(no subject)
"There is so little time. This is all the time I've got. This is mine, this small parcel of years, that threatens to spill over on to the pavement and be lost among careless feet. Lost. The water out of the sieve and the river runs dry. The quietly contained sea where the waters don't break.
"I want to run up the hill in the freedom of the wind and shout until the rains come. I call the rain with my head thrown back Fill up my mouth, fill up my nostrils, soak the parched body, blood too thick to flow the channels. I will flow. Flow with the summer grace along a crystal river. Flow salmon-flanked to the sea.
"Why dry? Why damned up when the hidden spring informs the pool? How to bore down to where the water is? How to cut an Artesian well thorough the jelly of my fear?
"I blame myself in part for my crime. Collusion in too little life, too little love. I blame myself. That done, I can forgive myself. Forgive the rotting days where the fruit fell and was not gathered. The waste sad time. Punishment enough. Enough to live wedged in by fear. Call the rain.
"Call the rain. Drops of mercy that revive the burnt earth. Forgiveness that refills the droughted stream. The rain, in opaque sheets, falls at right-angles to the sea. Let me lean on the wall of rain, my legs at sea. It is giddy, this fluid geometry, the points, solids, surfaces and lines that must undergo change. I will not be what I was.
"The rain transforms the water."
--Jeannette Winterson, Art & Lies (1994)
[[This novel is like a prayer.]]
"I want to run up the hill in the freedom of the wind and shout until the rains come. I call the rain with my head thrown back Fill up my mouth, fill up my nostrils, soak the parched body, blood too thick to flow the channels. I will flow. Flow with the summer grace along a crystal river. Flow salmon-flanked to the sea.
"Why dry? Why damned up when the hidden spring informs the pool? How to bore down to where the water is? How to cut an Artesian well thorough the jelly of my fear?
"I blame myself in part for my crime. Collusion in too little life, too little love. I blame myself. That done, I can forgive myself. Forgive the rotting days where the fruit fell and was not gathered. The waste sad time. Punishment enough. Enough to live wedged in by fear. Call the rain.
"Call the rain. Drops of mercy that revive the burnt earth. Forgiveness that refills the droughted stream. The rain, in opaque sheets, falls at right-angles to the sea. Let me lean on the wall of rain, my legs at sea. It is giddy, this fluid geometry, the points, solids, surfaces and lines that must undergo change. I will not be what I was.
"The rain transforms the water."
--Jeannette Winterson, Art & Lies (1994)
[[This novel is like a prayer.]]