Map
Another Writer
posted 03.01.2004 Saturday
Jeanette Winterson is one of my favorite writers. Her novel Sexing the Cherry , is my favorite. I love to read her work because she continually challenges the preconceptions I have had of things, be they trivial or consequential. I subscribe to her mailing list and she sent out her christmas newsletter with a christmas story that I read only this morning. When I was a child, my father had given me a glass snow-scene of the earth shook with stars. I used to lie in bed and turn it over and over, falling asleep with the stars behind my eyes, feeling warm and light and safe. The world is weightless, hanging in space, unsupported, a gravitational mystery, sun-warmed, gas-cooled. Our gift. I used to fight off sleep for as long as I could, squinting out of one closing eye at my silent turning world. I grew up. My father died. The snow-scene was in his house, in my old bedroom. When we were clearing, I dropped it, and the little globe fell out of its heavy star-shot liquid. That was when I cried. I don’t know why. My favorite part though, reads: We stare out of the windscreen. Just touching down over the roof of a handsome Georgian house, holly wreath on the blue front door, is a sledge pulled by six antlered reindeer. Father Christmas smiles and waves. The Child waves back and climbs out of the car, Hackles following her. Santa claps his hands, and out of a dark open window on the first floor, thud three bulging sacks. He shoulders them and loads them onto his sledge. ‘He’s robbing the place!’ you said, jumping out of the car. ’Hey you!’ The figure in red came forward convivially, stamping his boots and rubbing his hands. ‘We can only offer this service once a year,’ he tells you. ‘What bloody service?’ ‘In the old days, we used to leave presents, because people didn’t have much. Now everyone has so much, they write to us to come and take it away. You’ve no idea how much better it feels to wake up on Christmas Morning to find it all gone.’ The Santa rummaged in one of the bags – ‘Look, hair curlers, a year’s supply of bath salts, more socks than anyone can have feet, revolting baked garlic in olive oil, an Eiffel Tower embroidery kit, two china pigs.’ ‘And now what?’ you said, half furious, half fazed. ‘Car-boot sale on Boxing Day?’ Go, read!! :)
Soo... whatchootink?