I’m taking a class on Virginia Woolf. It’s a lecture series really, and my gods, the woman had a way with the English language. It’s easy to say someone’s prose is lovely or lilting, but it is another thing when a writer expresses the more mundane things in a way that fashions them spectacular. “She attended only with the surface skin of her mind” was a recent favorite as I began Night and Day.

Woolf wrote this novel after recovering from a nervous breakdown. She was only allowed to write in short bursts, and interestingly, at least to me, a full manuscript in her hand does not exist. Only pieces here and there, which feels very Woolf and very much like a recovery.

Today’s lecture placed Married Love, a very odd book about married “relations” written in 1918 by Marie Stopes up against Woolf’s Night and Day to look at love and expectations during that time. Also, Woolf’s wit and sarcasm. The class is over my head. These readers have enjoyed and dissected Virginia’s writing for years and I, well, I love her words, but I don’t know them enough to draw parallels to society, feminism, and the greater literary culture.

If I’m happy just highlighting and putting hearts in my copy of the book, then why take this class? Why listen to a lecture out of my depth? Because I love being in a room with people who are smarter than me. I don’t care if I only understand half of what they’re saying, or I need to look things up, or if I’m stunned by findings they’ve known for years. I love their perched glasses and furrowed brows. I connect thinly to the one thing we have in common, a love of story, and I listen to the rest.

In a world of quick answers and even quicker lies, I cherish my time in these lectures. Each year I choose someone I’ve always wanted to read, or read more deeply, and I find an online class or lecture series. Last year it was James Baldwin. His work was, and I don’t mean this to sound trite, life-changing. His words and works, and the men and women who lectured, reshaped the way I see the world and myself. It was again a humbling space, but wow, the brilliance I witnessed was worth every month.

This picture is not Virginia Woolf nor James Baldwin. I took it standing in the open courtyard of the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art the week it opened to the public. Different from my online lectures tucked into my office, but as inspiring, as important.

That’s all from the laundry room. Featherbed.

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