Calaidescope World

I'm just so Julie Delpy's Celine. Each line you will read in this post was originally written by British novelist Jeanette Winterson. If you were to read only one of her books, let it be The Passion. Nins, Bianx, my obsession with her work is all your fault. I thank you.

*****

"A fire and a tale," said Patrick...This was her story.

I wanted to be a drummer.

To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.

ONE DOG. BROWN AND WHITE ROUGH COATED TERRIER. FRONT LEGS 8 INCHES LONG. BACK LEGS 6 INCHES LONG. CANNOT BE SEPARATED.
Then I worried in case a person might mistake it was the dog's legs that could not be separated, instead of him and me.
'You can't force that dog on anybody' said Miss Pinch, standing behind me, her long body folded like an umbrella.
'He's my dog.'
'Yes, but whose are you? That we don't know, and not everybody likes dogs.'

Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.

What you risk reveals what you value.

We are friends and I do like to pass the day with you in serious and inconsequential chatter. I wouldn't mind washing up beside you, dusting beside you, reading the back half of the paper while you read the front. We are friends and I would miss you, do miss you and think of you very often.

I did not believe in fate, but it can be a useful excuse.

I like passion, I like to be among the desperate.

I’m not looking, I've found what it is I want and I can’t have it.

Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. That gnaws away at the night-time hours desperate for a sign and appears at breakfast so self-composed. That longs for certainty, fidelity, compassion, and plays roulette with anything precious.

There is no sense in loving someone you can never wake up to except by chance.

Fetch. My heart returns to me what I turn away. I am my own master but not always master of myself. This woman wants to be… "Your lover."

Lovers are not at their best when it matters.

I say I’m in love with [him]. What does that mean? It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, [he] explains me to myself. Like genius, [he] is ignorant of what [he] does.

When I say "I will be true to you" I must mean it in spite of the formalities, instead of the formalities. If I commit adultery in my heart then I have lost you a little.

If I cheat another, I cheat myself out of the person that I could be. If I wound another, I will eventually find the cut recalled to my own heart. There is no appropriate confession, only the will not to fail again so readily, perhaps because while failure can be forgiven it cannot be excused.

Like God, she was forgotten.

Why is the measure of love loss?

I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

What is more humiliating than finding the object of your love unworthy?

"You talk as though I've had an amputation." "I think you have. I think someone has cut out your heart."

I felt as if I had blundered into someone else’s life by chance, discovered I wanted to stay, then blundered back into my own, without a clue, a hint, or a way of finishing the story.

You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.

Does it matter whom you lose to, if you lose?

"But I tell you, Henri, that every moment you steal from the present is a moment you have lost for ever. There's only now."

This is all I have, all I can be sure of. The rest is gone. The rest may not follow.

The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. It's a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.

And the heaviest lie? That we could go home and pick up where we had left off. That our hearts would be waiting behind the door with the dog.

I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and knows that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy me and be destroyed by me.

Time is a great deadener. People forget, grow old, get bored.

It's hard to remember that this day will never come again. That the time is now and the place is here and that there are no second chances at a single moment.

The traveller always wants home to be just as it was.

Empty space and points of light.

A stranger is a safe place. You can tell a stranger anything.

I’m telling you stories. Trust me.

I can change the story. I am the story.

"I'm running away," she said.
"Who are you running away from?"
"Myself."

Who was I last night?

There’s no such thing as autobiography, there’s only art and lies.