necessary stillness to contemplate each line, to let her lyric words linger, to uncover the structure of her prose (at first glance a mass, yet punctuated mechanically and purposefully by the clock strikes of Big Ben?) Or would I still skim it like I’ve trained myself to do — with daily, lazy practice on so many internet-posted things — searching for bullet points, too rushed to tune in, to hear the phrasing, the voice of the author. Neglecting to listen.
Now Virginia, I find myself wondering with harsh-morning self-awareness:
Who will ever take the time to read my windy prose? My ill-disciplined splooge of twitchy-fingered type splattered on the screen? Who then will have the patience for me, if I have so little for Mrs. Dalloway?
But as the prophet says: Of the making of many books there will be no end. So I suppose I must do my part. (Note: The prophet made no promise about the reading of said works.) Persist I will at this my scribbling, my healthiest compulsion. All is vanity anyway, as has been established.
Speaking of vain pursuits, let me leave you with a song from Slash and the boys that’s got nothing to do with Virginia Woolf whatsoever. I first snagged this track as a cardboard-sleeved cassette single on a summer’s day at Camelot Records, The Mall, Akron, Ohio, USA. I popped it into the dash of my dad’s wood-panelled Ford LTD Country Squire and lit up the parking lot with power-ballad glory. Memories like that come rushing back…when you have a little patience, just a little patience.
So yes, patience I pray thee. Patience for your next big read, patience for me, and patience for you too. As St. Axel suggests: take some time to walk the streets tonight, just try to get it right. The work — your work — deserves it.
