Ten Commandments and the Eightfold Path

I was brought up with the Ten Commandments, even before I went off to meet the Sisters of St. Joseph at Sacred Heart School. My Catholic familia pounded these laws into us from birth...It wasn't until I was almost seven that I found out one could be forgiven for one's popcorn-on-the-water transgressions...transgressions for which I usually received a whack on the behind or a slap in the face (often after asking such smart-assed questions as to "why?" something was considered punishable in the first case.)...transgressions which adults continued to imbibe in, and for which I got the worst punishments when I dared to point this fact out...(They could show up for "Confession" and emerge totally fresh, forgiven, and with a second wind for the next week's adventures.) Until I left home for good, I never had such a "Go to Jail Free" pass in my possession.

In Catholic School, the nuns were still allowed to put their hands on us at their discretion--much as the priests were--though the nuns' rough-handling was much different... When I was falsely accused of chewing gum and swallowing it (third grade, Sr. Concepta Agnes), my first thought was to try to explain that it was spit I'd swallowed and spit which was still stuck in my throat out of absolute fear of this four foot eleven eighty-six year old with the thick brogue and the gnarly muscles. (Why it did not occur to me that rational and truthful explanations to adults, who were just itching to whack somebody--anybody--for whatever frustrations their lives were currently filled with--would ever work, eludes me. Why I still sometimes believe this plan is also weird, I know. Must be hard-wired in my brain. God knows I've tried to therapize it out, over the decades...sigh.) Sr. C was no exception.

I found myself hung over the second floor stone windowsill of the red brick building, my upper body hanging in space, my eyes focused on the tarred schoolyard below. My lower body was tilting, off the ground, held by one mighty fist of Sr. Concepta, my dress knotted in her veiny right hand, my short legs dangling two feet off the classroom floor. I truly believed I was going to die--or, at the very least, be smashed like a pumpkin, my dress over my bloody head, flung into an afterlife that probably held even more humiliations, as I never got time for a final Confession. Luckily, the screaming and horrified shouts from the rest of the class (less in worry about my fate than in terror for their own third-grade lives) called another nun from next door. I was reeled in and set free. The nuns conferred in the outside hallway for all of three minutes. Sr. Concepta Agnes returned, alone, and the transgression was never discussed again. (Neither hers nor mine...)

As an adult, I have travelled seeking out Bigger Truths. I have sought ways to work out my angry memories and to find forgiveness for my sins. I have even re-explored the Catholic Church of my ancestors. Wherever I go, I find that our sins are mostly against ourselves. Seeking forgiveness from those we've wronged is the best medicine. Only then, can we begin to heal the rot inside our own lives which leads to our bad behavior against other beings. The ten commandments, it turns out, are a good blueprint--if hard to follow. Versions of their message can be found in almost all cultures, past and present, if one seeks a Higher Path. On my adventures, I came to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. They offered a slightly different (and more esoteric) "take" that spoke to me in a time of exploration of alternate realities--something even the highest Physics Scientists now attest to being real. During this time of Lent, it is something to consider. (An addition to the Survival Manual for life on Earth).
 Peace be with us all.
P.S. Allow the kids' questions...

My take on what I've discovered:

FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
All life is sorrowful, suffering
The cause of suffering is ignorant craving
The cessation of suffering can be achieved
The way is the Noble Eightfold Path

THE EIGHTFOLD PATH
Right views (keep your mind on the study of Higher Stuff)
Right aspirations (try to follow the good stuff)
Right speech (no mean speaking; no negative gossip; no lies)
Right conduct (kindness; gentleness)
Right means of livelihood (do no harm in your work, to the Planet, or yourself, or others)
Right endeavor (pursuit of Higher Spiritual Awareness)
Right mindfulness (awareness of Higher Self )
Right contemplation (education, prayer, meditation)      

ASH WEDNESDAY

Ash Wednesday, beginning of Lent for all Christians, beginning of sober times and reflection of all sins and misdeeds. End of holiday hilarity--even as such hilarious holidays as St. Valentine's Day and Presidents' Day fall right in that 40-day block. (They came later...who knew when the Church began?)

