That Little Tug - -
...you know the little tug - - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid out on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.
Virginia Woolf (1929)
Woolf’s
analogy
More on analogies, so valuable to extending conceptions.
is rich. Our thoughts are so complex, hidden, extensive, they feel like a deep lake; rendering us grateful for whatever may be drawn from it. But later, once exposed to the
light,
Light has a central place in discussions of understanding.
what we find may seem paltry; and soon forgotten. That light, which magically conjures phenomena, contrasts with the dark of the water. The lake from which conscious ideas emerge is deep; many creatures hide in the preconscious where non-linguistic
thoughts
The difficulty of navigating these ideas is helped by consideration of the profoundly deaf.
coalesce, unimaginable connections materialise, meaning is endowed. Indeed a mysterious process. Is this the ‘light of reason’ which lets phenomena
emerge,
The magic of the appearance of the new.
in which we scrutinise our tentative ideas, and so ultimately creates ‘reality’?
A Room of One’s Own, was originally two lectures given to women’s colleges in Cambridge. The quote is taken from pages 8/9 of the edition published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at Hogarth Press, 52 Tavistock Square, London W. C. It is an eloquent, insightful while witty, assessment of why, so often, women seem to have had less literary success than men.
The photograph was taken in Đà Lạt in southern Vietnam. The sign, in the water, just in front of the fisherman, reads Cấm Câu Cá -‘Fishing Prohibited’.
Above, hovering on blue introduces a link: click to go, move away to stay.
Saturday 27th November 2021
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