The chart is not always easy to read and sometimes there is little ligth to read it by. This is the condition of our lives. We are not easy to read and we read others badly, either blinded by sun of mislead by shadows. Since Einstein, science has warned us that even our simple certainties are uncertain The difficulty of knowing is that we are both the instrument of knowing and what we seek to know.
In The Waves, Virginia Woolf tried to walk on water. She did this so that her readers could do it too. She wanted to write about the vast unknown uncertain continent that is the world and us in it. This continent is not a land mass. It is not solid, it is not stable. It shifts, it storms, it drowns, it is both the simple surface of things and their depths. At noon it is calm and clear. When the shadows fall, even shallow water menaces. How to write this?

Jeanette Winterson on The Waves, Virginia Woolf