2006-06-20
the evening party
On every chair there is a little soft mound; pale whisps of gauze are curled upon bright silks; candles burn pear shaped flames upon either side of the oval looking-glass; there are brushes of thin tortoise-shell; cut bottles knobbed with silver. Can it always look like this- is not the essence- the spirit? Something has dissolved my face. Through the mist of silver candle light it scarcely appears. People pass me without seeing me. They have faces. In their faces the stars seem to shine through rose colored flesh.
"Come into the corner and let us talk."
"Wonderful! Wonderful human beings! Spiritual and wonderful!"
"But they don't exist. Don't you see the pond through the Professor's head? Don't you see the swan swimming through Mary's skirt?"
"I can fancy little burning roses dotted about them."
"The little burning roses are only like the fireflies we've seen together in Florence, sprinkled in the wistaria, floating atoms of fire, burning as they float- burning, not thinking."
"Burning not thinking. And so all the books at the back of us. Here's Shelley- here's Blake. Cast them up into the air and see their poems descend like golden parachutes twinkling and turning and letting fall their rain of star-shapped blossoms."
"Fireflies among the wistaria."
"Heartless, I grant you. But see how the great blossoms hang before us; vast chandeliers of gold and dim purple pendant from the skies. Don't you feel the fine gilt painting our thighs as we enter, and how the slate coloured walls flap clammily about us as we dart deeper and deeper into the petals, or grow taut like drums?"
-Virginia Woolf
leesah-likes at 10:42 a.m.