Claire Donato's 'Thirst' at Fanzine

Claire Donato takes on, as she has described it, "wine, desire, philosophy, sickness, [sic]-ness, the void, linguistic non-neutrality, how liquid sucks our tongues, dehydration's death/depths, and alcohol's emotional qualities (e.g., pleasure, joy, pain, sorrow, desire, appetite)," in a new essay at Fanzine, "Unbelievable Thirst." It started out in a body that was sick: "I wrote it five years ago, but it feels like I wrote it today. Someone once suggested that Thirst feels like the beginning of a larger project, but I don’t want to bring my body back to that spot."

And yet, thirst prevailed, for "[o]nly when these thoughts constellate will thirst become my thesis." An excerpt:

If I say philosophy is the object of my desire, I may be speaking the truth, although there is no way of knowing. Truth, like information, is linked to one’s cranial nerves. If I say wine makes me thirst, I am not speaking to my body’s absorption of knowledge, a supposedly tasteless liquid that is so too supposedly clear, a word etymologically connected to my first name—Claire—framed here by two em dashes, long dashes used in punctuation to demarcate a break in thought. Rather, I am speaking directly from the space within my mind where wine transforms the brain’s synapses.  The more penetrable the junctions between my thoughts become, the more sick (sic) I become. Little by little, memory clears, so as to reject its clutter. What, for philosophy’s sake, do I remember?

* * *

He was reciting neo-classical theories of truth; in my imagination, I was questioning him. Then he was no longer. He became another.

Looking beyond his facial expression parallels the moment one looks at a sentence and realizes it possesses depth beyond its surface: deep surface. I gaze into his dehydration’s depth, and I see into his death, where many informal forms of intoxication exist.

* * *

I remember we were talking, we both felt sick, he was sitting beside me, the wine had become us, men can be likened to wine…

Read it all at Fanzine.