The poet and the woolf

As I sit here trying to write this week's blog, I feel the butterflies churning in my stomach and this strange tingling sensation inside my arm pits, both of which are making it difficult for me to concentrate and to physically type the words. For a long time, I have found comfort in the knowledge that the lead up to a hard day is much more difficult than the actual day itself. And so I know that these feelings are fleeting, that tomorrow when the hard day is in process, I won't experience anything like this build up.

I am reminded of the days when I use to race, the night before, feeling these same emotions, going through the thoughts of the pain that I will feel when I am pushing myself to run much faster than I would on an enjoyable run. I am not afraid of losing, or having a poor finish. It is always the pain, that feeling of being unable to catch my breath, the lungs stinging, the legs cramping, and the mind taking over the body, convincing the body to continue against what is feels is unnatural.

I felt it so important to sit down and write tonight even if the words are gibberish and do not in any way reach out to my listeners and help them understand something about themselves through my own valuations. There is something to writing in this space that makes me want to say a prayer to Virginia Woolf, to ask her to help me find that room of my own, where I can unleash that which is the essence of me in a moment when I am flittering and fluttering, swimming in the voices of projection about events that haven't happened yet. A space so very different from writing about the past, or a mythical present that I can create, free from the intense, physical attachment.

So I combed the web, looking for inspiration from Virginia (her books are packed up in boxes in the attic in our Ranelagh house). And the ones that are there are not about these moments, because the ones she wrote about this aren't the fun stuff to read, the inspiring, quick fix lyrics that for some reason or another seem to flood the internet, with the far more meaningful ones left by the wayside.

But I can see her, walking along the water's edge, that space where she chose to remain forever. And I feel comfort in the knowledge that my space has been and always will be the sky. So I have spent a good bit of time tonight, sitting outside, looking up, no moon, but I am still comforted by the dim light of the stars. 

I missed an opportunity today to bear my chest to the Pacific ocean and feel the cold air and water on my skin. And I try and imagine what it would have felt had I have made it to the beach this afternoon and had howled at the elements, unleashing that feminine side of me that needs to be free. A friend of mine created for me a picture of a wolf and I have not yet gotten that wolf tattooed on my skin, though I feel I may need that physical act in order to truly unleash the woolf spirit that is me.