The Smallest of Things

 

Spring is a busy time of year for gardening and cleaning the summer house, Villa Ramona, and the property, Silva Dulcis. We have a robot lawnmower, Buddy, that is a godsend when doing spring work until the chip in the robot no longer works. Now he is taking another extended holiday after his winter rest. We have become birders and are enjoying identifying birds as they make their nests in the many birdhouses Andreas built during the cold winter. (Now he is moving enormous stones for the rock wall!). A fun time of year where the little changes have a big payoff.

'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf was the book chosen to read in April by my Reading i Sverige book club. Several years ago, I read 'To the Lighthouse' by Woolf, so I thought I knew what to expect. I was aware that her style of writing was a stream of consciousness, a difficult genre for me. Yet, 'The Waves' is one of the most challenging books I have read. The beginning reminded me of the first section of 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner. As a reader, I was thrown into a story, and nothing made sense. The only reason I kept reading was….to keep reading. Once I finished the book, I reflected on it and said: What a brilliant book! The book's title gives away the theme of the book: 'As in me too the wave rises. It swells. It arches its back.' The waves never stop; from birth to death, the continuous power of the waves never lets up. Reflecting on the book, I found Woolf brilliant in what she accomplished. Lordy be, I struggled reading it!

This same book club intends to keep our summer reading on the lighter side because of the holidays and travels. The May book is in the contemporary category, and we are reading 'The Wives' by Tarryn Fisher. 'The Wives', a thriller, took no time to read. Even though the book was a page-turner, it left me with emptiness, for the experience was in the reading only, not the reflection. To be fair to the book, Fisher does address the negative role women often have in the American culture. Woolf does the same in her novel, except in England. The titles of these two books are almost the same except for one vowel.  And yet, what an amazing contrast between them. 

One vowel changed my reading experience completely; 'The Waves' to 'The Wives.' The smallest of things. Yet, is it not the smallest of things that make life what it is? This reflection made me think about the tiny seeds I have been planting in the hopes of a beautiful reward this summer. It made me think of the small words we say to each other to live in a civil society. It made me think of those special small things we do for those we love. It is the smallest of things that we intentionally do, making our life experience rich and beautiful. This spring, enjoy the smallest of things.

Currently reading:

• Psalm (5th Century BCE by King David and Solomon
• The First Four Books of Poems (1995) by Louise Glück
• The History (425 BC) by Herodotus
• Kajsa Kavat (1950) by Astrid Lindgren
• Every Thing is Sacred (2021) by Richard Rohr and Patrick Boland
• The Universal Christ (2019) by Richard Rohr
• The Abominable Man (1971) by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö

Completed:

• The Wives (2019) by Tarryn Fisher
• East of Eden  (1951) by John Steinbeck
• The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020) by Erik Larson

The Waves

 

Virginia Woolf's book 'The Waves' is not the first stream of consciousness book that I have read. Hjalmar Söderberg’s book, ‘Dr. Glas' and 'The Sound and the Fury' by William Faulkner are great examples of this genre. Having read 'The Lighthouse' by Virginia Woolf, I thought I knew what my experience would be in reading 'The Waves.'

During this reading experience it was as if I had a veil over my eyes. Nothing seemed to be clear. I found myself suddenly pondering past events in my life. It was as if by reading 'The Waves' I had entered my unconscious, and things became unveiled. It isn’t easy to describe because it has been unlike any reading experience I have had before. 

After a death in the book, the language Woolf used to describe grief is poetic and mystical:

"I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but the

 incomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people go

 to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among

 phrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty

 enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all,

 yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so

 unspeakably lonely."

Louise Glück, in her poem, 'Averno' wrote about the veil. 

'.. and now the mortal spirit 

seeking so openly, so fearlessly---

To raise the veil,

To see what you're saying goodbye to.

The poem is not grieving the loss of a loved one. Instead, the desire is to raise the veil to understand what life was. What had been kept hidden? She desires to know what was behind the veil before she dies.

 

Julian of Norwich also uses the metaphor of the veil. She acknowledges this same veil

that Glück desires to remove before death: 'We may have fleeting glimpses of the cosmic design and see that it is good. But then the veil drops again and we forget.' Does the veil protect us from what we cannot yet see or do we get busy with life and fail to see what is before us? 

 

After Moses spent time with God in Exodus, God put a veil over his 'shining' face to protect the people. Only when he was in the presence of God was the veil removed. This veil leads the reader to wonder if the people were not ready to see the truth. God protected them.

 

In my life, I often do not see clearly. Reading has caused me to question, wonder, probe, and see, but not yet fully. At times the veil has dropped as Julian of Norwich suggests. My different reading groups have helped me on this journey of 'raising the veil.' For them I am grateful!

Image of Lake Superior

Currently Reading:

• Don Quixote (1605) by Cervantes
• Psalm (5th Century Bc) by King David and Solomon
• Averno (2006) by Louise Glück
• Kajsa Kavat (1950) by Astrid Lindgren
• The Waves (1931) by Virginia Woolf

Completed:

• The Correspondence (2017) by J.D. Daniels
• What Unites Us (2017) by Dan Rather
• Proverbs (8th Century BC) by King Solomon