“I had lately learned that another way of writing ‘FALL IN LOVE’ was ‘WALK THE PLANK.’ I was tired of balancing blind-fold on a slender beam, one slip and into the unplumbed sea” (26).
“Lately learned” implies prior ignorance. It is so interesting that a feeling, a sense of happiness, a supposed ‘euphoric’ feeling can be so scary. The unstated connection made between the narrators heart and an “unplumbed sea” demonstrates the depth of the universal language of love.
I see freight in the words plank, balancing, blind-fold, slip and even sea; but why are these words associated with the oh so beautiful LOVE? Well, this fear was just learned. ‘Ignorance is bliss,’ or, was.
Why is love a “slender plank?” Is it the fear of the unknown? Fear of getting hurt? Fear of shame? Or fear of slipping off the slender plank and into the unplumbed sea? The Author suggests that his/her new learning of the dangers of love is strictly a game of ‘survival of the fittest.’ If we have already ‘fallen’ in love… then how are we still on the plank? There’s a connection there. The only difference is that it is an emotional fall, not a physical fall.
“Balancing blind-fold on a slender beam” would instill fear in us, it would give us an almost animalistic instinct to fight, to prevail and to survive. Who did The Narrator ‘learn’ that you need to ‘survive’ love from? Is he/she crazy? Or did we teach ourselves? Are we dying to survive something that would never kill us in the first place?
In Sedgwick’s Tendencies, she states that,
“The survival of each one is a miracle. Everyone who survived has stories about how it was done” (1).
Maybe this is the “newly learned” case in Winterson’s Written on the Body? Should we fear love? or love the fear? I am going to go out on a limb and say that it is the fear of the unknown within the unplumbed sea that makes us fear surviving, but LOVE survival.
When I first read the passage I had the same feeling of the narrator’s fear you describe in your post.
However, I think an additional reason why he/she compares falling in love to walking the plank is the fact that you never know exactly when you will have reached the end of it. That feeling, with every step you’re taking, your heart pounding against your chest, and the knowledge that sooner or later it will be over you just can’t know when, makes you feel anxious and prohibits you from enjoying the thrill (of falling in love).
When you fall for someone and do not know if the other person likes you back, it feels similar. You are not only scared of the outcome but of the very moment you find out for your heart might be left behind, broken and alone. Every step that brings you closer to that moment, to the end of the plank, feels like an eternity. On the one hand you want to get it over with, you want to know, you want to be done; on the other hand what comes after the fall might be worse than the uncertainty of the unknown.
I was also struck by the narrators use of the word ‘balancing’. He/she could have easily stuck to ‘walking’. By using balancing, however, the narrator really focuses on the struggle. As you have pointed out, the struggle of balancing urges to fight, to survive.
When falling in love, we should fall all the way, we should not fight against it but just step over the plank. The sooner we take that step the sooner our hearts can be happy or start to recover.
No matter what awaits us down there, in the sea, we will survive. We will just have another story to add to our repertoire.
I really enjoyed reading this piece because our quotes were so similar but we both thought about different purposes of the quotes. I think it was interesting that you chose the first quote which has little repetition, binaries, clusters, etc. but were still able to delve into each word’s emotional evocation. I also liked the excerpt from Tendencies but felt that you could tie them more together. Your quote from Tendencies tied directly to surviving love from Winterson’s piece.