Jeanette Winterson, Art.

What art does is to coax us away from the mechanical and towards the miraculous. The so-called uselessness of art is a clue to its transforming power. Art is not part of the machine. Art asks us to think differently, see differently, hear differently, and ultimately to act differently, which is why art has moral force.

Ruskin was right, though for the wrong reasons, when he talked about art as a moral force. Art is not about good behaviour, when did you last see a miracle behave well? Art makes us better people because it asks for our full humanity, and humanity is, or should be, the polar opposite of the merely mechanical.

We are not part of the machine either, but we have forgotten that. Art is memory — which is quite different [from] history. Art asks that we remember who we are, and usually that asking has to come as provocation — which is why art breaks the rules and the taboos, and at the same time is a moral force.

Jeanette Winterson.

How Do You Fall In Love? by Jeanette Winterson

You don’t fall in love like you fall in a hole. You fall like falling through space. It’s like you jump off your own private planet to visit someone else’s planet. And when you get there it all looks different: the flowers, the animals, the colours people wear.

It is a big surprise falling in love because you thought you had everything just right on your own planet, and that was true, in a way, but then somebody signaled to you across space and the only way you could visit was to take a giant jump. Away you go, falling into someone else’s orbit and after a while you might decide to pull your two planets together and call it home.

And you can bring your dog. Or your cat. Your goldfish, hamster, collection of stones, all your odd socks. (The ones you lost, including the holes, are on the new planet you found.)

And you can bring your friends to visit. And read your favourite stories to each other. And the falling was really the big jump that you had to make to be with someone you don’t want to be without. That’s it.

 P.S. You have to be brave.

Found, Discovered, Loved ...

I believe in stories, in story-telling, because a story can answer a question without reducing that question to banality. ‘Who am I? is a huge question, and the answer develops, unfolds, reveals itself throughout the whole of our life. At birth, we are only the visible corner of a folded map. The geography of the self is best explored with a guide, and for me art is such a guide. I write fiction because I want to get nearer to the truth.

Jeanette Winterson, extract from an article titled Oranges.

I have been dipping in and out of Jeanette Winterson's writing, trying to be patient as infection then  antibiotics run their course.  The antibiotics are exhausting even though I know they're doing good work and so, I am living quietly, in-between hanging out 5 loads of laundry (unbelievable!) and working out how to cook duck ...

I have never cooked duck.  Not ever.  But I do rather enjoy it and find myself wondering why I wasn't raised on duck and rabbit, back in that country that had plenty of both.  And I have been making small inroads into my office space here, trying to make it more beautiful somehow ... but perhaps that simply involves sunshine coming in through the window.  Belgium isn't really doing sunshine this year.  It's grim.

I am reading and sleeping, and trying not to sleep more, and writing and reading ... and then there's the housework.  It's like that.

Interesting people and art found in recent days.

I loved this.  An article about my favourite bookshop in the world, so far. 

Then this seemed like an invitation to consider Bradley Manning's actions, asking what you might do if you saw what he saw and understood all it meant. 

And this, begun as a search for the writer who described how his book was born.  He talked of the stories here... They chose me. You know, they touched my shoulder or my back, saying, "Tell me. I am a wonderful story and deserve to be diffused by you, written by you. So, please, write me." And I said, "Well, I’m so busy. No." "No, that’s an alibi. You must write me," the story said. And so I began—I ended writing the stories, and later have a very hard process of selection, trying to say more with less. And after this process, the only surviving texts or stories are the ones I feel that are better than silence. It’s a difficult competition against silence, because silence is a perfect language, the only language which says with no words.

I hope to buy the book, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History, as soon as is possible

And this.  Wait for the last question (there are only 3) David Gregory asks Glenn Greenwald.  An example of the best way to  reply to an increasingly biased or 'owned' media.

Lastly, I found Sophie Blackall and simply adore her work.  Another book for my books I would like to own list.  It's long.

So this is a little of what I have been doing in these days.