Falling in Love with ?

I’ve been thinking about questions. There used to be more around in my life – more emanating from my thoughts and more surrounding in the people around me. And here I really mean questions that alter you. (Asking about post grad plans doesn’t usually do the same thing.)

I played around today with some colorful chalk in an empty classroom. I guess there was some nervous energy and my mind needed something to hold on to. I needed some certainties. About me. About what I’m doing. Where I am going. So I wrote some things in the spirit of old fashioned pedagogy.

I will love.

I will love.

I will be.

I will love myself.

I will love my sisters.

But there was more that I felt I wanted to explore. I wonder about my relationship to the question mark. ?

I think I want to do it like this (thus I wrote)…

I want to fall in love with the question mark and interrogate the period.

But it’s problematic, right? I stared at the chalkboard and that statement for some time. The statement is a contradiction. Too many tiny chalk dots that ended things. They didn’t disencourage further discussion but there was no requirement that further thought happen. And this is what I want!

So I added…

Can I survive that?

It was like a splash of paint that an artist throws up because she feels that the paint should be thrown. It must be. It felt appropriate to write it before I had even considered what I meant or even what I was asking. But it’s true! I barely survived some of my Rhetoric courses because the questions upon questions obliterated my world view. It was so chaotic! And I felt like I was drowning.

If we are to approach a question with intellectual honesty then we inherently are taking risks. We suspend the solid-ness. We accept that things may not be as we thought before. But how difficult that is. How rare. Perhaps perfect intellectual honesty is something I am not capable of. But more of it I certainly need/want/will work towards. The chaos is outweighed by the poetic of impermanence and betterment.

Shout out to those who succeed in asking real questions. Contagious you are. Infectious. Bravo.

Also, shout out to whomever left that colorful chalk in the classroom. 😀