A Pearl in a Mussel

“‘Among their [the Yamana] variations of the verb
“to bite” was a word that meant “to come surprisingly on a hard substance
when eating something soft
e.g. a pearl in a mussel.”’” (Carson 80).

As Geryon gets older, he slowly begins to accept that he likely will not see Herakles again. In other words, he is “eating something soft;” though he doesn’t know it, he will soon come upon something hard. His life is not necessarily mundane, but it seems to be going as he expects it to. However, the reappearance of Herakles serves as the moment that Geryon “come[s] surprisingly upon a hard substance” in the midst of his eating something soft. Herakles throws a wrench in Geryon’s plans and brings him to Peru. The moment on page 107, where Herakles and Geryon reunite in the middle of a bookstore in Buenos Aires, serves as a moment that Geryon begins to reevaluate his life. This reevaluation, however, actually comes in the seconds before Herakles appears, where Geryon thinks, “Kissing makes them happy…and a sense of fruitlessness pierced him” (Carson 107). Geryon feels like everything he is doing is pointless; perhaps, indeed, it is a mundane life, eating something soft and only getting what he expects. Herakles, then, could potentially be a welcome change to Geryon’s everyday sameness, but if this were the case, then why does Geryon (and even Ancash) seem so utterly exhausted of Herakles’ buoyant personality and neverending presence? On the streets of Buenos Aires, the reader sees “Herakles jumping ahead like a dog / smelling everything and pointing at objects in the shops. Ancash and Geryon / came behind” (Carson 113). In Peru, “A silence tossed itself across the tall gold heads of the fennel stalks between them [Ancash and Geryon]. / Into this silence burst Herakles” (Carson 144). Herakles consistently jumps into and out of scenes; his personality bubbles up over the top of any container Geryon or Ancash try to hold him in, and he acts childish in almost every way possible. These circumstances lead me to believe that Geryon now merely tolerates adult Herakles, who still acts immature in every way except sexually. Therefore, it is not difficult to believe that if Herakles is the “hard substance” that Geryon comes upon surprisingly, Herakles is not entirely welcome, but simply accepted and moved past.

The Existence of Loss

“To deny the existence of red is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad.” (105) Red can be passion, anger, love. It can be intense, soft, or staining. To deny the existence of his emotions, his struggles, and his unresolved tensions is to deny the right to explore who he is. This will eventually lead one into an identity crisis, to which we see Geryon trying to find books about self enlightenment in the philosophy section. The act of being is complex and when Geryon finds another book that states “…to the oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape and habit blurs perception and language takes up its routine flourishes.” (107) We see that Geryon has constantly found himself in situations where his interests are met with challenges. Geryon makes decisions based on desires for love and long lasting intimacy but fails to accept reality for what it is. The book takes us on the journey of love and loss with Herakles but it is through the heartache that Geryon comes to realize he, like Herakles, isn’t the same person they were when they were younger. Perhaps we can tie this to his unmet needs from his family. Is what Geryon longs for, genuine happiness or reconciliation for an unfortunate loss he endured? 

In the show, How I Met Your Mother, the protagonist Ted is in love with a woman named Robin, it leads him to make grand romantic gestures until she agrees to be with him. They dated for a year and then broke up because they had different visions for their future. However, throughout the rest of the series Ted continues to pursue her while she moves on and eventually marries his best friend. Ted’s friends persistently tell him that she is not “the one” and that they’re not as compatible as he believes they are. In one episode, he reminisces on his college days and how he set his life out that by the time he was 22 he would be married. This episode occurred in 3 year intervals, with different realities of Ted almost reliving past breakups and failures. By the end Ted is disappointed with the reality of not being married or having kids. This episode and the entire series, makes me go back to the question posed earlier, did Ted want to be happy or was he looking for reasons to make his lover “be the one.” It teaches the difficulties with letting go and the heartache that comes with finding coincidences to be signs from the universe. For Geryon I believe that he was holding onto an idealized version of Herakles, someone who he could explore his identity and sexuality with. After he has sex with Herakles, he’s later confronted by Ancash who asks Geryon if he is still in love with Herakles. He answers with “In my dreams I do. Dreams of the old days.” (143) Then later says having sex with Herakles was “degrading.” I think this being the ending of the book says more about Geryon acknowledging and diminishing this romanticized version of Herakles than it does about him just feeling bad for the affair. One might see this moment as pitiful but I believe it can be seen as a moment of reclamation, to note that Geryon holds himself accountable for his mistake, but that he understands he can be afforded some mistakes because to deny the existence of red is to deny the art of letting go.

