thebooksaidthat

I saw that you love sapphic historical fiction and I've just gotta ask: have you heard of Burn the House Down by Kenna Jenkins? It's an alternate history novel abt the 1st woman president and her secret sapphic relationship/bearded marriage with her mlm best friend. It also ft. An entirely queer main cast and really fleshed out characters!

She loved it as much as I did, and we go through the scenes we liked best. It's a particular kind of pleasure, of intimacy, loving a book with someone.

It's always been fascinating to me how things can be simultaneously true and false, how people can be good and bad all in one, how people can be good and bad all in one, how someone can love you in a way that is beautifully selfless while serving themselves ruthlessly.

It is futile and knackering to try and make all your tiny choices representative of your moral compass then beat yourself up when this plan inevitably fails. Feminists can get waxed. Priests can swear. Vegetarians can wear leather shoes. Do as much good as you can. The weighty representation of the world cannot rest on every decision you make.

When you’re looking for love and it seems like you might not ever find it, remember you probably have access to an abundance of it already, just not the romantic kind. This kind of love might not kiss you in the rain or propose marriage. But it will listen to you, inspire and restore you. It will hold you when you cry, celebrate when you’re happy, and sing All Saints with you when you’re drunk. You have so much to gain and learn from this kind of love. You can carry it with you forever. Keep it as close to you as you can.

I am always half in life, half in a fantastical version of it in my head.

I would like to pause the story a moment to talk about ‘nothing will change’. I’ve heard it said to me repeatedly by women I love during my twenties when they move in with boyfriends, get engaged, move abroad, get married, get pregnant. ‘Nothing will change.’ It drives me bananas. Everything will change. Everything will change. The love we have for each other stays the same, but the format, the tone, the regularity and the intimacy of our friendship will change for ever.

She means I break myself off into different bits to give to different people, rather than being whole. I'm so restless and unsettled. I don't know how to be without all the things I use to prop me up.

'You will never know what I truly think of you,' she said, just as I was about to leave, letting me know she had already sensed how I work. 'You might be able to guess from my demeanour if I like you, but you'll never know exactly what I think of you on a personal level. You need to let go of that thought if we're going to make any progress.'

I'm like a plant where everything's withered away from a single green shoot that's still alive, and this shoot is my body and mind, and my mind is like a hand, it touches rather than thinks.

Tell me, did you plant this perception in me? Is it a part of the programme? Or did the image come up from inside me, of its own accord?

Words are steps along a path: the important thing is to get where you're going. You can play by all manner of rules, step-on-a-crack-break-your-break, but you'll get there quicker if you pick the most certain route.

I guess maybe that's how it works in families who love each other unconditionally: you can fight without fear of losing them and be honest without consequences or repercussions.

“I think marriage is just promising to love someone as long as you can for as best you can. I think relationships can be exactly what they're supposed to be,” she says, eyes still on the snow, “even if they only last for one year, or five years, or even just for one day. The good parts of the time you spend with a person don't go away simply because the relationship ends.” “Isn't that exactly what happens?”

What can the university offer us now? It can offer the same riches that Copernicus found: the accumulated knowledge of the past, together with the liberating idea that knowledge can be transformed and become transformative. This, I believe, is the true significance of a university. It is the treasure-house in which human knowledge is devotedly protected, it provides the lifeblood on which everything that we know in the world depends, and everything that we want to do. But it is also the place where dreams are nurtured: where we have the youthful courage to question that very knowledge, in order to go forward, in order to change the world.

The hard reality is, surely, that for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services. What is the point in worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that is in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment.

After all, what can we ever gain in forever looking back and blaming ourselves if our lives have not turned out quite as we might have wished?