weird questions borrowed/stolen from Keeper of the snails

1. What is a book whisperer?
A writer's muse. My stories are always whispered on the wind. I have to be silent, and listen, try and catch them. Let the words fall into me. Stop what I am doing, and see the pictures as they float by. The book whisperer is really the story whisperer, sends them out into the world floating in the air around us, and if we can listen and catch enough, they are like a thousand fireflies in a jar, all signaling at once, enough to light the dark. The muse is called a book whisperer, because he/she whispered these stories over the minds, ears, hearts, of those most likely to catch them and share them. Thus each book, once a whisper on the wind.

2. What can I smell when it is going to snow?
Childhood. LIke held breath anticipation, that something amazing could happen at any moment, that something magical is just around the corner. The world is still, waiting, but when you breathe the cold air in through your nose, down into your lungs, the cold sends electiricity through you, waking up every cell in your body.
(though in my opinion that is only the first true snow of the year, by March, approaching snow, smells quite different)

3. Tell me about a road that leads to a world where there are no ideas.
It is dark, and the path is at points narrow and tight, almost impossible to squeeze through, (you are barely able to see, sharp rocks cut into you, ripping bits of clothing, ripping bits of skin), and in other spots it turns all open, the road is wide, everything is flat and formless, grey, sky, ground, air, you, all grey, then you easily get lost, for everything looks the same, there are no markers to guide you, up, down, forward, back, it all becomes indistinct. The reason it is hard to walk this road, to find the place in the world where there are no ideas, is that the universe never wants you to arrive there.
(you only need one thought, to be able to turn around, and find the way back home, the road to ideas)

4. How can I get a memory out of my head?
I find the harder thing is to get one in there, I find it perfectly easy to lose them. Maybe I am lucky, for though I do have unpleasant memories there is not one (so far) I wish to forget. There are things I wish hadn't happened but as they did happen, I wish to remember them. I do wish I knew how to retrieve some of the shiny memories that are stored in deep storage, so I could bring them back out into the light and look at them. But I assume part of me still knows them, and they impact and effect me unaware. And that there is a reason it is so.

5.Where is shallowland and what lives there?
You must walk straight ahead and be braver than you've ever been before (braver than you ever thought you could be).
It is not (full of) a lack of depth (lack of meaning and feeling), it is things revealed.
The deep ocean, keeping things hidden, offering protection, now receded to reveal what it holds. The water is now shallow, items exposed, to light, to eyes. No need to be hidden, all treasures revealed, soft, shiny, and hard, dark things too. Wonderous all. Shallowland, to stand there boldy, among what you see, walk carefully through it, know it all. It is always in us, we usually keep the depth of water around it, around us, for protection, looking at it through layers and layers of grey-green sea, but sometimes we gather our courage, dive down, and walk there, among the inner parts of ourselves, the pieces gathered across the course of our life, and those parts of us that always were.. Sometimes we even let others, walk through parts with us (we bring part of it back and show it to them). Somethings are hard to look at it, to accept are there, to look at closely, but we go down, and walk there, because we know among these jagged pieces, are lost treasures, things that hold light, parts of us connected to something beautiful and vast, and we want to touch those parts, pull them out of the sand and hold them. The floor of us, the core of us, literally littered with light and dark pieces. Side by side, moving together in the tide of our lives.

6. Who is the man that lives inside the sun?
We've never met, and he doesn't sing to me the way the moon does. But I am grateful for the light and heat, just the same.

7. When did you first know who you were?
Still don't. I learn new things about me all the time. Like how the sunlight hits objects in different places at different times of the day, at core shape I am always the same, but look different in different angles of light, other parts are illuminated, revealed, as are, other shadows. If there is a heaven, I think there we know us fully, here is my journey, I find parts of myself in the strangest places, parts I didn't know I had lost, parts I hadn't looked into yet. It is not so much that who I am, is changing, just that time gives me more time to discover it, to uncover it. I am, I am, I am. It flies through the trees, echoes through the hills, pulled through an eternity of sky. Who am I, may be the question, but that I am, is the gift.
I AM

8. Why do gnats fly in sprials and never hit each other?
Centrical force (isn't there an f in that word? oh, centrifugal, I suppose, but now my poor brain is all confused, definitions and spellings not being just as I had thought. Poor brain, you try, I know you do. It's not your fault), and tiny magnets (with opposing forces, especially when spiraled). They used to fly straight and hit each other, get stuck together and drop to the ground. Which of course made it take forever to get anywhere. So one day, one of them ( I don't know who, several have of course taken credit) decided to fly in tight little circles to try and intimidate others to stay clear, and it worked, so they all started to do it. No matter how dizzy they got, they found they never hit each other. The reason it is spirals instead of tight circles now is because they discovered that spirals worked just as well, and then they didn't get dizzy (again I can't tell you which one realized this, over a million took credit at the time, and now every gnat says it was his or her ancestor who did).

9. What is love?
I don't know. I know it asks more of you than anything else, and gives more to you than anything else. But still, I don't know.

10. How can I capture a free spirit?
You never want to learn how to capture a free spirit. You want to learn how to set a caged one free.

(I notice there is a repetion of ideas and words, I have given in my answers)
not so pleased with them, but supposed to be doing many other things, and running out of time.
Time. Time. Time.
Time