Into the Hedge...

Angela (right) and her friend (and mine) Tiffany, Kodak EasyShare

In the picture above, Angela had just returned from her semester in Europe and was newly "21". She came down to LA to get her best friend and then drive even further south to be with her Auntie (me), so we could celebrate this milestone together. After all, it is indeed her time to be the crazy~wild one in the family, so I had to pass the crown!

The first night, we took them to our favorite Irish pub downtown. We had originally planned this stop to be an appetizer for the evening. It turned out to be five hours of sitting in this old wooden booth (me, Carsten, Tiffany and Angela), Irish music drifting in the background, while we each exchanged stories from the deepest places of our hearts. I love that Carsten captured this moment (above) of the girls holding my hands across the table. They were intently listening to a story of mine that had purposely waited to fall upon Angela's ears until a moment like this.

Next thing we knew...the pub was closing and we were in awe of how time stood still. Five hours??? I dig how that happens when you're in the company of good friends. I will share more on this eventful weekend in yet another blog.

Today my niece Angela sent me a piece of feminist literature by Virginia Woolf called "A Room of One's Own" that she wanted me to read so that we could exchange our thoughts on it together.

It is a beautiful piece thus far and I am weighted heavily by it. Have you read any of Virginia Woolf's works? I have wanted to for quite some time and perhaps didn't because I must have been waiting to receive such a piece from my dear niece today. I may not have truly listened to Virginia's voice so intently if it had not come to me from Angela with such passionate surrender. A plea that I felt not only came from Angela herself, but Virginia Woolf and thousands of women before and after her lifetime in regards to our equality.

I have only finished the first chapter and I am in need of some solitary time to absorb what I have just allowed myself to drink in. When I am finished with these six chapters, perhaps I will find the words to share the transformation that has taken place within me as a result of Mrs. Woolf's eloquence in writing about such a powerful subject.

For now, I will leave you with a quote that she left us with at the end of her first chapter, which was indeed also the end of her day as she wrote it. I thought it was quite apropos...not only for the description of Virginia's own day but for my own as well.

I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge.

– Virginia Woolf