The stories are maps. Maps of journeys that have been made and might have been made. A Marco Polo route through territory real and imagined.
Jeannette Winterson. The.Powerbook. Long extract (source) :
Break the narrative. Refuse all the stories that have been told so far (because that is what the momentum really is), and try to tell the story differently - in a different style, with different weights - and allow some air to those elements choked with centuries of use, and give some substance to the floating world.
In quantum reality there are millions of possible worlds, unactualised, potential, perhaps bearing in on us, but only reachable by wormholes we can never find. If we do find one, we don’t come back.
In those other worlds events may track our own, but the ending will be different. Sometimes we need a different ending.
I can’t take my body through space and time, but I can send my mind, and use the stories, written and unwritten, to tumble me out in a place not yet existing - my future.
The stories are maps. Maps of journeys that have been made and might have been made. A Marco Polo route through territory real and imagined.
Some of the territory has become as familiar as a seaside resort. When we go there we know we will build sandcastles and get sunburnt and that the café menu never changes.
Some of the territory is wilder and reports do not tally. The guides are only good for so much. In these wild places I become part of the map, part of the story, adding my version to the versions there. This Talmudic layering of story on story, map on map, multiplies possibilities but also warns me of the weight of accumulation. I live in one world - material, seeming-solid - and the weight of that is quite enough. The other worlds I can reach need to keep their lightness and their speed of light. What I carry back from those worlds to my world is another chance.
Jeannette Winterson
