Slipping from society to thoughts & Woolf’s “Kew Gardens”

Ok, I must first open this “blog”—the word is unreal to me, it’s not even part of my vocabulary and I won’t own it. Writing a blog and at points posting on forums or boards is odd to me. So, yes, this is a big deal. I will mark it with how I feel Virginia Woolf’s work “Kew Gardens” can reflect the occurrences of my life—perhaps everyone’s life.
Anyway, life has taken a weird change since my nephew has returned to NYC. He is just 6 years old. Among other things, he is vivacious and outwardly social but surprisingly very introverted. He never wants to go to sleep or nap for he says “I want to stay awake for the rest of my life.” ODD!!! Unless you have a complex condition (narcolepsy…), who doesn’t like to sleep?
So … outwardly social but introverted. He can repeat whole episodes of Spongebob or Dora or any of the cartoons he watches when you and he are in the midst of conversation or when he does not feel in the mood to talk to anyone. During these episodes, he is alone with his thoughts and is free to reenact the scenes from the shows. He can mimic the facial expressions and body language, on top of the lines, of the characters. He can retreat into the protection of his thoughts in a flash. He will introduce himself to a stranger, “Hey there, Buddy! My name is ---- What’s up,” pause to portray a feeling of genuine interest, and then undertake a circuitous path of escape from the intruder(s) to reenact his scenes.
Now, that brings me to “Kew Gardens.” I find that in this short story voices and one’s presence are tangible but ethereal. People come and go in the gardens:

[men, women, and children] wavered and sought shade beneath the trees,
dissolving like drops of water in the yellow and green atmosphere, staining it
faintly with red and blue […] but their voices went wavering from them as if
they were flames lolling in the thick waxen bodies of candles. Voices, yes,
voices, wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth […]
breaking the silence? But there was no silence […] one within another the city
murmured; on the top of which the voices cried aloud and the petals of myriads
of flowers flashed their colours into the air.

Voices emit from waxy husks to dissolve in the air or hang languidly over the city. The snail has “veins” and a clearer and simple aim, which is to cross, but the trotting humans are described with less vigor and likeableness than the snail. The humans imprint a “stain,” a presence that touches the garden but is washed away with time and the colors of nature like the red, blue, or yellow flowers and the penetrable sunlight. The visitors have a dissoluble presence that lingers mostly in their thoughts while transmitting to the outside world as an indistinguishable gesture. The secrets the old man gathers from the flowers as he stoops to listen or the young man’s decision to take tea elsewhere are examples of gestures that remain mysterious to the outside world, to their companions. The humans seem to retreat into nature and away from the “motor omnibuses” and mechanical turns of their city as we retreat, today, into technology, our ipods or iphones or blackberries or TVs and in the case of my nephew, our TV shows. We are constantly escaping the outside world. I listen to my ipod to escape having people talk to me in the train station or boredom because I would rather not converse or be too involved in people’s weird conversations with one another—I also read a book to avoid these things. However, this is my way of escaping for my nephew the preference is to reenact shows and, still yet, other people have other preferences. Right?

Okay, okay--so this may or may not be absurdly long. Apologies.

I cannot quite get a handle on this strange little story. I’m intrigued, for sure… although I’m not entirely sure why, or about what. What I’m absolutely certain of, however, is that I do not fully understand what it’s about. That said—I’m going to give this whole thing a shot.

What struck me most in reading this was Woolf’s depiction of age throughout the three or so pages in which the story takes place. Particularly towards the end (on page 88 specifically—in her description of the couple “in that season which precedes the prime of youth”) I get the overwhelming sense that she’s trying to (no no… I’m sorry: Virginia Woolf doesn’t TRY to do anything. She DOES things. Sort of like Chuck Norris) make a point about the various stages of maturity and development that people go though while traveling throughout the world—much like our narrator is (literally) doing in the story, itself. While the story is, strictly speaking, told from a single person’s perspective, the exposition of people in various periods of life – the children of the narrator, the quasi-prime -of –youth- power- couple and the trashy old ladies who sound vaguely like my Nana on a week long Whiskey bender, among others—all in the same geographical location makes me wonder about… well, a lot of things.

