A Room of One's Own

Even if it's a store room...

Have you ever read Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own? I read it in college many years ago, and although I can’t remember it perfectly and I [— just paused to brush the crumbs off the table next to me left by my husband during his evening salami break —] don’t have time to reread it again properly, which I should obviously do if I’m going to reference it in the title, but then again perhaps the whole point of the book is that it can really be summed up just that easily. Women would have been able to contribute more to literary history, and cultural and artistic history more generally, if they had been given (or allowed to earn for themselves, and keep), just enough money to support themselves and rooms of their own.

Virginia Woolf’s room of her own in her Sussex cottage. This is the goal.

It is raining outside and I haven’t done at all as much as I’d hoped today, so I’m growing a bit panicky. It’s coming on dinner time, so the dogs are getting restless. Four of them. Four dogs. Each with his or her own neuroses, quirks, needs, foods, and medications. When I went to select a furry companion, I picked a shed-less, purse-sized miniature shih-tzu and I trained her impeccably to fit my lifestyle and to not bark in restaurants. Then she got sick, and spoiled, and now she’s better and she barks in restaurants. The others were never really trained to begin with, for various historical reasons, and so there’s rarely a quiet moment in the house, unless we turn on the gas fireplace for them [— just got up to turn on the fireplace for them —], and that’s not counting the incessantly screech-barking golden retrievers next door.

Agatha in her bag in a restaurant in Venice, not barking for pasta.

Most people, it seems, have a certain allowance for disturbances from the outside world. I, however, have none at all, and the older I get them more sensitive I become. From the moment I wake up, the day becomes a series of what are known to “highly sensitive people” as “tolerations”. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not, and it feels like to begin to get on top of it I just need some blessed hours and days of peace in order to repair from the tragedies of last year (and, let’s face it, all the years before), and grow myself back together [ — can’t think at all with two dogs milling about the house — ].

And it’s not just the disturbances themselves: it’s the very thought that I might be disturbed that keeps me from settling into that beautiful, timeless creative space, that wonderful identity-less flow [ — Screeeeech of dryer filter being pulled out by a lovely husband who’s doing a load of wash and now is just asking if he can do a load of laundry for me, so I’ll get up and help sort laundry :) ]. You’re thinking: try again, try harder. I have! I can’t. I’m all spent up.

I’ve just pulled this off the internet in case someone reading this is a Highly Sensitive Person and doesn’t know that there’s a category of person called the Highly Sensitive Person. Although, to be honest, I find the illustrations abrasive and not at all something that an actual Highly Sensitive Person would ever draw him- or herself…

Throughout the years, I’ve lived in spaces just large enough for a shih-tzu, a tea kettle, a bathtub (although not always), a great load of books, and myself. And then, obviously, I’ve overstuffed each little chambre de bonne or flat with antiques…but they were still manageable. And cozy. And my own. Lyon. Paris. London. New Haven. San Francisco. West Hollywood. St. Helena. And now here I am, in a much larger house that was my mother’s, and it’s not just filled with dogs and antiques and noises and washing machines and exceptionally loud doors, but it’s also loud with memories, and my head is as full of ghosts as the rooms are, and I have trouble thinking my thoughts from one end to the other.

So for the new year, I’ve come up with a plan: claim a room of my own. It’s going to be the little shed-store room, outside, always a bit damp, and currently packed tight with toys, family photos, vintage clothes, and of course art supplies. It’s a long-shot. But I’m persistent, stubborn, and desperate.

I have work to do.

And I have help. As I’ve been writing here, Mike has been cleaning up some of the antiques, and the most romantic and interesting of them I’ll make available from time to time. I’d like to keep them all since I’m overly sentimental about just about everything, but it’s time to [— trash compactor! —] move my work outside into the shed.

Please let me know if you’re equally as introverted and have as difficult a time with disturbances as I do so I don’t feel quite so abnormal. (If you don’t have any trouble whatsoever and can listen to music and the T.V. while having a conversation with multiple people on a busy street, I’m very happy for you but it’s not polite to brag about such superpowers. ;)

Also please let me know if you have any coping strategies that work for you? I’d love to hear about them.

And also please let those of your friends who are antiques-minded know to head over to my Instagram stories to see if there’s anything currently irresistible on offer. That would help enormously!