On our way to Shetland we stayed in London, then took the train to Edinburgh, and we’ve exactly reversed that at the end of our trip. When we were here before we accidentally discovered Tavistock Square, a beautiful green space in the middle of Bloomsbury, which has a statue of Virginia Woolf tucked away in the trees and flowers.
Virginia’s diaries accompanied me through my early 20s, and for a year or so I had a vintage black dress that made me think of her that I wore when I went out sometimes. I admire her persistence in the world she lived in, and, of course, her writing.
“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
How perfect that we stumbled onto Tavistock Square, and changed our hotel so we could revisit it on this, our final night in London.
I’m smitten with the massive London plane trees, hybrids of the American and Asian species, that tower and lean and fill the London sky with their leaves. The green across the street from me here is as lush and thick as the trees back home on November Hill. I’m consumed by Shetland, and sad to leave it two days ago, but I am beginning, this final night away, to lean myself back toward home, back to chores and work and family and the familiar, the beloved.
A couple of days of work, then writing weekend, flowing from this trip back into the writing life at home.
“I am rooted, but I flow. All gold, flowing that way.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves
My plan for the summer is to work, write, garden, and sink my roots deep into home and family and the daily routine that sustains me. And while I’m doing that, to remember Fetlar, the beautiful, remote, and quietest part of Shetland we visited. So far away but it reminded me of - felt like - home.
“When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Waves