Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
"Blogging Circle of Friends " DAY 1898: January 26, 2018 Prompt: “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own "They published your diary And that's how I got to know you Key to the room of your own and a mind without end And here's a young girl On a kind of a telephone line through time And the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend So I know I'm all right my life will come my life will go Still I feel it's all right 'Cause I just got a letter to my soul When my whole life is on the tip of my tongue Empty pages for the no longer young The apathy of time laughs in my face You say each life has its place" Lyrics from Virginia Woolf, by the Indigo Girls Virginia Woolf, mother of writers and poets, sister of the page...how much I have come to appreciate her words, the sentiments behind them - so much more poignant now in these days of social change, of pink hats and marching feet and #metoo. She understood the power of free, uncensored thought. Each time I have written something that has brought me pain or strife, I think of her. I think of that "room and a mind without end" and I understand that terrible and awesome responsibility of telling the truth always. I try to be an unapologetic and authentic writer in all things. "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise" DAY 1501 January 26, 2018 Pick a fun fact you've come across this week and share it with us. Adam Grant, Author of "How Non-Conformists Move the World", notes in his volume of work that; "Nobel Prize winners in Science are 22 times more likelier to than their peers to have performed as dancers, actors or magicians". Could it be that inside every scientist beats the heart of an artist, a showman who reveals in the creative pursuits of a mind so often bound by the rules of Physics, Biology and Chemistry? I'm not sure why, but I find this fun fact to be positively delightful. Some of my most favorite people have been scientists of one discipline or another. In college, I had an Organic Chemistry professor who was brilliant. He held class in the largest lecture hall at the university and despite the material, he was animated and engaging. I struggled, but I think far less than I might have had he been droll and dry. He was prone to be seen about campus proudly wearing a t-shirt with the chemical equation for sugar emblazoned in hot pink across the chest. He frequently attended the school's drama productions and turned up every so often at the campus coffee shop for to take in the live music and a muffin. I always had the sense he was something else completely outside that lecture hall. I used to imagine he was a closet punk rocker in a weekend garage band or something of that nature. In Hawaii, where I studied for a semester at the University of Hilo, my science professors came to school in board shorts and sandals. They popped into the occasional campus shindig. They were poets and surfers. They played the banjo and smoked clove cigarettes while they debated the merits of religion and modern art. I admired them for their knowledge but also their connection to self, to expression and creativity. These non-conformists and men of science shared much of my early life. This quote makes me remember them and it makes me happy. |