For my first Major Authors essay of the semester, I’m attempting somewhat ambitiously to apply the butterfly effect of chaos theory to the love and life choices of Clarissa Dalloway and Lily Briscoe. With the premise solid in my mind and supported amply by a week’s worth of fruitful research, the words should be flowing onto the page. However, like Lily, I’m struggling a bit with my own creative commitment issues and where to begin…
She took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air. Where to begin? – that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by deep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made.
~ Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
The Pointe du Grouin, France, by Alan Hughes, October 2005
