as if by magic
fandoms: sherlock, doctor who, harry potter, the avengers, the hunger games etc.side-blogs: generation9 (snsd) | exo-spheric (exo, kpop)
other useful tags: quotes and my writing
What kills love? Only this: neglect.
The bitterness of love is twin of its hope.
What would it be to love? Would it be the fields under rain, the vivid green the grass takes? Would it be the air current the bird finds? Would it be the fox and the fox hole? Would it be natural at all? Would it be lucky find or magic trick? Buried treasure or sleight of hand? Would I be the conjuror or the conjured? Would it be a spell or a song I sing? If I am a wound would love be my salve? If I am speechless would love be a mouth?
The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love.
I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.
I love badly. That is, too little or too much. I throw myself over an unsuitable cliff, only to reel back in horror from a simple view out the window.
When I was a child I imagined love as a glass well. I could lean over and dabble my hands in it and come up shining. It was not a current or a torrent, but it was deep and at its bottom, flowing. I knew it was flowing by the noise of the water over the subterranean pebbles. Were there ships in there and ports that depended on it, and harbours where people naturally built their settlements? I saw the world beneath the water only by reflection. To enter it would have meant climbing into the well and letting myself drop away. My mother cautioned me against swimming.
Day by day I returned to the edge, watching what I could, dabbling my hands. Later, when I was grown up, I met a man carrying two buckets, who plunged them into the pellucid waters, took one for himself and gave one to me. I had never held so much water. Never found any container that could. I lost interest in the well, I had my bucket.
- Gut Symmetries, Jeanette Winterson
