Another Touchstone

While reading for another class, I came across a passage that stopped me in my tracks. I read over the passage many times not because it was confusing, but because it was beautiful. It is from Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry and here it is:

"On more than one occasion I have been ready to abandon my whole life for love. To alter everything that makes sense to me and to move into a different world where the only known will be the beloved. Such a sacrifice must be the result of love. . . or is it that the life itself was already worn out? I had finished with that life, perhaps, and could not admit it, being stubborn or afraid, or perhaps did not know it, habit being a great binder.

I think it is often so that those most in need of change choose to fall in love and then throw up their hands and blame it all on fate. But it is not fate, at least not if fate is something outside of us; it is a choice made in secret after nights of longing."

"I may be cynical when I say that very rarely is the beloved more than a shaping spirit for the lover's dreams. And perhaps such a thing is enough. To be a muse is enough. The pain is when the dreams change, as they do, as they must. Suddenly the enchanted city fades and you are left alone in the windy desert. As for your beloved, she didn't understand you. The truth is, you never understood yourself."

This passage is a bit cynical, but the language is so rich and the ideas are so engaging. Everytime I read it, it puts me in a better mood and forces me to analyze my own relationships, past and present.