As a Catholic School child (8 years of unrelenting nuns and priests and aspiring saints), Ash Wednesday did NOT mean hang overs from Mardi Gras celebrations nor trading plastic beads and wanton stories of excess. Ash Wednesday meant either going with the Parental Units, before school, to Mass, at Church, and during the sacred celebration, walking up to the altar and getting a usually red-faced priest to stick his huge thumb in a plate of what looked like cold cigarette ashes (though the priest often smelled of cigar smoke, himself...) and then rubbed what was supposed to be a Sign of the Cross on one's forhead. By the time we got home, the "cross" had melted into a smudged thumb print.

If we waited for the school celebration, it meant walking a few blocks down Lincoln Street, to Sacred Heart Church,from Sacred Heart School. We filed, one by one, with nuns running in the gutters, all the way to the Church. There, inside, we confronted the same scene--big priests with bowls of cold ashes--ready to mark us as mortals destined for ruin--and possibly a Higher Plane--if we towed the line. (I had my doubts, even then. But by then, I'd learned to "go with the flow"--at least outwardly--if I could contain myself.)

Back at school, all the girls would compare whose ashes stayed on the longest--or were the darkest--signifying special status and obvious sanctity. (For the only time during the year, the girls with the oiliest forheads were deemed "lucky"...) Usually, my ashes flaked off by the time I hit the schoolyard. My straight-cut pixie "bangs" brushed them off, aided by my stocking cap and thick glasses. It was hopeless. Nobody ever saw how "holy" I truly was...or trying to be...even at these outwardly obvious moments.

For the boys, as with most things, life was more direct and easier. The priests lovingly squashed big thumbprints into little forheads, rubbing just a bit longer on those "bad boys" than was necessary. And inevitably, as soon as the boys got to the back of the Church, they swiped the ashes off with their fists, wiping all traces onto pants and snow jackets--or for some malcontents, on the woodwork.
Most boys ashes were already blowing in the wind by the time they hit the school macadam. Ah, the life of Catholic boys...I knew because two of them lived with me.

As my questions and doubts and betrayals by the Church grew, and self-realization increased (and pursuit of True Godhead continued), there were fewer and fewer rites that I partook in. Ash Wednesday became code for "Spring is coming". Unlike childhood sacrifices of giving up chocolate or t.v. on Friday nights, a sense of wonder at the subtle turning of the seasons in the West, took over. The blossoming of the California poppies in the deserts--that riot of scarlet screaming up from the sand--became a different "holy celebration". Easter services at dawn, on the edge of the Pacific, or on a quiet mountain top far from the sleeping cities, became my new celebrations. Chanting and meditation and retreats filled with mindfulness and Eastern teachers replaced the smudged-thumbed Priests of my childhood. Easter was still about the Christ and the promised resurrection--I've never lost that lesson--but it was tied in with the rebirth of the physical planet in a much ignored way from my youth. I didn't need special clothes nor have to spend forty days without meat to deserve Easter. It was a promise freely given and the entire Earth could partake.

Today, my parents decided to wait for the noon Ash Wednesday services at Holy Rosary, instead of the nine a.m. services at Sacred Heart. Both Churches are still operating in town, and the Bishop is trying to convince them to consolidate into the Catholic Churches of Gardner--as they will attempt to do, next year, with both parish schools. Huge resistance from the historical enclaves exists--cultural as well as financial and demongraphic. The Bishop seems unconcerned, as long as his job is intact. The priests move blithely on, still big and smiling and saying the same words, more or less, they have always said: some folks deserve to serve God up close, and personal, and be paid for it--in status and life-time job security--like themselves. For the rest of us, well, we receive the ashes...

One time my little sister Ann viewed the Ash Wednesday services with big eyes, seated between my parents, in the pew. When we all returned with the smudged crosses on our forheads, she asked my Mom: "You said Uncle Charlie turned to ashes inside his coffin, last year, right?"
Mom answered: "Yes, after he died and they buried him at the cemetery, his body turned back to dust and ashes..."
Ann then asked: "So, is that Uncle Charlie they're spreading on everyone's face?"

God bless us, everyone. Happy Lent.        

BIizzard Time!

Rolled out of bed.
Ann's birthday today.
Had a gift from Maeve, her dog, and me. 
(Family party for her on Sunday.)
Pulled off longjohns and checked out the window for first snowflakes.
They had already begun.
Pulled on undies, snowsox, jeans and two sweatshirts. Pulled down a beanie over my furrowed brow.
Hurried downstairs for coffee, awaiting Ann's arrival.
(We have to drive to New Hampshire for Maeve's six month check up and vaccinations...her vet lives there and is waiting for us.)
Get leather bomber jacket, gloves, snowboots on over everything else. Put Maeve's leash on. Maeve is terribly excited, we are going "somewhere". (I have also reminded her it is her "Mom"'s birthday.)
I do not mention the vet visit...

