She built another inch of her cathedral each night after school. Each day another piece discovered just out of the corner of her eye, even better when she was not looking at all. If you had asked her what her cathedral was made of she would not have known. It is made of everything, that’s all I can say, she told her teacher who knew her well enough to believe her, for she never lied.
Clara felt her time on earth strangely as if she was lapping herself and re-meeting thoughts as she travelled through her day. For she was travelling , she didn’t need her cells to tell her that. Being ‘here’ and not there seemed accidental, a mere matter of chance and overtaking. Callum teased her most days about her dreaminess, not really knowing what else to say ,for whilst it wasn’t precisely dreaminess he experienced ,it was something outside what he knew, but he couldn’t identify what it was that made him know she was elsewhere.
Clara playfully frowned when he teased her though not in an irritated way.
I am not a dreamer. Just curious that’s all. I just hurtle about more than I can say. .
She broke through the detachment of her observing ways. In and out she weaved. Could she do this? I am weaving today about myself. I am inside and outside myself. I know we all feel outside sometimes, but what if that we all the time? Does the me ever go back inside and just accept. Clara comforted herself that waiting for the moment when the door opened and shut didn’t take long and then respite descended. Building the cathedral however shifted the strangeness way. When she started collecting the pieces of this world, she gained a sense of settlement, or settling down that went by the name of peace. It could have been the project but Clara felt it wove everything that had not quite fitted, together. I felt so many bits of me scattered across this world and then when I started the cathedral, the pieces became friendlier, my mind became friendlier.
Of course the construction of the cathedral rather confirmed the dreaminess, but then it became so concrete, so consuming for Clara that Callum had to agree that what she felt was different to a dream. The school library and the one in their town obliged with inter library loans and Clara’s locker and bedroom walls became covered in sketches of cathedrals, something that not unnaturally set her apart from her colleagues at college.
Something comforting and satisfying about the word ‘cloister’ and even the word ‘transept’ made her smile as she repeated it. Callum humored her because her eyes were ice green and who could resist a mind that knew what ignited it?
Anti clockwise tales that’s what we need, that’s why we are here.
