Read Online Weight by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jeanette Winterson
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the world. As a character in my own fiction, I had a chance to escape the facts. There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father . If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.
In a way I was lucky. I could not allow my parents to be the facts of my life. Their version of the story was one I could read but not write. I had to tell the story again.
I am not a Freudian. I don’t believe I can mine the strata of the past and drill out the fault-lines. Therehas been too much weathering; ice ages, glacial erosion, meteor impact, plant life, dinosaurs.
The strata of sedimentary rock are like the pages of a book, each with a record of contemporary life written on it. Unfortunately the record is far from complete …
My mother said we all have our cross to bear. She paraded hers like a medieval martyr, notched, gouged, bleeding. She believed in Christ, but not in his cross-bearing qualities.
She seemed to forget that he had borne the cross so that we don’t have to. Is life a gift or a burden?
What is it that you contain?
The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut.
Your first parent was a star.
I know nothing of my biological parents. They live on a lost continent of DNA. Like Atlantis, all recordof them is sunk. They are guesswork, speculation, mythology.
The only proof I have of them is myself, and what proof is that, so many times written over? Written on the body is a secret code, only visible in certain lights.
I do not know my time of birth. I am not entirely sure of the date. Having brought no world with me, I made one.
Spin the globe. What landmasses are these, unmapped, unnamed? The world evolves, first liquid and alive, then forming burning plates that must cool and set. The experiment is haphazard, toxic at times. Earth is a brinkmanship of breathtaking beauty and a mutant inferno. My own primitive life forms take a long time to web intelligence. When they are intelligent they are still angry.
For me, still, now, anger is deeper than forgiveness. My red-hot monsters aren’t extinct. I’ve kept their Jurassic forest, hidden but complete. They’re stillthere, jawed, plated, furious. The sky is purple-brown.
I am, of course, homo sapiens, at least on paper.
Spin the globe. If oxygen falls below fifteen percent of air volume, I can hardly move. If it rises above twenty- five percent, I and my world conflagrate. Homeostasis of my planet is hard work. I swing between one extreme and another, constantly threatening my stability. I am always in danger of self-destruction.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Oxygen is carcinogenic and likely puts a limit on our life span. It would be unwise though, to try to extend life by not breathing at all.
Which of us doesn’t do it? Either we loll in anaerobic stupor, too afraid to fill our lungs with risky beauty, or we roll out fire like dragons, destroying the world we love.
I try not to burn up my world with rage.
It is so hard.
* * *
Spin the globe. When I made it, it was small as a ball. I carried it on a stick over my shoulder. I was the fool, new and careless. I didn’t know that worlds are on the Planck scale – infinitesimally tiny, exploding to grow.
It grew. It utilised free energy from the sun. It learned to break the oxygen-carbon compounds. It started a life of its own.
I used my world like a crystal ball, gazing into it, looking for clues. I loved its independence, the unknownness of it, but like everything you birth, it gradually becomes too big to carry.
It’s on my back now, vast and expanding. I hardly recognise it. I love it. I hate it. It’s not me, it’s itself. Where am I in the world I have made?
Where in the world am I?
About five billion years ago, the material that now makes up the sun and the planets was a great cloud of dust called the Solar Nebula. This
In a way I was lucky. I could not allow my parents to be the facts of my life. Their version of the story was one I could read but not write. I had to tell the story again.
I am not a Freudian. I don’t believe I can mine the strata of the past and drill out the fault-lines. Therehas been too much weathering; ice ages, glacial erosion, meteor impact, plant life, dinosaurs.
The strata of sedimentary rock are like the pages of a book, each with a record of contemporary life written on it. Unfortunately the record is far from complete …
My mother said we all have our cross to bear. She paraded hers like a medieval martyr, notched, gouged, bleeding. She believed in Christ, but not in his cross-bearing qualities.
She seemed to forget that he had borne the cross so that we don’t have to. Is life a gift or a burden?
What is it that you contain?
The dead. Time. Light patterns of millennia opening in your gut.
Your first parent was a star.
I know nothing of my biological parents. They live on a lost continent of DNA. Like Atlantis, all recordof them is sunk. They are guesswork, speculation, mythology.
The only proof I have of them is myself, and what proof is that, so many times written over? Written on the body is a secret code, only visible in certain lights.
I do not know my time of birth. I am not entirely sure of the date. Having brought no world with me, I made one.
Spin the globe. What landmasses are these, unmapped, unnamed? The world evolves, first liquid and alive, then forming burning plates that must cool and set. The experiment is haphazard, toxic at times. Earth is a brinkmanship of breathtaking beauty and a mutant inferno. My own primitive life forms take a long time to web intelligence. When they are intelligent they are still angry.
For me, still, now, anger is deeper than forgiveness. My red-hot monsters aren’t extinct. I’ve kept their Jurassic forest, hidden but complete. They’re stillthere, jawed, plated, furious. The sky is purple-brown.
I am, of course, homo sapiens, at least on paper.
Spin the globe. If oxygen falls below fifteen percent of air volume, I can hardly move. If it rises above twenty- five percent, I and my world conflagrate. Homeostasis of my planet is hard work. I swing between one extreme and another, constantly threatening my stability. I am always in danger of self-destruction.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Oxygen is carcinogenic and likely puts a limit on our life span. It would be unwise though, to try to extend life by not breathing at all.
Which of us doesn’t do it? Either we loll in anaerobic stupor, too afraid to fill our lungs with risky beauty, or we roll out fire like dragons, destroying the world we love.
I try not to burn up my world with rage.
It is so hard.
* * *
Spin the globe. When I made it, it was small as a ball. I carried it on a stick over my shoulder. I was the fool, new and careless. I didn’t know that worlds are on the Planck scale – infinitesimally tiny, exploding to grow.
It grew. It utilised free energy from the sun. It learned to break the oxygen-carbon compounds. It started a life of its own.
I used my world like a crystal ball, gazing into it, looking for clues. I loved its independence, the unknownness of it, but like everything you birth, it gradually becomes too big to carry.
It’s on my back now, vast and expanding. I hardly recognise it. I love it. I hate it. It’s not me, it’s itself. Where am I in the world I have made?
Where in the world am I?
About five billion years ago, the material that now makes up the sun and the planets was a great cloud of dust called the Solar Nebula. This
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