Bonnie

“He didn’t believe in the future, only the present, and as our future, our years, had turned so relentlessly into identical presents, I understood him more. Eight years had passed, and I was still at war, cooking chickens, waiting to go home for good. Eight years of talking about the future, and seeing it, turn into the present. Years of thinking, ‘in another year, I’ll be doing something different,’ and in another year doing just the same.

Future. Crossed out.

That’s what the war does.”
― janette winterson

“The body clings to life at any cost. It even eats itself. When there’s no food, it turns cannibal and devours its fat, then its muscle then its bones. I’ve seen soldiers, mad with hunger and cold, chop off their own arms and cook them. How long could you go on chopping? Both arms. Both legs. Ears. Slices from the trunk. You could chop yourself down to the very end and leave the heart to beat in its ransacked palace.

No. Take the heart first. Then you don’t feel the cold so much. The pain so much. With the heart gone, there’s no reason to stay your hand. Your eyes can look on death and not tremble. It’s the heart that betrays us, makes us weep, makes us bury our friends when we should be marching ahead. It’s the heart that sickens us at night and makes us hate who we are. It’s the heart that sings old songs and brings memories of warm days and makes us waver at another mile, another smoldering village.

To survive the zero winter and that war we made a pyre of our hearts and put them aside forever. There’s no pawnshop for the heart. You can’t take it in and leave it awhile in a clean cloth and redeem it in better times.

You can’t make sense of your passion for life in the face of death, you can only give up your passion. Only then can you begin to survive.

And if you refuse?

If you felt for every man you murdered, every life you broke in two, every slow and painful harvest you destroyed, every child whose future you stole, madness would throw her noose around your neck and lead you into the dark woods where the rivers are polluted, and the birds are silent.

When I say I lived with heartless men, I use the word correctly.”
― janette winterson

“And then I saw that the running away was a running towards. An effort to catch up with my fleet-footed self, living another life in a different way.”
― janette winterson

“...I love dandelions. They make me feel like sunshine itself, and you will always see some creature resting on an open bloom, if you have a little patience to wait. This vital source for all emerging pollinators is a blast of uplifting yellow to brighten even the greyest of days. It stands tall and proud, unlike all the others opening and swaying in the breeze. The odd one out.”
― Dara McAnulty, Diary of a Young Naturalist