We wait.
We wait.
We wait and sweat.
We wait and just as I'm peeling off layers and almost passing out from heat stroke, Ann arrives.
We pile out to car.
We slide out of the snowy driveway.
Big silver flakes the size of corn chips are tumbling down the road in front of us.
Few cars.
Fewer people.
Maeve dances on the back seat, still not sure where we are going but glad to be going anywhere --especially with us.
(Ann has thanked me for the eagle bracelet we gave her--the female eagle woman of our clan--but doesn't seem overly impressed....oh well...more gifts on Sunday.)

We make good time to the vet's.
Maeve takes a doggy dump outside. Ann picks it up with a doggie dump bag. She goes in with Maeve. This time, I'm left out in the car.
A man with a terrible cough, hacks and spits, lights a cigarette and starts yelling into his cell phone one foot from the Jeep. (He has the entire parking lot to make the call--but he has to stand one foot from my face, outside the window of the car, to make his call.) His coat is open. His baseball hat is on backwards. He smokes and hacks and shoots a lugie into a pristine snowbank, meanwhile screaming at his girlfriend...
I try to watch the snow and think of dogs and beaches and white sand.

Ann comes out.
Maeve's heart is good. She didn't bite the vet. In fact, he finally got the guts to trim her nails--which pisses me off as I've had to take her in once a month for the last year because he is afraid to trim them! I guess when Ann told him what we're doing in Gardner with the dog he got embarrassed.
She's put on a pound but is bouncy and healthy and no one thought she would make it this long.
She licks my face and reminds me of every human I know with that same "Yay, I'm outta there!" goofiness after getting out of the doctor's office.
We drive home in increasing foggy snow.
The light is like the inside of a dirty cotton ball.
The cold pounds into my bones, even with the heater on.
I cradle doggie meds and a litter bag filled with my used kleenex. Ick.
We stop for gas.
Fifty people lined up like it's a Zombie Apocalypse....Ann pumps her gas and we head home.

At home, dog jumps out.
I head inside. Gotta get another warmer jacket and pick up another new prescription.
Ann is headed to a house auction. "It'll be filled with house flippers from Boston in this blizzard, but I want to at least see what's up..." Her friend from work will attend with her, as well as niece Mer, who, one day, will surely inherit any house Ann buys.
I pull off a coat.
I pull on a coat.
I blow my nose, filling my jacket pockets keys, gloves, money and kleenex.
I head out, alone.

The snow is filtering down in slanty sheets. Behind the clouds, somewhere, a yellow sun beats down. It is eerie and quiet and still freezing.
The car starts.
I head for the drugstore.
On the radio, the Mamas and the Papas sing me down the street...."a winter's day...."


 

AWAITING THE BIG ONE

1978: I had fled the East Coast, a Wells College graduate nursing a busted heart, leaving everyone I had known or loved, landing with my back to the Pacific and my dreams clinging like dust to my brain. I was hardly there when winter hit the East and buried it under a few feet of snow.

I was dealing with politics and sociological phenomena like the murder of Harvey Milk and Jonestown. Weather, no matter how severe, (there were giant fire storms singeing my backyard even as it snowed in Gardner, MA) was not on my priority list. (God forgive my callousness or ignorance.) Well, the Universe, which I take very personally, is making me re-live the moments I'd missed:

I finally go to the doctor on Monday to find that my sister was right: massive sinus infection. All those blueberries evidently kept it on the back burner for months and kept it out of my brain, so I didn't die--but I could have. Maybe. Or so I'm told.  Now, big anti-biotics for the next week. Massive head-aches, gross stuff blowing out of my nose by the minute and no sleep. But I have to carry on...

Tutoring. Kids are defiant and don't want to do homework at home. Want me to watch them read. Want to discuss "life" and not biology. Come in just a little late. Take forever to get set up. Want to finish early...meanwhile I am blowing my nose every second and apologizing for it. All gender wars aside, when tutoring male teens, even this gross behavior is excused quite readily...

