I love these questions because they are all so nakedly Clare, Clare, Clare, and reveal her in the asking more than anyone could reveal in answering. But I will answer them all the same.1. What can I fit in the space between the stars?
Swaths and of nothingness, cloth from invisible bolts.
2. What is the first thing you know that you saw?
White light trembling on water.
3. Can I really smell the rain?
As it seeds the ground and marries with earth.
4. When does white noise become dark?
When a demon breaks the blur into separate pieces.
5. Where did you leave your favourite dream?
In the air, flying.
6. How can I stop feeling the lashing of a tongue?
Walk in green leaves until the noise of a whip is only the wind in branches.
and 7. Why do some words stain with an indelible ink; while others leave no mark at all?
On writing
Some come from the ink jar of mastery, some are blood that will not be scrubbed away, and some were never really more than warm dissolving air.
On the soul considered as a piece of paper
News of the terrible error of one’s ways, news that is a streaming joyfulness, news of birth and death, and sometimes stray trivial news that comes to have meaning years later: indelible. The missed direction, the love unnoticed, the daily rout, and what seems (but is not) the common ruck of men and women passing on the street, talking into machines or to one another: no mark, unless a phrase should aspire to be stray trivial news that comes to have meaning years later.
About Clare
Clare Dudman’s questions and dreams and news about her own books and those of others can be found at http://keeperofthesnails.blogspot.com/. See more at http://www.claredudman.com/. And Clare in The Palace at 2:00 a.m.: here.
And read her books, too, won’t you? They, too, lead to questions and answers in the mind.
Photo credit: I saved this leafy labyrinth long ago and have no idea of the source. Tell me if you do.