Red = X

“…I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it. But this separation of consciousness is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is to believe in an undivided being between us….” (105)

The quote above from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red connects to the queer identity. We grow up in a world that assumes similarities until the differences are made explicit. The idea of coming out is built around heterosexuality and cisgender people who are considered “normal”. We assume that people come with default settings and it isn’t until someone tells you I’m not blank I’m actually blank instead of everyone saying I am blank. We grow up learning people are different and somehow the lessons of childhood are the ones we forget to apply. Geryon begins to grow up and notice how he is different from others. He understands the world through pictures better than words, he likes males. The quote is a reminder that there is no normal, we all see, and experience things differently.

It is made clear that red is significant to Geryon and his story. So what is red? What are we seeing differently? I think red symbolizes the parts of ourselves that we haven’t fully dealt with or embraced. The readers know red is so ingrained within Geryon but that doesn’t mean it is seen. The following quote has lead me to what I think red is “To deny the existence of red is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad” (105). I argue the specific symbolism of red to Geryon isn’t what is important but the general idea of what red represents. Red equals the variable x because red is just a symbol for our denied self and that is different for everyone.

Besides the word “red,” I thought it was important to define the word “mystery”. A mystery is something unknown and or obscure. The readers follow Geryon from a young age growing up and when growing up people slowly uncover mysteries about the world as well as themselves. Some have argued that deep down people know who they are and what they want but they deny the existence and bury it so far down that even they can’t consciously reach the answer. Placing the idea of denying something about yourself and the second part of the quote sends a pretty clear message. To deny a part of yourself will drive anyone crazy. You are never truly yourself until you come to terms with who you are and let yourself fly.

Geryon is a red-winged monster. He knows he is different and he tries to bury and hide his differences like his wings. All Ancash wants is to see Geryon spread his wings and fly. To be free and to fully accept himself. “There is one thing I want from you. Tell me. Want to see you use those wings” (144). I believe Geryon’s wings represent the strength and power that comes from the parts he has denied. It is when he fully accepts all of himself he has strength.

Circling back around to the first quote if red is something that someone is denying and there’s strength once we embrace it then I think the message isn’t just about we assume a “normal” exists among people but also communication is what opens the avenues to acknowledging our differences once we own them. Geryon buries red and hides it away because he has been conditioned to believe that he is different and that it’s weird “[F]ailure of communication” leaves us blind. Blind to our differences and blind to potential acceptance. If people communicate with each other openly and honestly, we can have some understanding of how we see red.

Sunken Treasures much like Your Own

The opening stanza of Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” starts with a list of preparations: a book of myths, a film camera, a knife, and a “body-armor of black rubber” (5) which makes them look “absurd” (6) and awkward (7). They then enunciate that their task is theirs and theirs alone, contrasting themself from Cousteau’s journeys into the ocean, “assiduous” (9) and well staffed with a team in comparison. The speaker is out of their depth (regardless of how well prepared they may be), and vulnerable. This vulnerability is exemplified in following stanzas, through simile: “I crawl like an insect” (30), and through imagery “black I am blacking out” (36). Throughout it all they also associate themself with the shipwreck itself: “We know what it is for, // we who have used it.” (17, 18), “We are, I am, you are”. The reality, the “thing itself” of the shipwreck erased and lost in the retold story of the shipwreck (“the myth”), contains “our name,” according to the speaker. The amount of danger and anticipation signalled in the desperation, helplessness, and vulnerability portrayed in their own preparation is for fear that they may end up like the shipwreck itself: “we are the half-destroyed instruments // that once held to a course // of the water-eaten log // the fouled compass.”

The story of shipwreck omits the reality of the things that were lost, among them the speaker’s—and their companions’—names, and in omitting the detail, or the details being lost and waterlogged, becomes mythologized: the poem speaks of historical erasure, and the (often intentional and malicious) loss of intimate, raw sentiment and reality in the transformation of lived experiences into history. In being erased from history, the speaker, and their associates, whether they be predecessors or contemporaries find their names and intimate, lived realities lost, damaged, waterlogged, with no story being left behind to preserve them, only a mythologized version of events which might not even acknowledge that they ever even existed.

Being Queer in the 21st century is to find the history of our predecessors and companions shrouded in mystery and haze, their lived realities lost to us and history books and biography books only sufficing to tell a myth based on the hint of a fact. We see ghosts of an implication: evidence to suggest this-or-that scientist or painter was gay, often conclusive, yet never scholarly integrated with the culturally significant mythologies we’ve created around them. The raw loss and devastation caused by the AIDS crisis, our names mythologized into obscurity in the version the general population continues to be taught, also. To be queer is to know that we are as vulnerable as the ships that have sunk before us, that our names and lived realities could one day be lost to time like our predecessors. To be queer is to “[load] the camera, and check the edge of the knife blade,” to “put on the body-armor of black rubber,” and diving into the wreck.

