Happiness is not a potato.

"The curious are always in some danger. If you are curious you might never come home, like all the men who now live with mermaids at the bottom of the sea. 

Or the people who found Atlantis.

Curious people who are explorers must bring back more than a memory or a story, they must bring home potatoes or tobacco or, best of all, gold. 

But happiness is not a potato."

-Jeanette Winterson | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Stories

"...Of course that is not the whole story, but that is the way with stories; we make them what we will. It’s a way of explaining the universe while leaving the universe unexplained, it’s a way of keeping it all alive, not boxing it into time. Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don’t believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It’s all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end."

-Jeanette Winterson | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Exodus

"Round and round he walked, and so learned a very valuable thing: that no emotion is the final one."

- Jeanette Winterson | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Finally Miss Jewsbury yelled so loud even I heard it. ‘This child’s not full of the Spirit,’ she screamed, ‘she’s deaf.’

"Once I went deaf for three months with my adenoids: no one noticed that either. 

I was lying in bed one night, thinking about the glory of the Lord, when it struck me that life had gone very quiet. I had been to church as usual, sung as loudly as ever, but it had seemed for some time that I was the only one making a noise. 

I had assumed myself to be in a state of rapture, not uncommon in our church, and later I discovered my mother had assumed the same. When May had asked why I wasn’t answering anybody, my mother had said, ‘It’s the Lord.’ 

‘What’s the Lord?’ May was confused. 

‘Working in mysterious ways,’ declared my mother, and walked ahead. 

So, unknown to me, word spread about our church that I was in a state of rapture, and no one should speak to me.

One Sunday the pastor told everyone how full of the spirit I was. He talked about me for twenty minutes, and I didn’t hear a word; just sat there reading my Bible and thinking what a long book it was. Of course this seeming modesty made them all the more convinced. 

I thought no one was talking to me and the others thought I wasn’t talking to them. But on the night I realised I couldn’t hear anything I went downstairs and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Mother, the world is very quiet.’ 

My mother nodded and carried on with her book. She had got it in the post that morning from Pastor Spratt. It was a description of missionary life called Other Continents Know Him Too. I couldn’t attract her attention, so I took an orange and went back to bed. I had to find out for myself."

-Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

"Write what you know is reasonable advice. Read what you don't know is better advice. Reading is an adventure; adventures are about the unknown...Literature is mix of unfamiliarity and recognition...As we travel deeper to into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood...It's the story or the poem that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves...Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact." 

-Jeanette Winterson | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

When I was younger, I wrote to hold on to embers of sanity. Many, many times writing was the only coping tool I had through bouts of loss, depression, and uncertainties. It would, without fail, strengthen me. If I could express it, I would survive it, so I wrote myself stable.

In the last two years reading has become my primary source of solace. 

When I read, I feel connected---more alive, more human. Reading tethers us to hope. It expands our capacity for compassion and empathy. It challenges our assumptions and enhances individual and collective knowledge. And it redirects one's focus from self to others and somehow that helps to see one's self and experiences more fully and clearly. 

Reading, for me, is an offensive, sometimes preemptive, stance against isolation, catastrophizing, depression, resentment, disquiet, hopelessness, regret, and a range of unnecessary insults.* In short, reading is an act of war against the forces in life that accommodate mental, emotional, and intellectual destitution.

I read the Harry Potter series for the first time this year, and I just finished my third reread on Sunday. I am struggling to wait for my lovely friends to complete the Good Days section of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, so I can greedily inhale the rest of that wonderful read. I am starting Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit with great anticipation.

There is so much I don't know. I'll be reading for a lifetime. Thank goodness for that. 😁

Lose Shame To Love Me

She never liked to be challenged

Estranged with her power

She sank in cowardice

Lost in internal malice

She was sure to be a casualty

Of her inner war...

She preferred them unavailable,

Emotionally stunted, and unstable 

She wanted everything familiar

Then she would go into it fearless 

Confident she would hurt...

She punished herself 

Just for being her

She believed she got 

Exactly what she deserved

Now she knows that was bullshit

Now she speaks to herself in the silence

"I love you, Kechia." 

She said it aloud...

I'd always go into it wildly

I needed to lose guilt to find me
This regret was killing me softly
I needed to hate doubt to love me, yeah
To love, love, yeah
To love, love, yeah
To love, yeah

I needed to lose shame to love me

Odds of Being Alone

You're watching your world spin
You feel farther from it now
Nowhere to begin
And are you to figure it out?

Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Yeah?

Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
The odds of being alone...
The odds of being alone...

Learning goodbyes
It's never easy, love
The harder we tried
Can never be enough

Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Yeah?

Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
The odds of being alone...
The odds of being alone...

I need answers now
'Cause I am caught off guard
The quiet feels so loud
Tell me this is the hardest part
Tell me this is the hardest part

Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?
Wouldn't you like to know?

The odds of being alone...
The odds of being alone

-Trent Dabbs and Amy Stroup