in praise of questions *UPDATED*

automatic answer generator

 

answer seeking answer leaking answer peeking into the next person’s paper answer eater answer generator andwer me whole seeking in dusty places diamonds in the dust answers drown the questions living at the heart of questions will i make it? do i want this? how will this all play out? question hunting a glove full of questions the heart of a question. at the heart of every answer is a question.

 

in praise of questions

 

answers often come to me in blurred, crystic forms. an image i can’t quite catch. like dream images. so real until i reach out to capture them and then suddenly, vapour.answers often come to me in floating words, a sign on a hoarding board, an overheard conversation.

i have asked questions and you have given me answers.

[in this post titles Welcome, Gifted Seer]

 

now you ask a me a question. a book will be your answer. hot off the shelf from a wooden floored, sun filled bedroom in kathmandu.

*UPDATE*

here are four readings. names randomly pulled out of a pot pourri bowl by my 6 year old cousin. thanks for the emails!

p.s. all four of you asked to be kept anonymous (some because the topic is sensitive for you, and one because you’ll get fired if jwt googles your name and finds this ) so will include links to you in future, unrelated posts

CJ is a face lover, doodle maker, and singer of bathroom songs. She says she has been contemplating leaving her marriage for the last few years. any guidance will be welcome (please if the rest of you will also pull cards, book paragraphs, anything to give her more answers, she’d love it).

CJ, your reading is from ‘writing down the bones’ by natalie goldberg:

“we hear about people who go back to their roots. that is good, but don’t get stuck in the root. There is the branch, the leaf, the flower-all reaching toward the immense sky. We are many things.”

MMM is a writer, lover, sky-reacher from Burma. She asks if she is being brave staying in her country full of turmoil and questions, but also home and comfort, or if this is her taking the easy way out. M, your reading is from ‘poemcrazy’ by susan wooldridge:

“i sometimes think poems come from electricity in the air, a hum inside, impulses we can feel in our body.  when i sense an electrical charge around a person, event, or place, i know there’s a poem in it, waiting for words. poems are often about something so important to us we can fele the need to write as a physical urge”

PS is a grass lover, freedom seeker, and loud laugh-er. she asks how having another baby might affect her career at this stage. For you, P, the answer is from ‘writing alone and with others’ by your almost-namesake, Pat Schneider. Your answer is a poem:

Your Boat, Your Words

by Pat Schneider

your boat, they will tell you,

cannot leave the harbor

without discipline.

but they will neglect to mention

that discipline has a vanishing point,

an invisible horizon where belief takes over.

they will not whisper to you the secret

that they themselves have not fully understood: that

belief is the only wind with breath enough

to take you past the deadly calms, the stopped motion

toward that place you have imagined,

the existence of which you cannot prove

except by going there.

Popsicle Hunter has a fake name over and above his cryptic blogger name. He makes words like ‘press conference’ and ‘client’ sound cool. he wonders what’s the best way to get promoted above his boss. P, your reading is from ‘opportunities’ by edward de bono:

“imagine that you are attracted by tall blondes and that you are at a party and spot a tall blonde at the other end of the room. the room is crowded. you move about the room asking your friends whether any of them knows the blonde well enough to introduce you. it is a tiresome process. yet had you looked around before starting off on the quest you would have seen that just behind you was an even more attractive blonde conversing with a good friend of yours. the moral is that opportunities may not be difficult to see in themselves but they remain impossible to see if we happen to be looking in the wrong direction.”

PH, this made me laugh out loud! lol