Like and Not Like

In the Autobiography of Red, Geryon travels with the boy who broke his heart, Herakles, and Ancash to take photographs. One of these photographs is titled: “Like and Not Like – It was a photograph just like the old days” (143). The on sentence description of the photograph directly following its title is noticeable because it only repeats half of the title itself. If the photograph is about being “like and not like” then why would the description only say that it was “just like the old days”? As the title offers both likeness and unlikeness there is an unspoken implication that continues the description. It was like the old days, and it was not. If one applies the title of the photograph as a lens to its description it is almost as if it adds the additional words “and not like”; becoming “the photograph was just like [and not like] the old days.”

What is both like and unlike the old days in this scene is Geryon himself, and his relationship to Herakles. “You love him? Geyron thought about that. In my dreams I do. Your dreams? Dreams of the old days…. When I- knew him”(144).  It is these last few words, in which Geryon uses the word “knew” and as such creates an explicit statement of the past tense. The dash between I and knew in Geryon’s speech is also noticeable, denoting either a moment of simple pause or emotion in which Geryon is being thoughtful, and therefore specific with his word usage. Geryon pauses while speaking to show the importance behind the word tense of “knew,” as he discusses his relationship with Herakles to Ancash. Geryon is pausing on the word because he is admitting that he no longer knows him; that the version Geryon misses and longs for is one that now only exists in his dreams. The Herakles in front of Geryon now is like the Herakles from the old days, as they are the same person, but also not like the Herakles Geryon knew and loved. 

It is an important distinction that Geryon draws for himself in this scene, for the first time, between his past relationship with Herakles and his present one. The heartbreak that ended his relationship with Herakles is still with Geryon, prominent in the ways that the two interact prior to this scene. When Geryon looks at Herakles it is him looking at the boy he used to know and love. However, in the above scene in the photograph Like and Not Like description Geryon admits to himself that the “old days” are gone even when the feelings of them linger. It is possible for this time to be both like and not like the old days, for Herakles to be like and not like the past version of himself, and for Geryon to be like and not like his younger self. This speaks to an overall narrative of growth, not only for Geryon and Herakles but in general. It is freeing to look at your past, carry it with you, but to not be defined by it. As an individual, we are each always like the former versions of ourselves, but we are also each always growing in both good and bad ways, and becoming “not like” our old selves. It is possible to be both “like and not like” at the same time; we are beings of “and” not “or.”

Hearth and Quest

“Love it was that drove them forth. Love that brought them home again. Love hardened their hands against the oar and heated their sinews against the rain. The journeys they made were beyond common sense; who leaves the hearth for the open sea? Especially without a compass, especially in winter, especially alone. What you risk reveals what you value. In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one” (Winterson, 81)

Carson’s little red monster Geryon journeys several times for love, or at least for infatuation. “Sometimes a journey makes itself necessary” (Carson, 46) is stated in the section “Hades”, where Geryon runs away for a time to Herakles’ home to see the volcano. This escapade, while brief, made in Geryon’s teen years is his first journey for love. It is a literal, physical journey to the other end of the island, but I think it also represents a more metaphorical move as well. Geryon is entirely infatuated by Herakles, so he makes a knee-jerk choice to follow him, regardless of the consequences that might arise from that move. One of the consequences, Geryon foresaw and was willing to take, upsetting his mother. But Geryon also got his heart broken on that trip. But from that moment, Geryon places his bets with Herakles, in Winterson’s words, “what you risk reveals what you value” (Winterson, 81).

Years later, Geryon’s priorities remain the same. He hurls himself into another spur of the moment journey with Herakles “beyond common sense” (Winterson, 81). This time, however, Geryon’s choice is even more unusual. Herakles is in a relationship with Ancash, and it has been years since the two were together. Geryon knows both of these facts and still goes to Peru with the pair. He even questions his own motives, “Lima is terrible, he thought, why am I here?” (Carson, 124). Yet Geryon stays because of his desire to be near Herakles. I think “In the presence of love, hearth and quest become one” (Winterson, 81) is a fitting summary of Geryon’s motives. For most of his life, Geryon has felt alone and adrift. But in Peru during this wild unplanned quest to go see a volcano, Geryon has a few moments of contentment and belonging. He seems to find his hearth flying above the volcano and standing in front of the burning bakery.

