The Waves

The ever growing desire to stay present. To feed one moment of interaction and reverie.

“The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously.” -The Waves, Virginia Woolf

The descriptors of waves, the natural breathe weaving and wefting, the light that cracks the surface. The frightening nature, the spiritual figures that enlighten “tremendous and sonorous words”. There is a mystery in perceiving and describing in words. In the past, I have talked about words being iterated through image. Now I’ll assess words' aging time.

A dialogue between two souls with descriptive words counts nations of kinesthetic reactors. The way the wind moves, as though you can see it. The blank eyes are in the present, learning how to live. In the first prelude of “The Waves” by Virginia Woolf, the dialogue intertwines back and forth, back and forth a flow that webs together a tale of perceiving.

To extrapolate the meaning of these interactions, one must look at the detailed descriptors.

I believe that the sudden switch of characters introduces a wild pacing of conscious and unconscious, observing and unobserving. The dialogue plays out as though they are bold, omnipresent prayers of their environment. There is a mysterious tone of grief of the present’s shift into an unknown emotion. Such as the waves of an ocean, the light trickling off and on it’s relationship with the wind, splashing and adorning the sand.

There is such a speed to these conversations,

“ I see a ring hanging above me,” said Bernard, “hanging above me. Quivers and hangs in a loop of light.”

“I see a slab of pale yellow”, said Susan, “Spreading away until it meets a purple stripe.”

“I hear a sound”, said Rhonda, “cheep, chirp, cheep chirp; going up and down.”

The rhythm of sight, sound, and color almost reads as a poem itself. Woolf seamlessly paints a picture of the preservation of surroundings, especially of nature. How humans certainly cling onto their last breath, ebbing and flowing as if they are bleeding words. The characters are committed to the reverie of life.

Interaction and sight must be necessary to carry on an experience and to live said experience. What the characters are experiencing are ominous but also familiar to any being. The nothingness of being is replaced with wondrous words and images.

I believe many writers use this method such as Kathy Acker in “Great Expectations”. Acker switches identities, sexes, and centuries the conjure a submersive, ever-present, life form and environment. The clenching of the present is a common technique among many writers. Switching identities is a perfect example of exemplifying the unconscious (subconscious) and the consciousness embedded within our speech and dreams. As if being in a dream, these conversations in “Great Expectations” are taken into a new level of emotion and being. Being can be frightening without descriptors and the science of speech between one another. There is nothing as sound as a profound statement about living and dying in this moment.

Virginia Woolf, like many writers, centers her story and living presence around perhaps her time period. This also grounds us readers to breath the inner workings of the character’s mind. The inner world is words. Sonic and internal to prevail as external. The ominous breath of the wind is being beaten senseless in Woolf’s writing.

The illusion of time and space take up the short prose spoken between numerous characters— back and forth is a short prose of some sort to describe and stretch time.

Time seems to slow down in careful observation of objects. The awareness of our bodies puts us out of the subconscious but also lures us into a dream.

“...Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of the candle. I dream; I dream.”

Even the evening is a mystery, but has a certain ring to the inwardness of the soul. Realizing from my own lived experience there is a shift and spirituality to words. Words within words, within words. The memory calls for healing when it is brought to the present. The world reigns with the mystery, the sullen mystery. Returning to the present is an investigation of truth’s surroundings.

Carrying the body seems overwhelming when death scorns a group of friends in The Waves, it's impossible not to analyze the external nature of life.