"How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?

Travellers at least have a choice. Those who set sail know that things will not be the same as at home. Explorers are prepared. But for us, who travel along the blood vessels, who come to the cities of the interiors by chance, there is no preparation. We who were fluent find life is a foreign language. Somewhere between the swamp and the mountains. Somewhere between fear and sex. Somewhere between God and the Devil passion is and the way there is sudden and the way back is worse."

Jeanette Winterson -- The Passion

Summer child lazily lizarding the days away.

no promises of silks,
i do not expect pure joy in each moment,
nor tenderness in every word.
give me only truth.
give me yourself and none other, the
mullings that keep you awake, the
visions of future comforts,
the shirt you wear when your skin doesn't fit.

i have nothing to impart but simplicity and the real.
no throne, no glory, no fame to my name.
my memory deceives me and i stammer often
but i am strong as the moon in all its crescents,
those smiles up and around the sky.
i breathe ocean air deep,
watch the tide further creep,
and will hold you together so you do not disappear.

My earrings are mocking me.

We are many.

Of the many men who I am, who we are,
I can't find a single one;
they disappear among my clothes,
they've left for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as intelligent,
the fool I always keep hidden
takes over all that I say.

At other times, I'm asleep
among distinguished people,
and when I look for my brave self,
a coward unknown to me
rushes to cover my skeleton
with a thousand fine excuses.

When a decent house catches fire,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and that's me. What can I do?
What can I do to distinguish myself?
How can I pull myself together?

All the books I read
are full of dazzling heroes,
always sure of themselves.
I die with envy of them;
and in films full of wind and bullets,
I goggle at the cowboys,
I even admire the horses.

But when I call for a hero,
out comes my lazy old self;
so I never know who I am,
nor how many I am or will be.
I'd love to be able to touch a bell
and summon the real me,
because if I really need myself,
I mustn't disappear.

While I am writing, I'm far away;
and when I come back, I've gone.
I would like to know if others
go through the same things that I do,
have as many selves as I have,
and see themselves similarly;
and when I've exhausted this problem,
I'm going to study so hard
that when I explain myself,
I'll be talking geography.

--Pablo Neruda, trans. by Alastair Reid.

orphan child with
one wing of passion, one of resignation,

trying to take off.

What are words but stepping stones between us?