the stone gods

i received a lovelylovely package in the mail several weeks ago and the main feature was a book passed on my by dearling cousin, katie.

jeanette winterson's the stone gods.

so many passages are being underlined. purple pen. pencil. what ever is handy. one page even dogeared {the 3rd quote down}.

here are just a few moment's of this book's glory:

the truth is that i've spent all my life with my binoculars trained on the Maybe Islands, a pristine place of fantasy that is really no better than the razor-rocks of misery...maybe if i'd met the right person years ago, maybe if i hadn't done this or that or, its cousin, the other. maybe, baby, that promised land was there and i missed it. look at it glittering in the light. but the truth is i am inventing the maybe. i can only make the choices i make, so why torture myself with what i might have done, when all i can handle is what i have done? the Maybe Islands are hostile to human life.

and

there is a white that contains all the colours of the world but this white was its mockery. this was the white at the end of the world when nothing is left, not the past, not the present and, most fearful of all, not the future. there was no future in this bleached and boiled place. nothing, not wild, not strange, not tiny, not vile, no good thing, no bad, could begin life again here. the world was a white-out.

and

what to say when the certainties fail? words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

and

i know that inside the story told is the story that cannot be told. every word written is a net to catch the word that has escaped.


she is an elegant and stately writer and her images are there to be savored. like a piece of rich chocolate slowly melting on the tongue. the aftertaste is heavenly.


currently listening to: tabula rasa: ludus & silentium - arvo pärt