vw Waves part six middle age Flashcards
clear- cut and unequivocal I am too
there it stands, my name
yet a vast inheritance of experience
is packed in me
if I deviate, glancing this way or that way
I shall fall like snow and be wasted
there is no respite here, no shadow made of quivering leaves, or alcove to which
one can retreat from the sun, to sit, with a lover, in the cool of the evening
the weight of the world is on
our shoulders
this is life; Mr Pretice at four; Mr Eyres at four-thirty
I like to hear the soft sound of the lift and the thud with which it stops on my landing
if I press on I will inherit a chair and a rugs place in Surrey with glass houses,
and some rare conifer, melon or flowing tree which other merchants will envy
Percival has died ( he died in Egypt; he died in Greece;
all deaths are one death)
Susan has children; Neville mounts rapidly
to conspicuous heights
The clouds change perpetually over our
houses
I do this, do that, and again do this
and then that
I am no longer January, May or any other season, but I am all spun to a fine
thread round the cradle, wrapping in a cocoon made of my own blood the delicate limbs of my baby
Sleep, I say, and feel within me uprush some wilder, darker violence, so that I would fell down with one blow any
intruder, any snatcher, who would break into this room and wake the sleeper
whether it is summer or winter I no longer know by the moor grass, and the heath flower;
only the steam on the window pane or the frost on the window pane
sleep I say desiring sleep to fall like a blanket of down and cover these
weak limbs; demanding life
pass by, making of my own body a hollow, a warm
shelter for my child to sleep in
[Susan] so life fills my veins
so life pours through my limbs
[Susan] so I am drive forward until
I could cry
yet more will come
more children; more cradles; more baskets in the kitchen and hams ripening; and onions glistening; more beds of lettuce and potatoes
[jinny] people are too soon gone
let us catch them
[Jinny] I am now past thirty, perilously like a mountain goat leaping from crag to crag
I do not settle long anywhere; I do not attach myself to one person in particular
we have between us scores of children from both sexes, whom we are educating, going to see at school (…)
and bringing up to inherit our houses
th activity is endless. and tomorrow it begins again; tomorrow
we make Saturday. some will take train for France others ship for India
life comes and life goes, we make life
so you say
but we who live in the body
see with the body’s imagination
I see rocks in bright sunshine. I cannot take these facts into some cave and shading my eyes grade their
yellows blues umbers into one substance
[jinny] I drop all of these facts- diamonds, withered hands, china pots and the rest of it
as a monkey drops nuts from its naked paws
I cannot tell you if life is this or that. I am going to push out into the heterogeneous crowd. I am going to be buffeted;
to be flung down, among men, like a ship on the sea
[jinny] for my body, my companion, which is sending its signals through the back ‘No’, the golden ‘come’ in rapid running
arrows of sensations, beckons
someone moves. did I raise my arm? did I look? did my yellow scarf with the strawberry spots float a signal?
he has broken from the wall. he follows. I am pursued through the forest
[jinny] one has pierced me
one has driven deep within me
‘why look’ says neville, ‘at the clock ticking on the mantle piece?
time passes, yes. and er grow old.
[Neville] but to sit with you, alone with you, here in London, in this fire lit room, you there
I here, is all
[Neville] I think those are books against the wall, and that a curtain, that perhaps an armchair
but when you come everything changes. the cups and saucers changed when you came this morning
[Neville] there can be no doubt, I thought, pushing aside the newspaper, that means our lives, unsightly as they are
put on splendour and have meaning only under the eyes of God
[Neville] but can this
last? I though to myself I said to myself, by a lion in Trafalgar Square, by the Lion seen once and forever
[Neville] so I re-visit my past life scene by scene
there is an elm tree, there lies Percival. forever and ever I swore
[Neville] but these meetings, these partings
finally destroy us
[Nevile] now this room seems to me central, something scooped out of eternal night. outside lines twist and intersect, but round us, wrapping us about
here we are centred. here we can be silent, o speak without raising our voices
[Neville] to follow the dark paths of the mind and enter the past, to visit books
to brush aside their branches and break off some fruit
[Neville] I want someone to sit beside after the days pursuit and all its anguish
after its listings, and its writings and its waitings, and its suspicions
[Neville] after quarrelling and reconciliation
I need privacy- to be alone with you, to set this hubbub in order
for I am as neat as
my cat in habits
[n] we must oppose the waste and deformity of the world, its crowds eddying
round and round disgorged and trampling
everything must be done to
rebuke the horror of this deformity
but you are not Ajax or Percival. they did not
scratch their foreheads with your precise gesture
you
are you
you are you. that is what consoles me for the lack of many things- I am ugly, I am weak- and the depravity of the world, a
and the flight of youth and Percival’s death, and the bitterness and recoup and envies innumerable
but if one day you do not come after breakfast, if one day I see you in some looking glass perhaps looking for another (…)
I shall- for there is no end to the folly of the human heart- seek another, find another, you.
meanwhile, let us abolish the ticking of times
clock with one blow. come closer
