Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

by Jeanette Winterson

chalk circle

Wizards have to spend years standing in a chalk circle until they can manage without it. They push out their power bit by bit, first within their hearts, then within their bodies, then within their immediate circle. It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

shape and space

‘I know your name.’ And so she stopped, afraid. If this were true she would be trapped. Naming meant power. Adam had named the animals and the animals came at his call.

As a bond he drew her a chalk circle with a tiny gap to step into as she crossed the water. Then he threw the chalk to her on the other side. It was a rough brown pebble, and clutching it tightly she wobbled across the stepping stones, leapt in the circle and closed it behind her.

the brown pebble is the chalk that draws the circle

‘There’s just one small thing; unless you tell me your name, you’ll never get out of that circle, because I can’t release you, and you don’t have the power.’

She believe she had always been in the castle, and that she was the sorcerer’s daughter. He told her she was. That she had no mother, but had been specially entrusted to his care by a powerful spirit.

just like jeanette

‘You will find yourself destroyed by grief. All you know will be around you, and at the same time far from you.

Then he rearranged his feathers, and dropped a rough brown pebble into her hand. ‘Thank you,’ said Winnet. ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s my heart.’ ‘But it’s made of stone.’ ‘I know,’ the raven replied sadly. ‘You see I chose to stay, oh, a long time ago, and my heart grew thick with sorrow, and finally set. It will remind you.’

sorrow turns heart to stone pebble as a reminder (of what?)

Warm and scratchy like a dog’s coat, and brown and needing to be handled right. She learned to handle everything like it was alive. It was alive, he told her, and it worked better if you knew it. He told her it was Wu li: principles of organic energy. She didn’t understand, but she felt it moving; the rich black tar and the tight thread bound round the stem of her oars. When the stones are hot, he said, they sing, and he gave her a singing stone for her journey.

She uses a physical substance to display her thoughts. If I use a metaphysical substance to display my thoughts, I might be anywhere at one time, influencing a number of different things, just as the potter and her pottery can exert influence in different places.

Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone.

‘After all,’ said my mother philosophically, ‘oranges are not the only fruit.’

I seemed to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line.

He felt himself being pulled like a bobbin of cotton, so that he was dizzy and wanted to give in to the pull and wake up round familiar things.

circular; cyclical