Woolf

"But beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty – it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life – froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth all that out under the cover of beauty."

– Virginia Woolf

Beauty freezes life, masking the face by denying it variety and motion.

A Room of One's Own

'[B]ut here I was actually at the door which leads into the library itself. I must have opened it, for instantly there issued, like a guardian angel barring the way with a flutter of black gown instead of white wings, a deprecating, silvery, kindly gentleman, who regretted in a low voice as he waved me back that ladies are only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the college or furnished with a letter of introduction.

That a famous library has been cursed by a woman is a matter of complete indifference to a famous library. Venerable and calm, with all its treasures safe locked within its breast, it sleeps complacently and will, so far as I am concerned, so sleep for ever.'

— Virginia Woolf describes her attempt at entry to the Wren, A Room of One's Own (1929).
The Wren is a library belonging to Trinity College.

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1. Really creative flyers being handed out during the Toxic City march I went to during G20. 2. Raging Grannies during G20, everyone should really inspire to be a raging granny. 3. Doggy umbrella, belonged to some kid on Toronto Islands. 4. I carved my highschool boyfriend's name into the sand. 5,6. To The Lighthouse we go with my couchsurfers Lara and Fritz, then I see a swan. 7. Cantonese style steamed fish with my other couchsurfer Dona. 8. My boss's cat Jake, fat and lovable as all cats should be. 9. Espana wins, insanity ensues on College St.. 10. Soupe au Pistou, David Lebovitz style, shared on the patio with my lovely friends Markus and Avary. 11. Beef patty on the way home from work, delicious indeed, probably best in the city, come one come all to the bakery inside Islington station.

ruin

"But those tools are not our tools, and that business is not our business. For us those conventions are ruin, those tools are death."

- Virginia Woolf, Mr. Brown and Mrs. Bennet

I just sat with a bunch of G20 protesters at Tent City for 4 hours. We smoked, we laughed and we sang. At one point I almost got into the oil wrestling rink with this greasy dude, I truly felt like I was living in it.

gems

"Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small. "
- Virginia Woolf, Modern Fiction

My friend Audi Ranalli took these. Aren't they beautiful?
We learned in my Modernist Literature class how important it was to make beauty out of the everyday. Artists, whatever their medium, are the only ones who are able to keep darkness and confusion at bay for just a little while longer. Using artistry to create these perfect little moments of unity, we are able to bring people together in our otherwise disconnected lives, these memories remain with us, luminous like gems.

Dear Virginia

"I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia. I composed a beautiful letter to you in the sleepless nightmare hours of the night, and it has all gone: I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn’t even feel it. And yet I believe you’ll be sensible of a little gap. But you’d clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality. Whereas with me it is quite stark: I miss you even more than I could have believed; and I was prepared to miss you a good deal. So this letter is just really a squeal of pain. It is incredible how essential to me you have become. I suppose you are accustomed to people saying these things. Damn you, spoilt creature; I shan’t make you love me any the more by giving myself away like this —But oh my dear, I can’t be clever and stand-offish with you: I love you too much for that. Too truly. You have no idea how stand-offish I can be with people I don’t love. I have brought it to a fine art. But you have broken down my defences. And I don’t really resent it."

- Vita Sackville-West in a letter to Virginia Woolf, January 21st 1926
via Suicide Blonde