{"id":7957,"date":"2010-12-03T06:54:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-03T11:54:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7957"},"modified":"2018-05-28T10:00:07","modified_gmt":"2018-05-28T14:00:07","slug":"what-if-you-get-a-question-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/what-if-you-get-a-question-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"“What If You Get a Question Wrong?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Image: detail from <\/em>The Garden of Earthly Delights<\/a>, by Hieronymus Bosch<\/em>
\n(click image for a much larger view of the whole <\/em>triptych<\/em>)]<\/em><\/p>\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

You Learn<\/strong><\/p>\n

You learn.
\nAfter a while you learn the subtle difference
\nbetween holding a hand and chaining a soul,
\nand you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
\nand company doesn’t mean security.
\nAnd you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
\nand presents aren’t promises,
\nand you begin to accept your defeats
\nwith your head up and your eyes open
\nwith the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,
\nand you learn to build all your roads on today
\nbecause tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans
\nand futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.
\nAfter a while you learn
\nthat even sunshine burns if you get too much.
\nSo you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,
\ninstead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
\nAnd you learn that you really can endure.
\nThat you really are strong.
\nAnd you really do have worth.
\nAnd you learn. And learn.
\nWith every good-bye you learn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Jorge Luis Borges)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide, and seek.<\/p>\n

To seek: to embrace the questions, be wary of answers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Terry Tempest Williams [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Men at Forty<\/strong><\/p>\n

Men at forty
\nLearn to close softly
\nThe doors to rooms they will not be
\nComing back to.<\/p>\n

At rest on a stair landing,
\nThey feel it moving
\nBeneath them now like the deck of a ship,
\nThough the swell is gentle.<\/p>\n

And deep in mirrors
\nThey rediscover
\nThe face of the boy as he practices tying
\nHis father\u2019s tie there in secret,<\/p>\n

And the face of that father,
\nStill warm with the mystery of lather.
\nThey are more fathers than sons themselves now.
\nSomething is filling them, something<\/p>\n

That is like the twilight sound
\nOf the crickets, immense,
\nFilling the woods at the foot of the slope
\nBehind their mortgaged houses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Donald Justice [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn, a human being; somebody who said to those near him, when his fingers would not hold a brush “tie it to my hand”–<\/p>\n

nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false, nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary, nothing emptied or filled, real or unreal; nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening, innocent spontaneous, true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden, but actually flowers which breasts are among the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted; brain over heart, surface: nowhere hating or to fear; shadow, mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making; only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno, impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong; never to gain or pause, never the soft adventure of undoom, greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence; never to rest and never to have; only to grow.<\/p>\n

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(E.E. Cummings [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

My Son the Man<\/strong><\/p>\n

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
\nthe way Houdini would expand his body
\nwhile people were putting him in chains. It seems
\nno time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,
\nguide his calves into the gold interior,
\nzip him up and toss him up and
\ncatch his weight. I cannot imagine him
\nno longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
\nget over my fear of men now my son
\nis going to be one. This was not
\nwhat I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
\nsealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
\nsnapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
\nand appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me
\nthe way Houdini studied a box
\nto learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sharon Olds [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

Finally, Monty Python remind us that even the cleverest questioners sometimes fall short in the answers\u00a0 department:<\/p>\n