Free Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson

explaining. He slept, and in the morning departed with his curiosity all the stronger.
    'Months passed and the young man grew a beard. He visited fabulous towns made from cobwebs and walked in places that only animals had seen before. He loved the world more and more but still he had not found what he was looking for. At last he came to a humble village by a river, and at the river he met a woman washing. Being thoughtful, he offered to help her carry her bundle back to her home, and she invited him to stay the night and promised to answer a question if he wished to ask. The young man sighed, and told the woman about his trip and the people who had already advised him. «Both of them told me to look at the stars, and one also told me that the secret lay in myself. But I am travelling the world because the secret lies outside myself. I follow it and it gets further away.»
    'The woman was sorry for the man and gave him a bowl of soup. Then she explained, «The secret of the world is this: the world is entirely circular and you will go round and round endlessly, never finding what you want, unless you have found what you really want inside yourself. When you follow a star you know you will never reach that star; rather it will guide you to where you want to go. It's a reference point, not an end in itself, even though you seem to be following it. So it is with the world. It will only ever lead you back to yourself. The end of all your exploring will be to cease from exploration and know the place for the first time.» The young man thanked her and in the morning set out for home.
    That's the thing,' said Mrs Munde. 'Knowing your orbit, like they do. They don't drift, they travel, but they always move back to their original place.'
    'I thought you could never go back,' said Gloria, dredging up a bit of philosophy she'd seen in some magazine. 'What about progress?'
    'Progress is a mixed bag,' her mother told her. 'Some things get better, but some things get a lot worse, it seems to me. Besides, if you've dropped a stitch somewhere in the jumper of life, you have to pick it up again or your pattern will come out lopsided.'
    If Mrs Munde had been able, she would have told Gloria that progress is not linear, and that only the very stupid associate what is primitive with what is outmoded. As it was, she talked instead about the jumper of life, which we don't much want to listen to as it is rather a sentimental regression after her first and pertinent point about dropped stitches. While she continues we can talk among ourselves.
    Just as a point of interest: the Bible is probably the most anti-linear text we possess, which is why it's such a joy. People have believed for centuries, on the authority of the book of Genesis, that there was once a deluge over the whole world. Maybe Genesis is less important than it was, but we still like flood stories - whether they're Plato's Atlantis or yarns about the Loch Ness monster. Freud says we are preoccupied with deluges as a safeguard against bed-wetting. This may or may not be true; what remains true is the potency of the myth. Myths hook and bind the mind because at the same time they set the mind free: they explain the universe while allowing the universe to go on being unexplained; and we seem to need this even now, in our twentieth-century grandeur. The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching together sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was. They set it out in order to create a certain effect, and did it so well that we're still arguing about it. Every believer is an anarchist at heart. True believers would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith. For them, all things are possible. They are poets, insomuch as poetry expands, whereas prose defines. Believers are dangerous and mad and may even destroy the world in a different