Skinny Dipping

[24.xii.25.a : mercredi / 21 December]  While the entry for the 21st of December is the last one that V.W. will write in 1925 and the penultimate entry in her DIARY XIV notebook, I plan to write a few more posts here [on/in Skinny Dipping] before saying final good riddance / à la rigueur !! / to 2025 … tempting to continue with V.W.’s letters to Vita … On 17 December Virginia went to stay with Vita at Long Barn for three nights. It was the beginning of their love-affair. [sic.] “A peaceful evening”, wrote Vita in her discreet diary on the 17th. But on the 18th: “Talked to her till 3 am. Not a peaceful evening.” They met another six times before Vita left for Persia on 20 January, and although their correspondence contains veiled references to what happened at Long Barn, Vita did not for the moment tell Harold Nicholson, and denied it hotly when challenged by Clive Bell. I copied that from The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume Three. And this from the editorial note at the end of 1925 in the Diary: On Boxing Day Vita Sackville-West came to lunch.

the secret of her glamour:
a candle lit radiance
stalking on beech tree legs
pink glowing, grape clustered, pearl hung
will I miss you when you are
motoring across the desert?

For me ?? I could almost say “this wounded stricken year” but I’m too much of a magical thinker to regard material trial, even sickness, as wounding and striking … the blows of the material world did not … do not land squarely on the soul. In any case, the surprises and challenges of the year only served to force me to pay attention, to reaccess, to question my habits … are they bad habits that need reform?

One of my new habits (as of late October) has been to reconceive the practice of writing my Nova Letters. Beginning with chapter #7995 (the numbering of these chapters go back at least twenty years when I began writing a serial novel, an unfolding text, that would only end when I left off writing or died) I resolved to post at least one new chapter each day to Nova Letters. The real act of posting each chapter forced a change in the way I composed this unfolding text. In order to post (publish) the chapter, I would (obviously) have to rewrite/revise/correct otherwise improve each chapter as I wrote it … I would have to become a basher. What that looks like is :: each morning I write a new chapter, then the next morning, before writing the new chapter, I spend as long as I need on rereading and revising the previous day’s chapter before posting it. Once posted, then I set about writing the day’s new chapter. Step & repeat.