A long winter it was here in Indiana. A very long winter but now it is May. My peonies are blooming and I am on break until June 5th. The spring semester ended last Tuesday, and I spent the following days decompressing and organizing. Today, I took an hour and cleaned off my desk and made my workspace workable (it looked liked a paper factory threw up in here before) and then I decided I wanted to blog. And read. And write.

I wanted to.

As is evidenced by my blog, a hefty stack of New Yorkers, a long que on my Kindle Fire and my empty writing journals, I have not wanted to do any of these things since about February. For shame, but there’s not point in dwelling on the past.

Onward.

After I spent some time cleaning up my little office area, I went outside, cut some peonies, returned to my office and read the first two chapters of A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. I’ve read this book before, but it’s been awhile and I picked up a used copy at a yard sale last year, so I figured I’d dive right in. I like Woolf. I like her wit and her honesty. Brutal honesty. I like how she remarks, after being snubbed by two different men while visiting Oxbridge:

It is a curious fact that novelists have a way of making us believe that luncheon parties are invariably memorable for something very witty that was said. or something very wise that was done. But they seldom spare a word for what was eaten. 

I also love her beautifully descriptive images:

It was the time between the lights when colours undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in windowpanes like the beat of an excitable heart. 

But most of all I admire her for passages like this:

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size. Without that power probably the earth would still be swamp and jungle. 

So here’s to a summer of reading, gardens, yoga, fresh food and words.

My own little room.