gut.

and in my purse is a page with this: the years fold up neatly into single images, single words and what went between was like glue or a resin that held the important things in place, until, now, later, when they stand alone, the rest decayed, leaving certain moments as time's souvenirs...

i no longer recognize the urgency of my old diaries with their careful recording of what mattered. what i wrote down is in another person's handwriting. what has held me are the things i did not say, the things i put away. what returns, softly, or in floods disturbs me by its newness. its vividness. what returns are not the well-worn memories i have carefully recorded, but spots of time that badge me out... i am marked by those stubborn parts of me. perhaps i did not know it would be so.

-jeanette winterson, gut symmetries.