SweetHunting-A London Adventure

by Virginia Woolf
No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But here are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner. As the foxhunter hunts in order to preserve the breed of foxes, and the golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling a pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say:"Really I must buy a pencil," as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter-rambling the streets of London.
In these minutes in which a ghost has been sought for, a quarrel composed, and a pencil bought, the streets had become completely empty.Life had withdrawn to the top floor, and the lamps were lit. The pavement was dry and hard; the road was of hammered silver. Walking home through the desolation one could tell oneself the story of the dwarf, of the blind men, of the party in Mayfair mansion, of the quarrel in the stationer's shop. Into each of these lives one could penetrate a little way,far enough to give oneself the illusion that one is not tethered to a single mind, but can put on briefly for a few minutes the bodies and minds of others. One could become a washerwoman, a publican, a street singer. And what greater delight and wonder can there be than to leave the straight lines of personality and deviated into those footpaths that lead beneath brambles and thick tree trunks into the heart of the forest where live those wild beasts, our fellow men?
That is true: to escape is the greatest of pleasure;street haunting in winter the greatest of adventures. Still as we approach our own doorstep again, it is comforting to feel the old possessions, the old prejudices, fold us around; and the self, which has been blown about at so many street corners, which has battered like a moth at the flame of so many inaccessible lanterns, sheltered an enclosed. Here again is the usual door; here the chair turned as we left it and the china bowl and the brown ring on the carpet. And here-let us examine it tenderly, let us touch it with reverence-is the only spoil we have retrieved form all the treasures of the city, a lead pencil.

This shor essay written by Virginia Woolf puzzles me a lot.
The consiciousness writing is rather confusing.
I'd like to hear your wonderful opinions!:yawnb: