Whenever she "thought of his work" she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew's doing. She asked him what his father's books were about. "Subject and object and the nature of reality," Andrew had said. And when she said heavens, she had no notion what that meant. "Think of a kitchen table then," he told her, "when you're not there."
So now she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay's work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one's days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds to do so), naturally one could not be juged like an ordinary person. (23)
2 comments:
The kitchen table is an interesting thing to explore. It is so evocative, at least to me, of things I use to have/have left behind (youth, security that comes from naivete).
Kitchen table also intimates a cetain type of relationship...
that's very true...
this comment just made me think, it would be interesting to explore/perform a child who has died. death is something that terrifies me, and i've only experienced it in my life with old people...a child's death is so wrong. but how does a young consciousness deal with the death of its body? oooh waltz no. 6! yikes.
sorry to ramble.
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