Day 149.1: Another Devastating Book

[sunshowerdandelion]

Another book has hit me full on, punched my solar plexus so hard I am about to retch. Of course it had to be Winter Love by Han Suyin, of course it had to be the dissolution of a queer relationship, and of course one party had to have been extraordinarily cruel. I have been cruel before. I have. The way Red (she has such a twenties name, Bettina, like a crockery brand advertised by a smiling housewife) mutilates Mara and is utterly callous to her is familiar to me. It does feel like that: It feels like inertia, and like nothing much - the act isn't fulfilling - when the moment falls it is utterly like other moments and what you feel is the usual running of life. When Red says, "Is that all?" after Mara has just poured out her soul for her, and even then Mara takes the most charitable reading, that is what cruelty is like. And later, when Red is shocked that Mara has ceased to love her, I know Red's shock, because I was also shocked that, after my moment of cruelty, my partner was wounded and was sad and trailing blood.

It is all so terribly true. And so is love turning to cruelty and back again, though thankfully I don't think I visited that on my partner, but I did feel it. And all the bits about them trying to grow love in a world hostile to their form of love. And the beastly lustful men who always think women are their due. And the again and again returning to men, often injuring other women. This is a very cruel book.

Next let me read a ghost story or something, please, please.