Q has been reached; he is sure of Q, and has dug his heels in at Q. I'm not sure of Q, or what he could demonstrate of it, because I don't think it is to Question; and if it's not that then what is it? Quickness of mind? Quietude? A man who needs walking privacy? Walking, as other philosophers have demonstrated, is good for thinking. Is Mr Ramsay perhaps a Nietzsche scholar? And should I really be thinking on this, writing of this only forty pages in?
When the mind starts whirring though I have to work. Wait for other details to emerge, to be made explicit, and thoughts such as they were, as they occur, will be gone. And so I take risks, updating notes, adjusting perceptions, but letting earlier assumptions stay. Fool! People will think, perhaps utter, who write after digestion has taken place. That to me disturbs the process. I can only write when I am acquiring knowledge, not after I've acquired it. And perhaps I won't in this case, although I should say with full disclosure I have met Ramsay before, once before when he was then as he is now holidaying in Skye. He was stuck on Q then too, but I cannot recall whether Q was ever defined.
If I remember rightly (and my recall is not always accurate) I was at that time more taken with other members of his party. Lily Briscoe, with her 'little Chinese eyes in her small puckered face' and Charles Tansley ('the atheist, the little atheist' as the children call him) and James' relationship with his mother. I was less of a thinker, less of a writer then, but now, like Mr Ramsay though with less experience at it, I am braver in thought and have more confidence in the paths it takes me down.
I shouldn't have spoken however of Lily Briscoe, for now all I can think of is Lily, and of her painting, and of her talks, occasional walks, with William Bankes, the widower. Neither of which are an R or a Q. What is W?
Mr Ramsay is frustrated with me for my attention has drifted, my praise diverted. His arms and legs are swinging, swinging. Up, down, turn. Stop, look and turn again. Am I, with my eyes, following him? And if not, why not?
What would my gaze meet with if I did? A stern countenance, a softened expression, the face of a man tormented? I might see a soldierly figure on parade; a stick man looking out to sea, studying the weather. And whatever he decided would be right of course, and wouldn't be disagreed with. Or perhaps a man seeming to admire the potted geraniums, or the picture his wife and son made, framed by the window.
Mr Ramsay is watching, is waiting, impatiently. He is not however the type to tap his foot; he is the type to hum, to say a melancholy phrase to himself and startle everyone. He waits, outside the window, on the terrace, his eye like that of an eagle's, as he examines rather than listens to the mother reading to the child the story of the Fisherman and His Wife. I, like James, have become absorbed in it; Mr Ramsay is quite forgotten. Mrs Ramsay, as she reads aloud, is half-lost in her own thoughts. But mother first her total submergence into remoteness does not occur until she is alone, all alone, when no vocals are required. She can be silent; the one interruption the stroke of the Lighthouse, and the only sound the click of her knitting needles. Mrs Ramsay now has all my attention.
Until Mr Ramsay passes by and chuckles. Q and R it seems have left his mind, and for a time even Z. He has reached the hedge, where he comes to a halt to look into it, this great thinker. Poor little hedge, I murmur, as my eye continues its trace along and down the page. Mr Ramsay himself has assumed a sad expression. Such a change in tempers. He sighs. Ah, R...R would be something...but Hume, that enormously fat philosopher, stuck in a bog ha ha ha.
Picture credit: Philosopher, Henri Martin (source: WikiArt).
See: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
Written in lock-down, May 2020.
