i am in love.
It's a short book but I haven't been able to read the whole thing yet because I'm just.. overwhelmed. I feel like it's feeding this hunger in my soul and I have to take a break when I get too full. How can someone else have the words that belong to my soul?
Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not take and the forgotten angle. These are journeys I wish to record. Not the ones I made, but the ones I might have made, or perhaps did make in some other place or time. I could tell you the truth as you will fing it in diaries and maps and log-books. I could faithfully describe all that I saw and hear and give you a travel book. You could follow it then, tracing those travels with your finger, putting red flags where I went
For the Greeks, the hidden life demanded invisible ink. They wrote an ordinary letter and in between the lines set out another letter, written in milk. The document looked innocent enough until one who knew better sprinkled coal-dust over it. What they letter had been no longer mattered; what mattered was the life flaring up undetected... till now.
I discovered that my own life was written invisibly, was squashed between the facts, was flying without me like the Twelve Dancing Princesses who shot from their window every night and returned home every morning with torn dresses and worn-out slippers and remembered nothing.
I resolved to set a watch on myself like a jealous father, trying to catch myself disappearing through a door just noticed in the wall. I knew I was being adulterous; that what I loved was not going on at home. I was giving myself the slip and walking through this world like a shadow. The longer I eluded myself the more obsessed I became with the thought of discovery. Occasionally, in company, someone would snap their fingers in front of my face and ask, "Where are you?" For a long time I had no idea, but gradually I began to find evidence of the other life and gradually it appeared before me.
- Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson
For the Greeks, the hidden life demanded invisible ink. They wrote an ordinary letter and in between the lines set out another letter, written in milk. The document looked innocent enough until one who knew better sprinkled coal-dust over it. What they letter had been no longer mattered; what mattered was the life flaring up undetected... till now.
I discovered that my own life was written invisibly, was squashed between the facts, was flying without me like the Twelve Dancing Princesses who shot from their window every night and returned home every morning with torn dresses and worn-out slippers and remembered nothing.
I resolved to set a watch on myself like a jealous father, trying to catch myself disappearing through a door just noticed in the wall. I knew I was being adulterous; that what I loved was not going on at home. I was giving myself the slip and walking through this world like a shadow. The longer I eluded myself the more obsessed I became with the thought of discovery. Occasionally, in company, someone would snap their fingers in front of my face and ask, "Where are you?" For a long time I had no idea, but gradually I began to find evidence of the other life and gradually it appeared before me.
- Sexing the Cherry, Jeanette Winterson
1 comment:
Wow, I love when my degree pays off. I knew I knew that name. Jeanette Winterson. She is amazing. I studied Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit in an English class a few years back. I wish I still had it, I would lend it to you. The writing in it is beautiful. Of course, I sell on my books, so it isn't around anymore. I thought she was Canadian but she isn't, she is British. She wrote Oranges when she was in her early 20's and it is so layered and interesting, damn good book!
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