Matches Struck Unexpectedly in The Dark
In 2013 I read Virginia Woolf for the first time as a part of my Anglophone Literature class. Anyone who has read Woolf knows her style: stream of consciousness, in which her prose resembles actual brain patterns, her sentences stretching across pages, sometimes entire chapters. Her sentences aren’t always easy to digest, and although most of her books are slim in volume, they are heavy. Reading Woolf requires patience- you must, in To the Lighthouse, suffer through Mr. Ramsay’s pompous monologues in order to relish in the book’s relationship to Mr. Ramsay and to the Ramsay family as a whole.
The title of this Substack, this new creation I’m embarking on, is Matches Struck Unexpectedly in the Dark. These are Woolf’s words, the words that make up a passage that remains the most sacred to me of all the thousands of passages I’ve read (keep reading, you’ll get the full passage below). Some readers struggle with choosing a favorite writer or a favorite book, but I do not. My favorite writer is Virginia Woolf, and my favorite book is To the Lighthouse.
I’ve returned again to To the Lighthouse in 2020. This year is so oddly cruel that at this point it feels trite to say so. Corporations have co-opted the pertinent phrase Black Lives Matter in a thinly veiled marketing strategy and companies like Amazon, with a CEO whose wealth sets him apart from the rest of humanity, create commercials that claim they are ‘here for us.’ Sixteen year old cashiers at grocery stores are paid minimum wage for being essential workers and underpaid teachers across the country are being forced to return to work where their superintendents proudly fly MAGA flags and doubt the science of epidemiology. Wildfires burn at a rate I can’t compute and the sky outside of my window smells charred, half-dead. The death count from COVID19 has reached numbers higher than the lives we lost in the Vietnam War, the Korean War, and still Facebook users argue ‘it’s only a 2% death rate,’ as if each and every one of those lives didn’t have unassailable, tremendous grief associated with it. 194,000 and counting.
What is there to do in the face of such devastation? I think maybe the only thing there is to do is find what you hold sacred, to cling to it, tightly. In March, when my work from home began, my routines changed. I was no longer walking to the Red Line metro to get to work- I wasn’t shuffling past strangers, unmasked, all of us in a rush, huddled closely in a way we took for granted. I was no longer returning home after a full day of work and a commute back, no longer exhaling as I laid down on my sofa, thinking about what to make for dinner. Life now feels like one giant exhale after another, all of my exhales oxygenizing the air of this 650 square foot apartment. I watch birds, louder than they were before March, peck their beaks against my neighbor’s fence; I take my cat out to sit on the cement and stare at him for what may be hours, but does anyone really know how long anything is anymore? I pick up seashells from my Animal Crossing beach or pet a fox in Ghost of Tsushima and feel a little bit of joy. I hand-grind coffee beans in the morning with an awareness I’ve never given the activity before. The blood in my veins seems to be traveling with more feeling when I flip upside down in yoga- or maybe the blood has always traveled that way, but my brain was too loud with routine to notice.
We’re all clinging to the things that bring us some semblance of joy. Joy itself has become sacred. Opportunities to have a picnic outside with friends are now beloved in their rarity, in the ability for them to be taken away, without any last goodbye. Books and writing have always been the most sacred elements in my life- as a child I clung to books and to my journals because I wanted an answer to what I now realize is unanswerable. I wanted to unlock some wisdom, some key to the magic of the world. Now, though, I know Woolf was right when she wrote my favorite passage in the world in To the Lighthouse:
“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”
All we ever really have are matches in the dark. Moments. A look in your partner’s eye that you catch over lunch. The smell of street tacos. Hearing your friends’ baby laugh. Reading a really good passage and having it stick for seven years.
I’m wishing each of you your own illuminations. I hope they carry you through.
WHERE TO FIND MY WRITING:
I’m working on a website(!) that will hopefully be live this weekend. All of my published work can be accessed there- in the meantime, here are some links:
http://angelcityreview.com/issue-8/
https://entropymag.org/woven-grace/
https://theracketsf.com/home/2020/5/4/quarantinejournal5
WHAT I’M READING:
My Goodreads Reading Challenge is set at 75 books this year and I just hit book 55 when I finished JD Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, a book I’ve been resisting for years based on my dislike for Catcher in the Rye (happy to report I liked this book much better). Next up is Anna Kavan’s story collection Machines in The Head and Sarah Gerard’s True Love, October’s bookclub pick.
WHAT I’M WATCHING:
After binging all of Legend of Korra and I May Destroy You (a PERFECT show), I’m now catching up with Lovecraft Country and The Boys. I recently watched The Killing of A Sacred Deer for the first time along with Shirley, the Shirley Jackson biopic starring Elizabeth Moss. I also revisited Pan’s Labyrinth and wow, a lot more violent than I remembered?
WHAT I’M PLAYING:
As Animal Crossing slows (after 300 some hours… yikes), I found an indie game on the Switch I highly recommend called A Short Hike. It’s a very short game and it does the thing that so many indie games available on the switch (Gris, Night in the Woods, Hollow Knight, Celeste) do so well, which is write a complete story in which the gameplay enhances the story. I’m also still playing and loving Ghost of Tsushima along with revisiting Legend of Zelda Wind Waker- to be honest, I’m always playing or replaying some Zelda game.
OTHER:
I participated in Esme Weijun Wang’s ‘What the Heck is A Book Proposal and How Do I Write One’ workshop on Saturday September 12, 2020. Esme offered 40 scholarships for BIPOC participants and 10 for non BIPOC participants- I was chosen as one of the 10 awardees for non BIPOC participants. The workshop was incredible, and it was beautiful to meet with such a great community of writers. Thank you Esme for sharing your wisdom! Check out her incredible work here
Thank you for being here. Xx,
Erika N. Gallion
