§93 “Write about everything, without order, or care.”
[8.ii.25 : samedi] Only when I was young did I imagine writing my autobiography one day. Now that I’m 56, I’m less interested in my biography than I am in writing. Being wise and making use of one’s wisdom are different capacities. I know that I should slow down, do less … Son, I said to my son, don’t do what I do. Take your time. Don’t be in such a hurry to finish. In anything that really matters, being first or having the most isn’t a virtue. Why would I boast about how many books I’ve read? I wouldn’t boast about how many movies I’ve watched. I can’t write about everything … all I can do is sit down here at this desk and start writing ,,, follow where the words take me. Please write it … let it be the waste paper basket, conduit pipe, cesspool, treasure house, and larder and pantry and drawing and dining bed room of your existence. Write about everything…
My impulse is to organize, arrange, impose order … I compose. I’ve developed methods to help break me of chains that bind me to that hobgoblin, consistency, but I want to smooth & polish.
V.W. writes these words (the ones in bold above) to Jacques Raverat who is writing his autobiography & dying at the same time. Death will finish first, but V.W. still has few more letters to write to her French friend.
I used to write letters, but I hardly ever do anymore. Sending a text is the easiest act, gesture one can make to stay in touch, but do I even do that? Only for practical matters really. I overthink everything I write because writing, what I write is important to me. I should be more carefree, whimsical, & perhaps I am when I’m writing my proems. When was the last time I called Peter or David? Too long ago. I intended to write letters to both of them over the holidays, but did I? V.W. writes, “The difficulty in writing letters is, for one thing, that one has to simplify so much, and hasn’t the courage to dwell on the small catastrophes which are of such huge interest to oneself; and thus has to put on a kind of unreal personality; which … becomes inevitably jocular. I suppose joviality is a convenient mask; and then, being a writer, masks irk me; I want, in my old age, to have done with all superfluities, and form words precisely on top of the waves of my mind—a formidable undertaking.”