Objects, according to Virginia Woolf

Objects, according to Virginia WoolfEJR

#essay, #wandering, #materialism, #memory

An object, a purpose, an excuse for walking halfway across town to pick something up.

Today I ran some errands, I got up at 8, read something, cleaned the house, took the dog out for a walk, went to the pet store, was tempted by reading something again, went to do groceries, cooked dinner, and sat down. But I wouldn’t have done any of them, if I actually had to be somewhere else. A headspace. I needed to write this piece of writing, on objects according to Virginia Woolf. And instead, as I imagine Woolf would have done too, I ran errands. The errands being the objects of procrastination. The action that keeps a certain tradition alive.

Imagine a sheep farm where no lambs are born. No such place exists.

So, instead of becoming an actively writing artist, as I suppose I should be to reach approaching deadlines, I became a wandering artist. I went outside. On a walk, using the poor dog as an excuse. I felt the walls of my apartment closing in on me; instead of it feeling like a safe heaven it felt more and more claustrophobic, like I was living in my own coffin. Surrounded by inanimate things who, when the stillness kicked in outside, started vibrating louder, and louder. Jane Bennett would describe this as vibrant matter, that incredibly loud silence inanimate bodies excrete, in these moments of stillness and inner silence. They try to tell me something that I couldn’t possibly understand, because that is simply outside of my realm of comprehension. Even though they are known to me, like old friends. I know exactly what most of them

look like, and can reminisce about them in my mind’s eye at any given moment. I wanted to be surrounded by strangers, who wouldn’t judge because they didn’t know me. So I fled. Onto the streets, into the park, thinking that perhaps Virginia would have felt the same sense of claustrophobia, after all she just had one room for herself. Maybe her objects would have vibrated even louder than mine, or less so, because they weren’t that familiar, were less critical of her, and didn’t remind her of incredibly strong feminist grandmothers and teenage angst.

For these personal objects all share the same, they share memories. Memories that trigger my mind to wander, therefore I let my body wander. Straight lines, networks of streets, that all lead to a known location. My mind, however, is a different creature, who has no clear destination.

Perhaps Jane Bennett and Virginia Woolf share some similarities in their opinion on objects, or inanimate matter, I thought on my fleeing walk. Bennett describes in one of her essays, The Force of Things, the power of the thing to draw attention. She calls this ‘thing-power’. It can demand attention. Like the foot of the lady fitting shoes, like my bookcase that belonged to my French grandmother that she bought on sale, due to the closing of a Parisian bookstore. They have a personality, a character that speaks to us. An interior that fits our personality, inanimate bodies similar to our own. Yes usually these are objects of desire, that stroke our eyes with their innate beauty. But, nevertheless, they do succeed and, by doing so, show us that they aren’t mere dwellers in a human built world. Perhaps we are as many dwellers in a world created by them. We are irreversibly connected with one another. closing the little mirrored doors whilst keeping my head in the opening. Creating a mirrored room, in which I saw my own endless reflection. Her memory is embedded in these objects. She has become them. However, my grandmother was so much more than a painfully 70s dressing table, or a Parisian bookcase. These are just snippets of her life. But, by saying this it almost feels like I’m trying to supersede the intricate meaning that objects can carry. Could the carried meaning of a single object bring across the complexities of one human life?… my god I think I got a bit carried away. I wandered off, again.

But I guess that’s what one does, when your home feels like a coffin.

I didn’t run errands, I didn’t do the groceries, the house is a mess, the plants need watering, there’s no food left for the dog. I just wandered off.

I wandered off, through a city not yet known to me, again heading to an unknown destination.

‘The rhythm of walking generates a kind of rhythm of thinking, and the passage through a landscape echoes or stimulates the passage through a series of thoughts. This creates an odd consonance between internal and external passage, one that suggests that the mind is also a landscape of sorts and that walking is one way to traverse it.’ (Solnit)

My grandmother died some years ago. The bookcase reminds me of her, so does her dressing table with mirrors that can fold inwards and outward. I used to play with it for hours, sitting in front of the mirror,