I blow a dandelion rosette into the wind; it travels into all fields of the perceptible. What a story those seeds could tell. Nonlinear dandelion story. Seeds writing on the wind. Heisenberg wanted us to learn the handwriting of atoms. Dandelion: member of the Sunflower Family (Asteraceae). Blooms March thru September. Pick one, notice the milky white, sticky exudate on the stem. Latex, a complex metabolic cell product. Write with it. Use young leaves in salads, dip the flowers in batter and fry. Ahhh, the atomized aroma of frying flowers.

 

 

This space is empty.

 

Marguerite Duras
Blue Eyes Black Hair

The spaces between passages have profound significance for fiction. This book is typical of many Duras works. Short paragraphs are followed by "drops."

The spatial-temporal awareness demonstrated by Duras moves fiction into a ready-state for the web. If hypertext were all, but hypertext is not all. The beauty of Marguerite Duras's formal elegance is undeniable. The spatio-temporal element in fiction can reach full-blown expression in web-specific writing.

Space between short passages creates an awareness of time. A breath-conscious rhythm is established. It is almost like the effect of a 16-line sonnet—a passionate form. The contents of the paragraphs seem elevated by the air surrounding them. A psychic space, like the energy field around a person. The space in which clandestine rendez-vous and spiritual bonding transpire.

Typically, the passages are discontinuous or nonlinear. The language shifts in time/voice/setting in a significant way. A passage about film direction might be interjected in the midst of a series of fictional passages. I think of them as passages rather than paragraphs. They are both, but passages has a temporal connotation.

 

The Spaces Between the Lines

 

T'ai Chi on the mall. I turn & there's a deer. Turn again & there's another. You are in the deer—

in everything timid & powerful, everything cautious & wild.

the chaotic disarray of the sheets