2003-05-02 @ 6:20 p.m.

permanent mood:

I haven't added an entry for 3 days. But it doesn't mean I didn't write. That I didn't write down anything doesn't mean I didn't write in my mind. Actually I write, I write all the time.

When dusk comes like this, when there are still sunshine still children playing outside in the yard, with whom seeing them, I write. If I were standing there, watching them through the window at the balcony, I would wonder why it was I who was watching rather than being watched. I wish I were outside playing, bathing in the sunshine-still shining at 6 o' clock in the afternoon, looking at the leaves quivering, the flags waving, people talking, enjoying the last relaxation before dark. How cozy... But I'm not, I'm not with them. I choose to stay in this shadowy room, reading Mrs. Dalloway with light fading little by little, between the shadowiness on the pages and the gap in my mind, I remained reading it. I've only done half, which I think is very difficult to read. I'm not totally blind to the book yet I just can't understand those delicate words, exquisite intension and all those delusions. I wonder why Woolf could think for every character in her book, all those characters, all those interior monologues? How could she invent those discontinuous, floating sentences without having the idea of them, the imaginations? That's why she had two lives I know, yes, she could be another person and dream for himself apart from her own dreams-which is already wild enough. She was good at it.

At the same time, I'm reading a review book called How does Woolf Read and Write in Chinese. Today I read about the stream of consciousness and the background of writing Mrs. Dalloway. There was something that inspired me. Those writers, who wrote modern fictions, considered the details and interior feelings were more important than conventions in a novel. Here's how Woolf appraised James Joyce:' Let's record it in the order by which those atoms fall on people's minds one after another; Let's pursue this style, no matter how discrete and inconsistent it looks from appearance; according to this style, every scene and detail will imprint on one's mind.' Those writers record life truthfully by their own feelings and reveal it to the readers. That is the style about. It's about ideal, dream, imagination and poetry. I think that's probably why it's so much to my liking, though I can't understand it right now, it's the style I must pursue *because I also record my imagination in a unawarely truthful way. And I like this way of writing, which is very fascinating and enchanting to me. It's so natural and beautiful and incredible. I just like the way.

Now I know the barrier for me to read this book is that there are so many new words. Though I know some of them, I don't know the exact meaning, so I just can't precisely catch the writer's idea. So much work for me to do! It seems so. :< Obviously, I know so little about English, so little. Sigh...