In the West, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double adva… - Jeanette Winterson

Every journey conceals another journey within its lines: the path not taken and the forgotten angle.

That night two lovers whispering under the lead canopy of the church were killed by their own passion. Their effusion of words, unable to escape through the Saturnian discipline of lead, so filled the spaces of the loft that the air was all driven away. The lovers suffocated, but when the sacristan opened the tiny door the worlds tumbled him over in their desire to be free, and were seen flying across the city in the shape of doves. (p.13)

Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition. I recognise you; I know you again, from a dream or another life, or perhaps even from a chance sighting in a café, years ago.