The Crocus

Moved by the idea, rather than the sight of the first spring crocus in Kensington Gardens, which I live nowhere near and have never, I think, in my lifetime walked in, I decided to set my fingers to the keys, as people, writers particularly, these days do not set pens or any writing tools to paper, and using Virginia Woolf as my model, type mostly of the crocus and not the patron, for, as a writer, though I hesitate to give myself that occupational title, I have already broken that rule: I have dismissed them all, the crowd of patron competitors; I think only of the crocus.
The beautiful crocus with its showy white, yellow or purple flowers. (I'm not sure I've ever seen one? but I understand they are showy and, if of the iris family and not the lily which blooms in autumn, bloom in these colours.) And try to recall if they were among those who spoke to Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers. There was a Tiger-lily I remember, who, true to her name, was tigerish, and most certainly a thorny Rose, but was there a Crocus? No; for surely the crocus is too shy, too tame for such a garden; she would, I imagine, be terrified of the Lily and the Rose and need to be, if noticed trembling or closing in on herself, coaxed by a very understanding Alice to say anything, which may be of note or may not. The perfect, and imperfect, flower for a writer then, it being so tortured.
Does the crocus, I wonder, represent not the various works a writer cultivates but the actual figure behind the works, who a 'touch of sun', says Virginia, would do 'a world of good'? I certainly feel, at times, like the crocus Virginia describes: 'malformed, shrivelled on one side, overblown on the other.' But is that the lot of the writer or the lot of age, or the two combined with that of woman? Once thinking herself or considered by others 'beautiful and bright', and then...before...after...The lot of flowers; the lot of woman.
But no, Virginia was not being so literal. I have taken her meaning and deliberately twisted it, excluded all men from the garden and made it about gender, when the writer, encouraging the crocus from the soil, should be, a patron will advise, if you decide as a writer you must absolutely have one, genderless. That, I would reply, to this potential patron and potential crocus, is not the kind of patron I am prepared to court. I don't want to, in the course of anything, forget my sex, I want to identify with it.
'The Crocus, in my opinion', chimes in the Rose, 'needs no patron at all.' Her argument not elaborated on, for roses don't elaborate, that writers who have them think, and remain conscious, of them only, which is why in many gardens, including Kensington, possibly, the real crocuses, in their too-soft beds, who would, if nudged with a toe, begin to unfurl and bloom profusely, sleep and sleep and sleep.

Picture credit: Crocuses, 1938, Stanley Spencer (source: WikiArt).

From a journal entry, May 2021, with quotes from The Patron and the Crocus, an essay by Virginia Woolf.

I Bide My Time

I bide my time. The recurrent motto used by Sir Walter Scott in The Bride of Lammermoor as well as (the note told me) by several Scottish families, and now adopted as my own, perhaps only for the purposes of this short piece, though not in the sense Scott used it (and I'm guessing the several Scottish families also): to wait patiently for an opportunity to avenge oneself on another thought or known to have, at some point, inflicted insult or harm; no, in the sense that I too wait patiently, but for the opportunity to prove myself a writer, able to at least deliver a good essay, for the rest – the other genres - I only dapple in, regardless of skill or wit.
Then I read Virginia Woolf and think: why bother? why try to write anything? Her essays are far above mine, not that, it is true, I always follow or grasp her meaning. She has a tendency to meander, and comes from a different literary world, as do I, I suppose, from my elders, my contemporaries and youth. It is my reading of her, I think, that is at fault. Her essays should be read not as they are contained in a volume, one succeeding another, but savoured on a different day like a sermon given, the 'thought for the day', to be thought on, and perhaps discussed, during its course. But pages are for me made to be turned for an interval of time and therefore I cannot just stop where one essay ends, for then I will be left with time on my hands and nothing to read.
So I read on, turning page after page, until my mind is confused and unsettled, which is as much my fault as it is Mrs Woolf's. Mine, as I said, because I should be less word-greedy, and her's because, despite being penned with the common reader in mind, there's a presumption I will have read what she's read and know what she knows, or at very least appreciate the angle from which she is approaching her subject. (The editor of this Vintage Classics edition makes the same mistake: presumes if I'm reading Woolf then I must have some knowledge of French and Greek (I don't) to translate the occasional sprinkles of them, which in Mrs Woolf's defence are often direct quotes, and offers no translation, not a footnote or a note.)
Now, it could be argued that my schooling was better than hers, as in I had the privilege – being female – to be educated to a certain age and a certain standard, but beyond this I didn't continue to study, assisted by a tutor or an institution, literature, or indeed anything higher than a vocational subject, which had no interest in the world of literature, English, French, or Russian, or any other. (Perhaps, with hindsight, I should have listened to the urgings of my English teacher, but no, I've always been stubborn and doubtful of my abilities.) The point could also be made, however, that Woolf had the advantage, for she had not the distractions of modern day and so could pursue, doggedly, her own interests in her father's library.
Her perspective, therefore, to return to it, I find, even if I do have a smattering of knowledge of whom or of what she is speaking, surprising, for it goes down roads I'd hadn't considered, unaware (unlike her) that they were there to be taken. And still some other roads, unknown to me, I go down simply because she led me, so that I go on to research the Pastons, Sir John Fastolf (the real Falstaff) and Sir Thomas Browne; or to decide, despite my interest, I do not have the patience to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, though perhaps I have the adequate amount for Defoe's Moll Flanders; I have already gone a-rambling with the diarist John Evelyn. Just as she leads me to pick up my pen, or to flex my typing fingers and begin...

