On this day, Virginia Woolf

On this day in 1882, Virginia Woolf was born. Circling the drain of depression some 59 years later, at the end of March, she slipped sacred stones in her coat pockets—much in the way the Egyptians once hid scarab amulets in the back of the throat and under the heart as protection for the next life. After completing her manuscript, Between the Acts, she gathered cobblestones along the shore, or was it from the road that lined the village of Rodmell? She said, “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.” And as she walked, a tributary of words whispering dark secrets followed her along a towpath to the river’s edge. She waded into the River Ouse near Lewes, and slipped in, letting the current drag her down. The words were chasing her. Ouse as in muck, or as in shorebirds? As in the Celtic word for water, uisce, which gives us the word whiskey, or as in oss, Norse for mouth? There are several River Ouses in Britain, this one is in Sussex, a place she once described as “an inland sea.” The Water River, call it the stream of consciousness. The river opened its mouth to drink her in and kept her down like Ophelia, or Undine for three weeks like an errant kelpie before it gave her back to the air. The River Ouse is filled with birds, flightless water ouzels singing over the rocks, and ripples, and the river is feathering its way toward the air.