Dear Mrs. Woolf,

I have begun to create a room of my own. 

Is it possible to correspond beyond the chasm of time and mortality? Can you hear me over the thick walls of forever? Perhaps, this is nothing more than a naive attempt to reach you, yet I write. 

Your profound words have shaped and shielded my mind for many years. You have walked with me through museums, galleries, libraries, bookstores, noisy gatherings, and intimate family parties. You have been part of countless conversations of women and their would-be, should-be, and supposed-to-be’s. There were moments when I stood in front of artworks and tried to assume the way you would think. What would she think? What would she say? I’m a lover of your mind, a 21st-century woman trying to reach you through ink and paper.

I dance my dance in paint and clay

As you have done yours in ink

What are we- sisters?

Priestesses?

Or am I a daughter,

born out of your senses?

Sitting at the corner desk of my studio, I am surrounded by my paintings, sculptures, piles of books, and papers. Also, blank canvases, unfinished works, a wall full of inspiration, dried flowers, shells, a cracked mirror in the corner, and knick-knacks I collected for my still-life projects; these are my comfort. One of the reasons why I wake up in the morning with hope and energy. I imagine my sculptures as ancient Custodians of the temple, guardians of the wandering spirits. I am constructing this refuge for myself one baby step at a time. I started on my kitchen table years ago. Now, I have a little thought temple of my own.

It is early April; outside, Mother Nature is howling with a fierce wind. The winter queen stubbornly refuses to leave, and my tropical heart is growing impatient. Two of your books have taken up residence on my desk. For the last few months, they have kept traveling back and forth from my bed to the bookshelf, bookshelf to the writing desk, always within reach. I first read your essay out of curiosity, but now it is a necessity. It has been nearly a century since your lectures on women and fiction, and it is still as relevant as ever.  

I have been walking my creative path for some time now. I have studied 19^th-century classical oil painting and sculpture. This is my first year, fresh out of the academy. Far away from my intellectual community, I am learning to spread my wings. Sometimes, I feel like a small fish in the middle of a vast ocean. Where absurdity is the main current. However, when I say small, I don’t mean weak; it means the mountain is much bigger than I thought it would be, and I must find a way to climb. For the past century, the painter’s pursuit or the world in general has taken a different turn. Not in a good way, and I am not sure how much I want to discuss that with you. The more I look outward, the more inadequate it makes me feel. It scares and baffles my mind to see what greatness or betterment has done.

Hence, I do what thousands of years all poets, painters, and philosophers before me have done. I turn inward to lose myself in the room of my own. In the Temple of the Art Goddess, where everyone enters to seek beauty and find joy, do greater good with the power of knowledge, I walked in just to find refuge. I’m a refugee, standing in the corner with the broken and bewildered. I say it like a prayer. Keep me, hide me, let me disappear in your infinity before the clever world finds me. I am grateful to simply be. Sheltered from the world and sometimes from myself. The one who does not know what or how to see beauty. Who often was and still is terrified to face some truth.

I know you won’t, but many call it escapism, and I don’t argue with them. They are not entirely wrong.

I thought about this confounding question, as many people have asked me quite often. Why do I do what I do?  

The answer is never the same. I don’t have a clever or romantic answer on my sleeve. Although I wish I had one that I could deliver with brevity and confidence, the one that makes me sound smart and unstoppable. But I do have a question, one that I never ask out of sheer politeness. The question is, would you ever ask why a poet writes a poem or a bird why it sings its song, even though people rarely pay attention to it? Could I not be like a bird, exist solely to sing my song, and disappear? Nobody knows how she was born or when she went to her grave. I know what you are thinking; if you are thinking of warning me, for the birds that get hit by the tall glass building, for pursuing the illusion of the open sky. I have already thought about it. I am not clever enough to see it, but I am mindful of it. The point is to sing my song and how much honesty I have in my voice.

Tell me, would you not understand?

You, who walked into a river with a pocket full of stones.

Something is telling me you’re smiling quietly.  

Although I do have desires for what I long to become. Every work of art in my book should be part of a becoming. So, I ask myself.

What exactly am I longing for?

 If I could go and knock on Doctor Frankenstein’s door. Ask him to make me into some creature. I would say, I want to have a poet’s heart, a sculptor’s mind, and a painter’s hand. This is the exact being I want to become. I do not know how attainable such a transformation is, but I sure fantasize about having a conversation with the doctor.

 Do you think I am being greedy?

For some reason, I hear your words echoing in my mind:  “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself. We are all going to heaven and Van Dyke is of company”.  But my dear V, becoming such a creature is one painful process to go through. I don’t have Victor Frankenstein to help me go through this. And the pieces that I’m picking; they are so shattered and broken, they simply don’t fit into each other like puzzle pieces. What I need is you. I have so much to ask-so many knots of dread, doubt, and denial to untangle. The needle of self-consciousness is constantly pricking my tongue. If only I had the depth of your brilliance- your eloquence to say it, I would not have any trouble painting my pains in perfect order and harmony.

Yet, this is my first effort to reach you. A faint whisper crosses the universe.

I am writing this letter knowing that no physical answer is arriving in my mailbox. Still, I will keep trying to reach you, not exactly for “pure nuggets of truth” but for something quieter and urgent. Guidance. The kind Dante found in Virgil.

I do not seek answers so much as a companion to walk beside me through this foggy path of bewilderment. I want to be a creature of my own creation with your guidance.

Will you not show me the way? Will you not hold my hand? Would my common language be an annoyance? Do I dare? How much do I deserve?

I don’t know these answers. But I’ll keep trying, writing, asking.

Sincerely yours,

Mary Beton, Mary Seton, or Asha. 

(April 2025, From the middle of the contemporary chasm)