Picture credit: Ravenswood and Lucy at the Mermaiden's Well, 1886, Charles Robert Leslie for The Bride of Lammermoor by Sir Walter Scott (source: Wikipedia).

A journal entry on reading The Common Reader (volume I) by Virginia Woolf, May 2021.

Aubrey's Sirs

O rare Sir Will. Davenant
Had a coffin of walnut tree,
The finest coffin ever seen.

O distemper'd Sir John Denham
Had piercing eyes of light goose-grey,
The strangest pair looked into.

O facetious Sir Thomas More
Had his utopian head struck off,
The jaw kept as relic.

O handsome Sir Henry Savile
Had the complexion of a lady,
The queen favoured him much.

O accomplished Sir Philip Sidney
Had the best tutors provided him,
The best his father sought.

O gallant Sir John Suckling
Had a ready wit most sparkling,
The admiration of the court.

Picture credit: John Aubery (source: Wikipedia). 

Inspired by Lives of Eminent Men by John Aubery (1626-1697), written May 2021.

The Grump

I think the muse has left me, abandoned me to mere thought, thought so insignificant none should be recounted. The mundane, the trifling i.e. the little annoyances that make up daily living, and cause the Grump to emerge.
The Grump, a beast that defies all description, but which would surely frighten any of the Muses or Graces, especially as she appears without prior warning. My belief that her being is caused externally, generally by the behaviours of People, other people, and needs, therefore very little prompting or prodding to appear. So much stupidity abounds! Those her words not mine, and to which I respond, in an attempt to calm her: Temper, Temper. Not that she takes much heed of them, just smirks, for she knows her tempers, though not altogether in many cases unjustified, are both cruel and absurd. In other words, they are not worth it – the subject of them nor the stress they produce. But grumbling, the Grump contends, is not all bad, not if, at the end of them, you see the funny side or they entertain another in your telling of them.
The Grump I think is not peculiar to women, but her appearance is, I hazard a guess being of that sex and therefore at her mercy, more frequent, particularly during The Change, her favourite moment, so she informs me, of a woman's life, since it can drag on for years, and therefore afford her plenty of opportunities to present herself.
The host may not even know or be sure she is undergoing The Change, but the frequent presence of the Grump is a sure sign, especially as she likes to cause reactions that are often out of proportion to the situation, particularly in women that previously hadn't had this affliction. Of course, they will, at first, find or invent other reasons for these unexplained rages, until the frequency of them increases or occurs only at a certain time and then the reason becomes all too clear. It is The Change.
And then other signs, perhaps gone unnoticed, become apparent. The skin, the hair. The flushes of heat. The fogginess. The joint achiness. The see-sawing emotions. Up, down, up, down, in a single day, just like the good old British weather. The Grump, if she has hands, rubs them with glee.
And perhaps the female she inhabits, before she's fully cognisant of the above, does, in some small way, too, for here is rage like she's never felt it, which can, I imagine, feel, if usually milder mannered, empowering. Here is the assertiveness she's been lacking! But rage of this nature, though it might at moments feel good, isn't always so easy to direct or suppress. The teeth will grind, the eyes will cold-stare or narrow, the voice will be clipped, sometimes accompanied by pursed lips or a strained upturning of the mouth, and the walk stomped. Stereotypical, you might think; yes, but nonetheless true, and the female all too aware, often laughingly so, how she is presenting. The comedy naturally realised in the aftermath, for at the time the Grump is all consuming.
There's a lot for the Grump to be angry about, some of it not so trivial, such as why is it, generally speaking, that a man is the saviour of women? By which the Grump means why are there so few women specialising in women's healthcare? Men might be sympathetic to female issues, but how much understanding can they have of them? They won't go through The Change. And they aren't governed as much by hormone fluctuations at any stage of life. But then all General Practitioners, including those identifying as female, don't seem to recognise the many varied menopausal symptoms, and refuse to consider The Change as a possibility. The patient is told they're too young or it can't be that, it must be something else. Are women, the Grump shouts, not allowed to know their own bodies? And how those bodies usually respond? Is the problem, asks the female, that every women's experience is individual, or that there's so little professional training?
Women, when afflicted by the Grump, demand answers; when not they just want reassurance and the right diagnosis.

Picture credit: Pelvis II, Georgia O'Keefe, 1944 (source: WikiArt). 

Written May 2021.