Come out of the Library. It is almost zero degrees F. My nose finally stops running. It is frozen.
My back tire is flatter than a book page. I knew it was low earlier, but not like this. Evidently the air temp did it in. I am outside and the Library has closed and it will take AAA at least an hour to get here...My student comes out and offers to go to his home, pick up his airpump, come back, inflate my tire and see me home!  What a sweetie. I agree, reluctantly.

We take turns sitting in my heated car and running the pump. It takes twenty freezing minutes. I limp home. I put the car in the driveway, knowing I'll have to move it in the morning.  I go inside and tell the parental units what has occurred. No one seems phased. However, then, over dinner, I am told fifteen versions of what to do.  I decide to move the car into the street, risk a ticket, better allowing AAA to get it in the a.m. with a towtruck and to allow Mom and Pop access out of the garage--if need be.  Of course everyone balks.

I move the car.
Much family feuding.
I get up in the a.m. Call AAA. They send a tow truck which takes two hours to arrive and involves three more calls back and forth. I get towed to the tire place. I get a lecture on how I shoulda bought four tires when I put the front ones on.  I finally tell the tire dude: Hey! You aren't helping! Let's just put on new back ones, okay?

(Tire guy finally shut up and put on new back tires)Two hundred and ten bucks. My entire last check for tutoring...sigh. No new sneakers this month! I leave an hour later.
Pick up anti-biotics and juice and salsa fresca.
Get home.
Park in driveway praying everyone is in for the night.
Come inside.

"So, your sister said you went to the doctor for something yesterday?  I thought it was just your usual check-up..." from Mom.

"How were the tires?  Expensive, right...?" Dad.

Before I can answer, we are back to "The Storm".

It's coming. All the plows are lined up. Everyone is charging their devices and buying back up batteries. Two storms to meet right over Gardner. Thunder and lightning in the blizzard--sounds like the wrath of God to me!

"I saw thunder and lightning in a blizzard before...no big deal..."  Mom. ( Unless it is about her body, nothing is 'a big deal'...)

We eat and they discuss the storm.
Thirty-six inches on Friday to Saturday. Power outages. That means, no snowblowing brother...I cringe, expecting shoveling with a rag shoved up each nostril and my car stuck in the driveway with nobody going anywhere.

I pour some more juice and pray.  

MOVING OBJECTS DEUX

Tuesday, 6:00 p.m.
Karen arrives home after tutoring at the library.
Parking in the street, she gets out of the car, in the dark, ready to take the trash barrel from the back yard to the curb.
As she crosses the street, she notices a dark sinister shape standing on the curb in front of the house...

Karen retreats to her car, starting the engine and pulling into the driveway, to park for the night.

Tuesday, still, 6:03 p.m.
Karen enters the livingroom. The six o'clock evening news is blaring at full-force. Mom and Dad don't even hear her enter.

Mom turns from the t.v. and clutches her heart, giving a little "yip".

Mom: You scared me! We didn't even hear you come in the house!

Karen: I told you I would be back by six p.m.

Dad: We didn't hear the door and the dog didn't bark...

(Dog is smiling, on the floor, wagging her tail, looking up at me.)

Karen: Dad, who put the trash on the curb? I told you I would do it after I got home, tonight!

Dad: Well, it was still in the backyard and I wasn't doing anything, so I just took it down.

Mom: Jim, I don't want you going down the steep driveway with the trash--the girls can take it down!

Dad: I didn't want to wait...

They both redirect attention to the blaring newscast: TEMPERATURES RISING TO THE FIFTIES, TOMORROW, THIRTY DEGREE RISE FROM MONDAY, ACCOMPANIED BY INCREASING FOG....

Wednesday, 7:30 a.m., Fogbank in back yard.

Karen comes down for breakfast.
Dad is watching morning news in livingroom.
Mom is upstairs in her bedroom, getting ready for the day.
Dog is sitting by the kitchen table, waiting for Karen, wagging her tail.

Karen reads  morning news. Feeds dog biscuits. Drinks coffee.
Dad comes in for more coffee and cookies for himself. Mom turns on shower, upstairs.
No one says a thing about trash, cars, weather, etc.
Karen goes back to newspaper.

