#frankissstein

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson (2019)

I cannot conjure spirits, but I can tell you that calling things by their right names is more than giving them an identity bracelet or a label, or a serial number. We summon a vision. Naming is power.

History is what you make it. Tonight we are the history we are making.

Why should she not remake herself? What is identity but what we name it?

And where does this soul go, at death? said Byron. That is unknown, answered Shelley; the becoming of the soul, not its going, should be our concern. The mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.

She's right. I am liminal, cusping, in between, emerging, undecided, transitional, experimental, a start-up (or is it an upstart?) in my own life.

Why is it that we wish to leave some mark behind? said Byron. Is it only vanity? No, I said, it is hope. Hope that one day there will be a human society that is just.

But what is the right time? I asked him, and he wondered if time itself depends on those who are in time. If time uses us as channels for the past—yes, that must be so, he said, as some people can speak to the dead.