There is a geographical and temporal irregularity and queerness in Geryon’s actions. When we see choices like his made in romantic movies or novels, we remark on how unrealistic they are. In our day-to-day lives in a temporally and geographically heteronormative society, we don’t go on spur of the moment adventures with our exes and their current partners. But that reluctance falls in line with a normative timeline, where you settle down with someone who has a common geographic convenience to you. They go to the same college, or you work at the same place, live in the same town, or have another shared connection in the way your life is lived. And we don’t interfere with other people’s relationships; polyamory, cheating, even flirting with someone in a relationship are all frowned upon by “nice” society. But both Geryon and our narrator rebel against that. This action that defies social norms and works against traditional conceptions of romance or love are inherently queer and breed new ideas of who we are “allowed” to love.

Hidden Wings and an Empty Fruit Bowl

“Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.” Page 107

This passage is important to the novel as a whole and encompasses the major themes presented. Depression is all-encompassing and can be an unknown barrier that prevents you from being your true self, it leaves you unable to connect with others on a level that one may truly desire. This passage represents the struggles of Geryon and his lack of knowledge on depression and the way it reflects in his relationships. This is because he continuously struggled to find a healthy balance in his romantic relationships while also lacking necessary communication skills. Geryon lived unconsciously for many years due to his abuse and neglect contributing to his lack of healthy relationships. However, as he gets older, he grows and begins to change pushing through his loneliness to try and develop a life for himself after Herakles but is still weighed down by depression and darkness.

Geryon’s loneliness and insecurities leave him unable to share his true self with the world because he fears vulnerability and being vulnerable can leave you susceptible to attack. He truly is a little red monster, not because he is a frightening creature but because he is a true outsider, unable to communicate effectively and forced to hide his wings. His hidden identity is a main component throughout the novel, and it leaves him secluded, for he is different. This exacerbates his depressive state, and he is unable to spread his wings.

Loneliness and insecurities are strong themes that follow Geryon throughout the novel. Geryon was a child of neglect and abuse, left to solitude. Due to his unhealthy relationships, he is unable to create healthy ones and longs for affirmation and attention. However, even if he receives what he is looking for, it is unlikely he will ever be satisfied because only he can fill and fix the void that was his childhood. Geryon’s past traumas had left him living an unconscious life, until the culmination of his trauma, the empty fruit bowl. The empty fruit bowl is a representation of the emptiness he has felt and the nourishment he so desires. The empty fruit bowl is a symbol of Geryon’s being, he is lonely and left unfulfilled by his relationships, just as the fruit bowl is left bare. His depressive state is a causal response to his life, yet when he sees the empty fruit bowl it seems as though a spark ignites inside of him. It is clear why he left, and there is hope.

It is clear to me that Geryon’s life is not a representation of one lonely outsider, but he is representing an entire community. Society perpetuates a heteronormative way of life and if you are unable to fit in, you must hide your wings, living in fear. Identity is an important aspect of this book, but also to our society. Our identities are an important part of our lives and something that we alone wish to control, losing that control leads to loneliness and ambivalence towards a successful life. This can be seen with Geryon throughout the novel as he hides himself, his sexuality, and the little monster that lurks within him.

To be or not to be vulnerable

“Louise dipterous girl born in flames, 35. 34 22 36. 10 years married, 5 months with me. Doctorate in Art History. First class mind. 1 miscarriage, 0 children. 2 arms, 2 legs, too many white T-cells. 97 months to live (Winterson, 144).”

This passage occurs after the narrator has left Louise after finding out her diagnosis. They then describe Louise to a woman named Gail in a manner that is unloving and callous of the past that they once shared. They repeatedly say throughout the novel that they love Louise and that they would never leave her. However, their actions and thoughts show a different intention. The narrator has a fight or flight response leaving the reader feeling just as empty as each lover they leave. The cold-hearted nature of Louise’s description “2 arms, 2 legs. (144)” shows how unreliable the narrator is. This is an important aspect of the novel because they perpetuate such vulnerability to the reader and their lovers, yet they leave all of us wanting to know more and feeling slightly empty. This is a common theme throughout the novel, and it is apparent that the narrator has betrayed the sense of trust that we all placed on them and the unreliability of their stories leaves us wanting to hear the stories of their various lovers. A narrator just like a romantic partner needs to be honest, open, and vulnerable, and just how Louise and Jaqueline once felt, we feel as though we did not get the whole story and despite having finished every page there is still so much left to uncover, yet we have also been cut off.