Mail arrives.
Karen sorts mail for family, leaving various piles on the kitchen table.
All is quiet. Karen finishes paper.
Dad meanders into kitchen for more cookies. Comments on squirrels in backyard and rising puddles on the unfrozen lawn.
Dog begs to go outside.
Karen takes dog out; waits for dog. Dad watches from pantry window, smiling.
Karen takes dog in; wipes four paws, belly, tail and replenishes dog bowl.
Still no sign or word from mother, upstairs.
It is now 10:30 a.m.

Karen rises from table.
Goes down cellar to take up laundry from laundry room.
Passes mother on stairs, says "Good morning".

Karen goes upstairs to put laundry away.
Karen turns on computer to begin writing.
Suddenly, there is much hollaring and screaming of her name from downstairs.
Karen opens bedroom door and asks" What?!!!"

Mother: (Screaming), I'm leaving right now!!! You have to move your car!! I've got to leave right this minute!!! You are parked in front of the garage doors!!!!

Karen rushes downstairs, grabs keys (amid screams and shouts). Dog is barking. Karen runs into wet fog.

(And so it goes.) 

  

MOVING OBJECTS

9:oo p.m.  Monday Night

Dad: Tomorrow, take the trash out to the curb, okay?
Karen: Why don't I do it, now? I'm dressed and I have to move the car, anyway...
Dad: No! It's too early. It goes out tomorrow!
Karen: Okay.

(Outside, the snow is coming down in tiny bits and pieces, hard, like broken glass.)

Karen: It's starting to storm...I should take the trash out, now, before it is covered in ice...
Dad: Tomorrow! Take it to the curb, tomorrow!
Karen: sigh...

5:30 a.m. Tuesday Morning

t.v. weather-station comes on: Storming till this afternoon; freezing rain; icey conditions...

Karen pulls on warm clothes. Brushes teeth. Puts on snowboots, parka, hat and gloves. She is about to go out to get the trash barrel unstuck from the ice, when her mother enters the kitchen.

Mom: What are you up so early for?
Karen: I have to take the trash to the curb--last week I got up too late and Dad had a fit because the trash guys arrived early...
Mom: For God's Sake, the trash doesn't go out till tomorrow!
Karen: Dad said it goes today...
Mom: Wednesday!
Karen: Isn't that for re-cycling and--
Mom: Yes, every other week, but the trash goes out on Wednesday morning EVERY week...how long have you been back here?
Karen: Well, I should move my car, then....
Mom: Why? Your sister isn't coming home today...and we aren't going out in this weather. Leave it. If there's an emergency, you can always pull it into the street, later.

Karen takes off hat, boots, parka, etc. Returns to her bedroom.

7:30 a.m. A sound of a car pulling into the driveway rises to Karen's room. It is her little brother, arriving to snowblow the one inch of snow that has managed to coat the driveway.

Karen knows she must move her car, immediately, out of the driveway, so he can pull out the snowblower and get around where she was parked.
Karen puts on hat, parka, boots, gloves, etc.
Karen goes out to greet brother and move car.

Brother: (shouting over snowblower) Just move it halfway down the drive, then pull into Ann's spot. She's not coming home today, right?
Karen nods. Gets into her car. Starts it. Warms it up. Moves it fifty feet, down the driveway.
Brother finishes snow blow.
Karen moves car BACK to sister's spot, in driveway.
Brother pulls his car behind her.
Brother: I'm coming in for coffee, before I go to work.

9:45 a.m.
Phone rings.
Mom: (To Karen and Brother and Dad.) It's your sister. She's calling from Burger King. Do you want anything? She's on her way home, from work.
Karen rises. She pulls on parka, boots, hat, gloves. She grabs her keys.
Brother: I gotta go, too. Thanks for the coffee, Ma! He exits.
Karen waits till he pulls out of the driveway, then follows him.
She parks her car in the street, just as a snowplow pushes up a banking of slush around the outside of her vehicle.

