Jeanette Winterson

What things matter?  What things have a value of their own instead of a borrowed glory?  Is there such a thing as an intrinsic worth?  It's fashionable to say no.  To say a tree is only its wood, that any painting is a work of art, that journalism can be literature, that love is self-interest or that ethics are mores.  It is right to question standards but wrong to assume that there aren't any.  Where there are no standards the market-place obtains.

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies pg 101)

Jeanette Winterson

Then David's anger was greatly kindled against the man and he said to Nathan, 'As the Lord lives the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing and because he had no pity.'  Nathan said to David "You are the man.'  (2  Samuel, 12)

'Because he had no pity.'  The punishable sin is not lust, not even adultery, the sin is not do with sex at all.  It is a failure of feeling.  Not an excess of passion but a lack of compassion.

Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

The tall, hooded man who played the Jack with me, when I was a child.  He who cut wild flowers with his sickle and made me a hedge-chain I did not want to take off.  I went with him, hand in hand, child-crowned with his curious flowers.  It was easy to walk beside him while his steps were met to mine.  I never saw his face, only his hands, and the long days juggled.

When was it that he became impatient?  Insisted that we hurry, and hurry faster, though not through press of destination?  I had nowhere to go.  Why did the sun not lull him as it did once?  The still days and the luminous water.  The afternoons that lasted for years.  Wasn’t that him, dark shadow on the bank, unroused and unrousable?  He was deaf in those days and for every long and hated hour, produced another, a soft sewn ball thrown to me.  Yet I was happy and forgot.  When was it that he became impatient?

The little chain of wild flowers, sap stalks and sun heads, petrified.  I was fast-bound to him.  I am his bondsman.  Yearly now, he claims his feudal tithe, and I wither visibly.  Each year there is less, and less to claim, but he does claim it, no matter how thin the harvest.

I have seen his face close up, the strange lop-sided grin, that turns to me immobile, although everyday we are moving faster.  There are others, all of us, the chain gang on the charcoal hill, bound in the danse macabre.

Do I try to cheat him with wigs, dyes, concoctions, ghastly operations and lambskins for my mutton flesh?  Here I am, prancing on my back legs in a borrowed skin.  Must keep up with the times.  Must keep up with Time.  When was it he became impatient?

Too fast.  Kick off my dancing shoes and crawl on all fours.  Drag me, how he drags me, knows the creature that I am.  Beg him?  He is deaf still.  In spite of that I cry out.

On we go, the blurring body and the cheated soul.  Why did no-one tell me to provide for it?  Everything I have has been the outward show.  Everything I have belongs to Time.  Art?  Don’t be silly.  The contemplative life?  Where can I get one? What then  for my soul as Time pulls me on.  What then for my soul?

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies, pp 141-143)

Art and Lies, Jeanette Winterson

The Second City is political.  Politics of slums, apartments, mansions.  The correct balance must be maintained.  On no account should there be too many mansions or too few slums.  Apartments hold the balance; the rich are terrified of being reduced to one, the poor dream of owning their own.  The political city thrives on fear.  Fear of never owning an apartment.  Fear of owning merely an apartment.

Homelessness is illegal.  In my city no-one is homeless although there are an increasing number of criminals living on the street.  It was smart to turn an abandoned class into a criminal class, sometimes people feel sorry for down and outs, they never feel sorry for criminals, it has been a great stabilizer. 

(Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies, p.19)

Jeanette Winterson "Lighthousekeeping"

Jeanette Winterson

Lighthousekeeping

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.

There’s a booth in Grand Central Station where you can go and record your life.  You talk.  It tapes.  It’s the modern-day confessional – no priest, just your voice in the silence.  What you were, digitally saved for the future.

Forty minutes is yours.

So what would you say in those forty minutes – what would be your death-bed decisions?  What of your life will sink under the waves, and what will be like the lighthouse, calling you home?

We’re told not to privilege one story above another.  All the stories must be told.  Well, maybe that’s true, maybe all stories are worth hearing, but not all stories are worth telling.

When I look back across the span of water I call my life, I can see me there in the lighthouse with Pew, or in The Rock and Pit, or on a cliff edge finding fossils that turned out to be other lives.  My life.  His life.  Pew.  Babel Dark.  All of us bound together, tidal, moon-drawn, past, present and future in the break of a wave.

There I am, edging along the rim of growing up, then the wind came and blew me away, and it was too late to shout for Pew, because he had been blown away too.  I would have to grow up on my own.

And I did, and the stories I want to tell you will light up part of my life, and leave the rest in darkness.  You don’t need to know everything.  There is no everything.  The stories themselves make the meaning.

The continuous narrative of existence is a lie.  There is no continuous narrative, there are lit-up moments, and the rest is dark. 

When you look closely, the twenty-four hour day is framed into a moment; the still-life of the jerky amphetamine world.  That woman – a pieta.  Those men, rough angels with an unknown message.  The children holding hands, spanning time.  And in every still-life, there is a story, the story that tells you everything you need to know.

There it is; the light across the water.  Your story.  Mine.  His.  It has to be seen to be believed.  And it has tao be heard.  In the endless babble of narrative, in spite of the daily noise, the story waits to be heard. 

Some people say that the best stories have no words.  They weren’t brought up to Lighthousekeeping.  It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid.  The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues.  The true things are too big or too small, or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called language.

I know that.  But I know something else too, because I was brought up to Lighthousekeeping.  Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence.  And then, very quietly, as quiet as light, meaning returns.  Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. 

(pp133-135)

I Carry Your Heart (e.e. cummings)

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) 

ee cummings