:: on reading Jane Eyre ::

" So we open Jane Eyre; and in two pages every doubt is swept clean from our minds.

...Nor is exhilaration short lived. It rushes through us the entire volume,

without giving us time to think, letting us lift our eyes from the page.

So intense is our absorption that if someone moves in the room

the movement seems to take place not there but up in Yorkshire.

The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees,

never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her.

At the end we are steeped through and through

with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë."

{Virginia Woolf}

pieces of my heart

tucked within these pages...

with each new reading

my soul is born anew.

a cherishing...

holding heaven in my hands.

{for the past 10 years, I've read Jane Eyre every November. the spine is falling apart, pages brimming with underlining...after all this time, my heart still skips a beat as I open to the first page...such joy!}