[b]Jeanette Winterson
I choose this story above all others because it’s a story I’m struggling to end. [/b]
And it invariably starts on the day you were born. Though maybe not.
Where did love begin? What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea? Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you? In the fossil record of our existence, there is no trace of love. You cannot find it held in the earth’s crust, waiting to be discovered. The long bones of our ancestors show nothing of their hearts.
For some, it’s a serious question, for others, it’s not.
We’re here, there, not here, not there, swirling like specks of dust, claiming for ourselves the rights of the universe. Being important, being nothing, being caught in lives of our own making that we never wanted. Breaking out, trying again, wondering why the past comes with us, wondering how to talk about the past at all.
And that may well be the point of it all.
I realised something important: whatever is on the outside can be taken away at any time. Only what is inside you is safe.
Oh, yeah, sure!
[or something like that]
The key to happiness, she said, is tolerance of those who do not do as you do.
What if those who do not do as you do are gunning you down? I said.
Alaska frowned. Guns are intolerant. Guns are a failure of communication.
True, but that still doesn’t answer the question.
I can’t catch her by copying her, I can’t draw her with a borrowed stencil. She is all the things a lover should be and quite a few a lover should not. Pin her down? She’s not a butterfly. I’m not a wrestler. She’s not a target. I’m not a gun. Tell you what she is? She’s not Lot no. 27 and I’m not one to brag.
And then you move on to the next one. Just as they move on from you.