We Need the Eggs

I long to be like Virginia Woolf. Aside from the packing your coat with rocks and drowning in a river bit, her life seemed fairly peachy. Granted, there must have been some unhappiness (given the rocks, the river), but I think I have the strength to cope.

There is something so romantic to me about Virginia Woolf’s existence, I can’t explain it. Perhaps it is just my imagination. As I sit and write this I imagine Virginia writing: sitting in a large wicker chair, padded wooden desk upon her lap, inkwell, fountain pen in one hand, a freshly rolled cigarette in the other – what an image. I understand that this is my imagination and not your’s, but still, everything I know about Ginny just grabs me.

I long to be like Virginia Woolf, so much so that I have begun to imitate my imagination’s mental picture of her writing process. I gathered the necessary supplies: my giant blue chair, a plastic lap desk (advertised as being made by “The Original Lap Desk Company!”), paper, and an ink-filled blue pen.

I was set up to begin writing like Virginia, but there was an interruption.

“Kevin! Kevin!” my mother cried as she entered the world of a 19^th century English novelist.

“What?” I asked, involuntarily pulled back to reality.

“What are you doing?”

“Writing,” I replied.

“Writing what?”

She has a good point. What was I going to write about when I sat down like Ginny? Frankly, I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I scrambled for an answer.

“Oh, ah…suicide notes. Yeah. Some suicidal people are so depressed that they have to outsource the writing of their notes. That’s where I come in.”

The perplexed look on my own face was reflected in my mother’s.

“Okay, well, dinner’s ready.”

I imagined what Virginia would do if one of her house servants had just burst in on her without warning. I’m sure she did not take kindly to any disturbances. The entire landscape of English literature could have been altered because a servant forgot to knock before entering Virginia’s lair. “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself” could have been “Servant Sally is unemployed and a hussy” all because “the help” was a little too helpful.

Poor Ginny, that was a close one.