Noshin Nisa

Arryn is having a really bad day. She wears glasses because of her slight migraine. Though the glasses are not that necessary, she still wears them as a form of protection. For some reason, she feels that these glasses will somehow keep her safe from something she fears. They will hide the irredeemable dullness of her eyes and save her from the world’s ruthless inquiries. But today even these loyal glasses cannot cover her feeling of hopelessness and despair. She read a poem of Robert Herrick called “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”.

This poem advises to seize the day. It tells to gather the roses while they are fresh and blooming. Using the metaphor of the roses, it tells people to live while they are young and alive. The same glowing roses could be dying tomorrow, the same young person could be withering tomorrow. If once a person loses one’s precious time of living the dreams, one could be stuck in the continuous loop of disappointment till death. With no disrespect to the amazing poet, yet with utter frustration, Arryn thinks that this kind of things, urging others to seize the day is very easy to say. She wonders if they really understand that living in the moment is not possible. A person is so preoccupied to take care of the insecurities of future and the mistakes of the past that there is no scope for the person to live being free from stress. She wonders,”How can I seize the day if the day itself is snatched away from me!” How can I gather my roses if the roses themselves are blown away, when life itself is lost! How can I choose to nourish my dreams when I’m dumped in so-called feigning significant priorities!” She thinks, “There are so many dreams and desires a person can have. To live each day like the last day, how can I choose any one certain wish for the one last day pretending to be satisfied and being plunged into the everlasting pain of disappointment! How can I live my life fully before death comes, as the poet requests, when my life is abducted from me! And just when death lurks, if life is then thrown to me like a ragged piece of garbage, what will I do with that vague torn little particle of a foregone life!” She angrily thinks, “These wise renowned people can only boost and barge, they can never answer these questions with funny exclamatory marks”.

Tired and disappointed, Arryn comes back home; subtly shocked by the realization of how, in her mind, she opposed to the famous poem of a classic poet; she is shocked realizing the intensity of the devouring depression, as she thinks of life itself like a trash. A few days ago, in her philosophy class, she heard her teacher advising them to see things from different angles. For now, all the angles seem flat. She then also remembers Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Ramsay who had a quiet relationship of subtle tension and unexpressed love with her excessively practical husband, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. Ramsay didn’t want his son, James’ to go to the Lighthouse because he was too skeptical to assure a child that his dreams might come true. Several years later, after the death of Mrs. Ramsay and some of their children, when James himself has grown up to be practical enough not to hold on to a childhood fantasy, old Mr. Ramsay, who is missing the sparkle of comfort of the bliss of his wife’s positivity in his confined strict world, himself insists to go to the Lighthouse, making James gradually admire his hidden softness that was coming out with time, instead of being annoyed by his rigidity. Lily Briscoe, a friend of the Ramsay family accompanying them, completes Mrs. Ramsay’s painting, keeping the essence of Mrs. Ramsay’s glowing positivity alive. This positivity lets her to throw away her disappointments, stretch her arms and clench the glistening hopes for her family with her soft wings of dreams. Arryn remembers Mrs. Dalloway, the gentle sophisticated lady and the sweetheart of the neighborhood. She contemplates about her simple life with some enchanting touch in it which includes her adventurous ambitions with her best friend Sally and her young joyful past. She wonders about the sparking little waves of life flowing from this phase to other. She also fears the terrible complications which she finds so sickeningly suffocating. She reminisces about her relationship with Peter Walsh, a hopeless romantic who actually loved Clarissa (Mrs. Dalloway’s name before marriage). They had to part ways, as Clarissa married Richard Dalloway, the man who, as she believed, would give her the space to breathe and think and dream and live and soar. He really did so. But she still worries about Peter. Seeing him struggling to settle down still torments her.

She feels tormented when she hears of Septimus Warren Smith, a man suffering from “Shell Shock” who killed himself. In the lavish party that she has been arranging, she is horrified listening to others emotionlessly blabbering the frightening facts and unstoppable truths. The terrible dark surge of horrible words keeps streaming around, and she keeps sinking in silent horror. She starts to question the meaning of life itself. And then she sees the old lady of the house in front her house. The old lady always sits at the balcony at night quietly whispering with the mild breeze of night, and when the bell of her clock strikes, she slowly goes to bed. In the morning, she invariably comes at the balcony to soak the raw sunshine. For whatever reason, this old lady gives Mrs. Dalloway a strange hope, the hope that Mrs. Ramsay nurtured. Then Mrs. Dalloway smiles, comes back to the party which she has arranged so affectionately, and spreads the fragrance of her smile to her friends and family and special ones, dancing radiantly with her beloved. Arryn doesn’t know if she is supposed to get some secret message from these to fictional characters of Virginia Woolf. She doesn’t know if her irritating remorse is starting to go away or not, as she isn’t even sure if there is any way this clingy depression can be gone. However, some funny feeling, like a mysterious “fairytale-like” guidance, tells her to go with an invisible but interesting flow. She likes the strange idea, of not knowing whatever the flow means.

A few minutes later, she glimpses herself on the mirror, involuntarily smiling. She is astonished to see herself. Though it sounds funny, but she feels that after a very long time she is seeing herself with a real smile. She decides not to let this smile go away.