10:30 a.m.
Phone rings.
Sister Ann wants to know if we need anything from the store.
Mom: No! I'm going out later, anyway.
Mom hangs up phone.
Mom: Your sister is coming from the grocery; I'm leaving in a few minutes, but she says that tomorrow and Thursday you can park in her space because she will stay at Work those nights.
Did you move your car yet, so I can get out of the garage?
Dad: (entering the kitchen) The trash goes out tonight, to the curb. Not yet, though. It's too early.
When do you leave to tutor?
Karen: At three p.m.
Dad: Can you put the trash out when you get home?  Or when you leave?
Karen: I can do it now...
Dad: It's too early. Do it later.
Mom: You can park in your sister's spot when you get back--she isn't coming home again until Friday morning.
Dad: I thought she wasn't coming home, today!
Mom: No, no, no. She checks on her friend, Sarah, on Tuesdays, and then comes home. Today's Tuesday! No wonder I'm crazy--you all expect me to keep your calendar's straight and I've got enough of my own to worry about!
Dad: You can park in your sister's spot when you get home, after tutoring, tonight. And don't forget to put the trash out...

(It' s times like these that I truly appreciate the notion of " a room of one's own, with a lock on the door, privacy, and five hundred pounds free and clear..."    


9:  

WHOSE AFRAID OF VIRGINIA?

As I pass Virginia Woolf's birthday, I remain stunned by her words about women and writing: the fear of it; the fear without it; the trick of it; the treats; the triumphs and the tragedies after those triumphs. Though not my favorite writer, per se, (that position will always remain with John Steinbeck), she is my favorite female writer.

It was the pure audacity of her work--its breadth as well as depth--which pulls me in, still. Essays, both political and personal, short fiction, autobiography, biography, history, journals, newspaper articles, criticisms, and of course, the bounty of novels which pushed the boundaries of what novels were "supposed to look like"...all the while struggling with mental illness and aware of the ravages it would wage inside her. This kind of artistic courage didn't come from outside, though she was bolstered by family and a stellar grouping of colleagues. It came from a heart of a lion who needed to roar.

Whenever I get depressed about my own life's journeys, or the irony that I am a writer who has always written and always wanted to say what I see around me, though not always a writer with a stage or a printing press from which to launch those observations, I grasp the image of Virginia, literally, and just "write on". One can realize one's limitations, be they monetary or spiritual or even simply talent, but one doesn't always realize that the way to overcome those limits is simply TO WRITE. Virginia taught me this--speaking from the hallways of her diaries, when I was in High School. Later, with guides to show me different paths through the novels, I took to heart what she was illustrating. She not only thought about what it took for a woman to write the truth (or what that woman saw as the truth),but followed her own insights. She wrote what she was experiencing, no matter how out of step, or out of line, it was for its time. Gender bending, insanity, incest, independence, a room of one's own, WWII and the corruption of politics across the globe, the pure heartstrings of pets or the loss of one's soul-mate, these were subjects she investigated through the lens of her own experience. Her bravery astonishes me, still.

The issues have not greatly changed. The world remains at war with itself. Women are still not in power or wealthy in any great numbers. Slavery and prostitution and child abuse and poverty are the biggest employers on a planet that seems as mad as she worried she was becoming. And the human heart is as easily fractured as it ever was. Today, though, we don't have the beauty of the Muse of her mind--the elegant phrasings, the watercolor exteriors. Ours is a harsher time. A time which moves too hurriedly to appreciate novels of extraordinary construction or experimental boundaries of language. Today, instead of visiting each other for lengthy conversation and tea, we text. Or Skype. Or forego physical visits, altogether, and hope we will "meet up" at those events no one can escape: funerals, parent-teacher meetings, The Holidays...

Virginia understood the constant watering needed in the garden of the human heart. She attended to those around her, as best she could, even when she shouldn't have. In the end, not wanting to take advantage of the kindness of her clan, she put rocks in her pockets and walked into a fast river, knowing yet another bout of madness was sweeping her away. Unlike many who studied the Bloomsbury Group in college, in the 1970's , Virginia Woolf''s suicide was not the clarion call I heeded. No. It was Virginia Woolf's robust external and internal life--her blending of both into her art. She remains, for me, one of my own Muses.

Unlike the past, when I would have gathered my own Group up and spent the night in toasts to the writer (and to each other, as fledgling writers to be), I am long time clean and sober, so I will, instead, let Virginia's own words stand in as a toast, shared among friends across this planet, tonight. Happy Birthday, belatedly, Ms. Woolf, wherever you are!

"If a woman is to write,she has to have 500 a year and a room with a lock on the door, a sacred space where Shakespeare's sister, Judith, might have equaled his prodigious gift or not. She might have simply floated there, set loose in the privilege of privacy, her self unwritten, under no one else's eyes..."

Virginia Woolf, "A Room Of One's Own"