reading Orlando by Virginia Woolf. it's a bio of the real star of the Lord of the Rings flicks. and by the way, I have Woolf's bio of Elizabeth Browning's dog, but haven't read it. if I had Philip Dick's prose writing purpose I'd take 3 weeks off and write a bio of, I dunno, Pumpsie Green, Colonel Klink, Haley Duff, Amy Clampitt, it doesn'tmatter who but digin and down. so far, Orlando is spritely, but I am sure a morbid, downcast note will arise. according to my morbidometer, Woolf ranks with Thomas Mann in languourously overwhelming sense of collapse and decay. that's not including Hawthorne, who's in the sedate New Englander divsion, an entirely separate category. I don't mean to squeeze Woolf into a critical box, I like her a lot. one gleans a certain fragility in Woolf, but not in her writing. it seems to me that writing The Waves was an act of considerable physical effort. To the Lighthouse, as well. a fascinating, wiry toughness to her. I think of Dickinson in her near solitude and in comes Higginson. and while not the brightest lightbulb in the silverware drawer, he notices this energy emanating but not fully escaping from her. more than he could handle. Woolf wasn't like that, she had snooty class distinction to fall back on, but she was more brilliant than those around her. The Bloomsbury Group seems more like a distraction, social padding, than a vital artistic congress. overwhelmed in a tenuous world, she plugged on. I suppose I'm getting into glib territories of easy definition. just meant to evoke some spirit of respect toward her shadow, while wondering why the nattering at Lucipo luridly engages me a bit. gosh, they worry (with some distinct exceptions) the little things.