Day 25

Body rebelling; mind in turmoil -- watching PBS series about the Civil Rights Movement and reading "A Room of One's Own" simultaneously, I feel the same mixture of adrenalin and pain swelling just under my solar plexus as I did when I first read about these things -- both a horror and a desire to act. I am reminded, too, of Woolf's brilliance and influence -- things I couldn't appreciate when I first read her back in my early twenties. I cannot believe she was suicidal -- her mind is so clear in these pages. But I know, don't I, how things can turn. I found myself looking out of my window after I'd finished to see if she was there. I wanted to embrace her, make the pain go away, thank her. She is in so great a part why I am here doing this -- why there are books I want to read out there. She brushed off the dust of the establishment and revealed the shine -- women's voices!