On Being Ill (a collaboration with Virginia Woolf)

Perhaps the great wars the body wages against us unravel the noble doings of the mind, leaving us slave to the solitude of the bedroom, hardened by our discomfort, imprisoned within the inevitable catastrophe of shiver and headache – our sleepless needs and fears tethered to the echo of every midnight groan.

Or maybe in illness we are finally freed to float as sticks down a sparkling stream, scatter with a gathering of dead leaves across the lawn – or like a self-possessed rose – gently tilt our head to the breeze and deliberately fall, petal by petal, in a swirl of dignity and indifference, all scent and flavor, framed in a festival of golden shafts, blue shadows, and creamy, voluptuous clouds.