Among the books I read in the pandemic isolation, a short essay is reverberant with me, Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Woolf. In the essay, she wandered passionately on the London street to buy a lead pencil. “It should be the evening hour for in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the sociability of the streets.” She admits the desire of having an object is an excuse for walking. As she observes the streets and has the chance to glimpse her inner space with her memories, she finds her own stories to tell / write.
I was curious. Is there a lead pencil for me somewhere? What can I express about time and the air now? The act of drawing is, for me, like looking for the pencil of Woolf, and it is a wandering process somatically to glimpse my thoughts which are invisible, often unclear to spit out in words. I scribble on a scrap hoping to reflect on something uncertain in me and on what happens around me. I start to draw a line and another line and again and again.