Saturday, December 25, 2004
mrs dalloway
fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall.
as a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on london; and falls on the mind. effort ceases. time flaps on the mast. there we stop; there we stand. rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
they looked in at a shop window; they did not wish to buy or to talk but to part, only with contrary winds buffeting the street corner, with some sort of lapse in the tides of the body, two forces meeting in a swirl, morning and afternoon, they paused. some newspaper placard went up in the air, gallantly, like a kite at first, then paused, swooped, fluttered; and a lady's veil hung. yellow awnings trembled. the speed of the morning traffic slackened, and single carts rattled carelessly down half-empty streets. in norfolk, of which richard dalloway was half thinking, a soft warm wind blew back the petals; confused the waters; ruffled the flowering grasses. haymakers, who had pitched beneath hedges to sleep away the morning toil, parted curtains of green blades; moved trembling globes of cow parsley to see the sky; the blue, the steadfast, the blazing summer sky.
indeed, he was collecting evidence of their malpractices; and those costermongers, prostitutes, good lord, the fault wasn't in them, nor in young men either, but in our detestable social system and so forth; all of which he considered, could be seen considering, grey, dogged, dapper, clean as he walked across the park to tell his wife that he loved her.
... because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels ...
i resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, i fade, she was beginning, i disappear, but london would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
somehow it was her disaster - her disgrace. it was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand there in her evening dress. she had schemed; she had pilfered. she was never wholly admirable.
as a cloud crosses the sun, silence falls on london; and falls on the mind. effort ceases. time flaps on the mast. there we stop; there we stand. rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
they looked in at a shop window; they did not wish to buy or to talk but to part, only with contrary winds buffeting the street corner, with some sort of lapse in the tides of the body, two forces meeting in a swirl, morning and afternoon, they paused. some newspaper placard went up in the air, gallantly, like a kite at first, then paused, swooped, fluttered; and a lady's veil hung. yellow awnings trembled. the speed of the morning traffic slackened, and single carts rattled carelessly down half-empty streets. in norfolk, of which richard dalloway was half thinking, a soft warm wind blew back the petals; confused the waters; ruffled the flowering grasses. haymakers, who had pitched beneath hedges to sleep away the morning toil, parted curtains of green blades; moved trembling globes of cow parsley to see the sky; the blue, the steadfast, the blazing summer sky.
indeed, he was collecting evidence of their malpractices; and those costermongers, prostitutes, good lord, the fault wasn't in them, nor in young men either, but in our detestable social system and so forth; all of which he considered, could be seen considering, grey, dogged, dapper, clean as he walked across the park to tell his wife that he loved her.
... because it is a thousand pities never to say what one feels ...
i resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, i fade, she was beginning, i disappear, but london would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
somehow it was her disaster - her disgrace. it was her punishment to see sink and disappear here a man, there a woman, in this profound darkness, and she forced to stand there in her evening dress. she had schemed; she had pilfered. she was never wholly admirable.
// posted by silas @ 4:12 PM 
