Light and a procession of shadows

Light fills our living room in a very beautiful way every evening. The window does not have any blinds yet, and we are waiting for our power drill to arrive, but part of me will miss the bold, unfiltered light. Last night after a simple dinner of corn on the cob (one of the best summer vegetables) and black beans and rice, Guion worked on all of the technical details involved in pre-brewing (math, washers, wrenches, pipes). I sat on the couch and watched him while I read and drank a glass of wine. I thought about the serious joy that comes from focus. We were both intensely concentrated on our tasks–Guion, on preventing leaks; me, on connecting ideas–and though our solemn faces and knit brows would never betray it, we were very happy.

I am re-reading Jacob’s Room by Woolf now, because our church has a book club and I want to go. I miss talking about books. This is the best passage in the novel, in my opinion, and it reminds me why I love Woolf and why she always changes the way I think about people:

It seems then that men and women are equally at fault. It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this and much more than this is true, why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world most real, the most solid, the best known to us–why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him. Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love.

Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf

Oh, Guion has a little website now, too! Check it out.

“Only at Christmas Time” by Sufjan Stevens came on Pandora while I was cleaning out old accounts at work today and I nearly started crying. Something about that song always gets me. It’s so beautiful. And then “Fidelity” (Regina Spektor) came on, and I felt like I was a freshman at Carolina all over again, walking to Hamilton Hall and feeling full of helium, terrified and smiling at everyone.