I find it interesting that on a very basic level, this piece is somewhat retrospective—at least initially. Our hero Simon, who is reminded of an erstwhile, youthful love interest seems to marvel at the extent to which fate (ostensibly) or just good old fashioned luck played a significant role in the way his life turned out—inasmuch as it did not dictate the outcome, completely: “I’ve been thinking of Lily, the woman I might have married,” he frankly admits to the woman he actually did marry (presumptively years later). More than anything, I believe, Wolf is emphasizing the complete arbitrariness of this outcome as represented by Simon’s belief that his life’s most significant events lay contingent to the volition of…um, a dragonfly.

So, okay— how does this relate to my “age-claim?” Perhaps it doesn’t, save for in my own head. BUT. I guess what I’m maintaining is that Woolf is pointing out a) the speed with which our lives pass us by—making reference to children, the elderly, and everyone in between in such a small space (both in the geographical confines and decided “smallness” of the story) and b) the fact that as we grow older, things seem to…lose significance? At least smaller, more mundane (more benign?) things. I don’t really know how else to put it. It seems to me, though, that as the characters in this story progress in age, they become less concerned with the importance and meaning of individual moments.

For example—the young couple moseying about with a parasol is preoccupied with the subtle underlying meanings of individual words such that they take on more significance than they may have in actuality, and are arguably hyper-focused on the minutia of their language. Simon recalls his fixation on Lucy’s shoes, and as stated before on the significance of the actions of the dragonfly swarming around his head. Conversely, the older people that we see (both the two old women speaking gibberish and the old man speaking with a seeming disregard for the meaning or significance of his words) are not at all concerned with the meaning of individual moments, or individual words.

All things considered, what I got most out of this story was the idea that it’s somewhat foolish to ruminate on small things to a great extent… because doing so, as demonstrated by this story (for the reasons outlined above) seems to be an exercise in futility.

And now I'm officially rambling. So I'm going to quit while I'm ahead (inasmuch as I was, ever). Sorry for the length though--brevity and I are not friends.

"Kew Gardens" and the (Un)Importance of Words

While I was reading "Kew Gardens," I must've listened to at least fifteen different songs.  I can't tell you what any of them were, except that "I Am the Walrus" is coo-coo-coochoo-ing its way into my ears right now. The words don't matter, they just provide a backdrop for my thoughts.

In "Kew Gardens," several different couples go by. They all have something in common--they aren't there for the words, but they're not there for the flowers either. I don't imagine that anyone really goes to Kew Gardens for the flowers, though they are quite spectacular. Unless you're a botanist, the Gardens themselves simply provide a pretty background for whatever conversation or introspection you might be engaging in that day. Woolf seems to be suggesting in "Kew Gardens" that the words passing between the couples are as unimportant to them as the flowers themselves.

The first couple, a husband and wife, are so preoccupied with "thinking of the past," (85) that even their children don't warrant any attention other than an occasional head-turn from the woman (84). The man thinks back to another time in the Gardens, where one of the most important decisions of his life was made. Lily's answer to his marriage proposal, the actual "yes" or "no," isn't what Simon notices or remembers. Instead of the words, he hangs all of his hope on the wanderings of an aimless dragonfly who "went round and round: it never settled anywhere." (85) His wife, Eleanor, lost in thoughts of her past, recounts a time when an action, a kiss from an old woman, affected her more deeply than words ever could--"the mother of all my kisses, all my life." (85) The words that pass between the couple, these "falling words," (87) between all the couples, seem to have all the importance of strangers exchanging small-talk about the weather. They're the soundtrack of a walk through Kew Gardens, but the important things are the ghosts of the past--all the might-have-beens and actions of the moments that really affect us. Woolf is suggesting that words, though a necessary aspect of life, prevent us from fully reflecting on our thoughts, and jar us awake (87) to remind us of the canyon that exists between "one's happiness, one's reality." (85)