It takes only a day (yet a day I don’t often own) to recall what it is to really exist; to rediscover the heart of what it is to be alive.
(And it takes remembering that it only takes a day so that one may somehow afford that to oneself.)
Virginia Woolf said that a woman needs her own money, and a room of her own, to write fiction. She also needs empty time. Time when someone else’s day does not depend on hers; time when she is lost to the world, unaccountable, and cannot be found by any but herself.
Women heed calls. They tend. They listen. Above all, they reassure and encircle their children, their worlds, in love and care. They make sure. That the dog is fed, the fish, the guinea pigs…that the plants and trees have water, that even the worms get their meal. They clean, they wash, they prepare. They make, they round off edges, they tuck in loose threads, they console. They take care.
While men often go out and sow and reap (also necessary!), women often tend. It is in our hearts and our biology and is in many ways our destiny; and it is our magic. This all-encompassing love is crucial to nothing less than the continuation of our species, but while lip service is often given, our tending generally goes unseen and unappreciated in a world where achievement and power are valued above all else. It’s incalculably unfortunate that a woman’s greatest gift givable, her magic, is often completely invisible and goes unacknowledged.
But as women, if we wish to create and enjoy other kinds of magic (writing fiction or otherwise)—which it should be noted often sustains our ability to care and to tend—we must have Woolf’s requirements, yes, and as I’ve mentioned, we must also have time.
Perhaps Ms. Woolf assumes time within her two needs—I don’t remember—it’s been awhile since I read A Room in its entirety.
I just know that there is tending, and there is something else; something VW notes in her recalling of her impressions of Lamb’s essays: “…that wild flash of imagination, that lightning crack of genius in the middle of them which leaves them flawed and imperfect, but starred with poetry.”
To truly love a woman is to bow before her care, to truly see her inestimable value, despite her imperfections and flaws, and to know that she contains wild flashes of imagination, lightening cracks of genius. That she is starred with poetry. And that she needs empty time.
**I don’t mean that all women must depend on men (or anyone else) for money (that’s in fact the opposite of what Virginia Woolf asserts), or to see their value, or for the simple gift of responsibility-free time (or the assumption that it must be a gift given rather than a right of her own), or for anything else, or that she can’t make her own way and money, or inherit her own, or whatever. And in a very real way, in any case, all else aside, a women must somehow, if she wants the other kind of magic, amid the tending, create her own time for herself.**
(Perhaps, now that I think of it, the time is what the room affords and the money buys.)
In any case.
It only takes a day. And perhaps a night. A day and a night to myself and I remember: wild flashes, lightning cracks, stars.
It doesn’t matter what kind of day it is—the weather may be of any kind, although it helps if the room is to one’s liking and the money is sufficient so that one’s thoughts are not fully absorbed by necessary planning and strategizing (because the other magic, tending, must aways take precedence).
And then Flash! Crack! The stars become visible! What is truest, realest, what has eluded me all week, gazing at the persimmon tree as I awaken slowly, on my own time…returns, wild and undamaged.
And I remember important things I’d momentarily forgotten.
Sometimes as women our tending magic becomes a noose around our necks; we allow our love to hold us in damaging places, tending to those who drain us dry, who are blind and deaf to both our magic and our needs. And there’s no denying that a cost is exacted—the cost tears parts of our hearts and leaves scars. But if we’re lucky, if we’re able, we decide to finally take care of ourselves, slip out and live again.
But nevermind.
The stars.
The stars are what’s important. The stars, the flash, that crack of lightening, reminding us of who we are. We must leave space for it, tending ourselves. We must dip into that space that is only ours, somehow leaving behind our phones and our responsibilities to others for a bit, and like Virginia Woolf in 1928, bring back a ladle full of the liquid universe that courses through our veins. Because we are starred with poetry.