difficult beauty

Why do we flee from feeling? Why do we celebrate those who lower us in the mire of their own making while we hound those who come to us with hands full of difficult beauty?

If we could imagine ourselves out of despair?

If we could imagine ourselves out of helplessness?

What would happen if we could imagine in ourselves authentic desire?


What would happen if one woman told the truth about herself? The world would split open.

Muriel Rukeyser

from Jeanette Winterson, 'The Semiotics of Sex' in Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (New York: Vintage, 1995), pp. 116-17.