The concept of reliability is significant in our lives because trust and authenticity allow us to be our full selves. We can share our identity with those we trust and those who have trust in us. When we are vulnerable with unreliable people, like the narrator, we close ourselves off, unable to share our true selves, for if we do, we may get hurt. The narrator’s unreliability and inconsistencies are a symbol of the toxicity that eats away at our identities and prevents us from being our true selves. The relationships that we have with those around us influence how we are able to display ourselves and just like the narrator does with Louise we often feel the need to run and hide from our true selves when things go awry.

 

“It’s the clichés that cause the trouble”

In Written on the Body, the line “it’s the clichés that cause the trouble” (10) is one that not only is repeated in the novel but is a foundation for the way the narrator speaks. The narrator expresses their desire for Louise extensively through metaphors of nature, the universe, amongst various other elements. The narrator early on refers to love as an inexplicable thing but contradicts themself by finding different ways of explaining that for himself. In another passage, the writer details ties that “twitched when Louise walked by and the suits pulled themselves in a little.” (32) The narrator knows that Louise attracts everyone’s attention, including those of married people like themself. This is also an example of how cliches don’t do Louise’s beauty justice to the narrator, nor the complexities of the affair. At the end of the passage, they remind themself that the ring is capable of burning them. Louise is the muse for the narrator, a sin in flesh and a symbol of internal conflict about morals they choose to embody. 

In a different passage, the narrator has us visualize a conversation with Louise, who tell them that they don’t want false confessions of their love for her. The lover in their mind has a dispute, comparing Louise to the angel in Love and the Pilgrim, a work of art that shows an angel guiding a person out of vines. They say “Find your own way through and you shall win your heart’s desire. Fail and you will wander for ever in these unforgiving walls.” (54) The cliche here would have been, “art imitating life” but this individual weeds out the issue, while giving us detailed description of the manifestation of their problem in the artwork. The lovers are both actors in painting that almost reveals as if it was fate that brought them together. If the clichés are what cause the trouble, then the metaphors and imagery are what reveal the intensity of those troubles. 

 

Time travel: Not yet possible, so instead we write novels where time isn’t linear.

 

Close Reading : Written on the Body

 

 

“So what affects the circadian clock? What interrupts it, slows it, speeds it? These questions occupy an obscure branch of science called chronobiology. Interest in the clock is growing because as we live more and more artificially, we’d like to con nature into altering her patterns for us. Night-workers and frequent fliers are absolutely the victims of their stubborn circadian clocks. Hormones are deep in the picture, so are social factors and environmental ones. Emerging from this melée, bit by bit, is light. The amount of light to which we are exposed crucially affects our clock. Light. Sun like a disc-saw through the body. Shall I submit myself sundial-wise beneath Louise’s direct gaze? It’s a risk; human beings go mad without a little shade, but how to break the habit of a lifetime else?” (Winterson, 80)

 

Time doesn’t work linearly in this story. The narrator talks about the circadian clock in the passage above, but it would be more accurate to call it a circadian rhythm. We might not be able to change it, but we can affect the circadian rhythms with far more accuracy than we can time. The narrator has more trouble with time than they do with this clockwork pattern; Louise is working against time. To address Louise’s “direct gaze” as the same as a sun gaze, makes the narrator the one telling the time as a sundial. The narrator is helpless to tell time, they aren’t able to do anything but watch and report time passing. The narrator says “we’d like to con nature into altering her patterns for us” but I don’t think that’s quite accurate; the narrator wants to con nature into changing how time functions, not it’s natural patterns. They say:

 

“Frighten me? Yes you do frighten me. You act as though we will be together for ever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. Time without end. In practice we both wear a watch. If I rush at this relationship it’s because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see and that any minute now the door will open and you’ll be gone. Then what?” (Winterson, 18)

 

The problem is not with time as a concept, but how time affects the precarious nature of the narrators relationships, not just with Louise but with all of their lovers. They idealize love as an infinity but are cowardly when it comes to acting in the same manner. They refuse to be vulnerable enough accept love as a finite concept, and in doing so can never fully commit to love. Over and over, the narrator shows how they make the same mistakes in their relationships, and the constant fear of time passing only contributes to this.

 

There are moments in the book where the narrator seems to recognize and contemplate how time interacts with the novel as a whole, which is where it starts to get interesting. “This is outside of time,” they say on page 72. That sentence could be referring to the point in the story, but I think it’s more relevant to look at the statement as a comment on the novel as a whole. The narrator is so highly focused on time, and time running out, but they’ve created their own story that ultimately has no clear beginning or end, so any fears about time exist only in the mind of the narrator, not in the audience.