A year ago today, I wrote about poet Andrea Gibson’s essay the “Hardest Winter of My Life.” I couldn’t get the phrase “being inside the question together” out of my head and I still can’t. The words continue to circle me every time I wade into the murky waters of wonder. It can feel lonely to bump up against the edges of a question. I need the grist of another person’s thought process to open the gates.
I often throw an idea — in the form of a bold, declarative statement — out to Danny. As we discuss, I imagine that we are nibbling away at the edges of this question in the form of statement until the sentence has become either a carcass or it is reborn as a creature with appendages that reach to the floor. He’s a good sport about mucking about in the questions, looking for purchase while I sputter away. And in fact, after I read the opening line of this post to him, I could hear his flying fingers on the keyboard composing a response for me:
Some of us have no such dilemma. The phrase simply washes over us like a fresh mountain stream — long enough to feel and be refreshed by new thought and letting it carry itself away to find its level. In our writing groups, we do 5-minute free writes. Inevitably one or two people in our group, tells us before reading that they didn’t get it right or went a different direction from the start and ask forgiveness. Everyone approaches these prompts so differently. It keeps conversations lively and the thoughts from each other’s work often lead us far afield from the original idea. We enjoy the diversity of ideas which further bonds our writing groups.
I would add that being in the question together connects us to a well spring. The free write prompt, the discussion, the call and response of our conversations — these are the containers that help us shape the way we envision the world and our place in it. From this raw material we construct new work.
Michael Wise responded to that question together in this way;
There are things I have experienced
that seek not the light of day,
Not having to worry about hiding from the question
Together,
Being seen just as you are …
Amir’Whadi Hassan wrote this response to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings:
But there’s a bird that knows only the narrowest views, slants
of steel is all he sees through. Wings clipped from
rage, feet strapped and encaged.
Luis Rodriguez responded to Andrea Gibson’s Longest Winter:
The winter was cold but I must let it pass in my mind, for we are what we think. We find what we seek, and we live in the season in which we choose to sit.
From Michael Stepina:
The simple is viewed as a fool by the intellectual.
The intellectual is ambitious and tries to reap benefit off the back of the simple.
Becoming by Ian Lohrman:
An undulating living edifice
of its own organic geometry
brimming with nascent awareness
of the inevitability of becoming
R. Miranda’s I Have Spoken:
I dare not give them life
through oral words or phrase,
So in the shadows of my mind
is where they opt to stay
Stressla Lynn Johnson brings us home:
What are these murky pools
that seem to sit behind my mind’s eyes,
shallow water away from the shores of my illusion,
weight-down in the darkest depths of aloneness;
Ah, the aloneness. To stand alone in an idea feels like defending a fortress. How do we rebuild those stances to find common ground, to maintain partnership, unity? How do we ensure that our ideas hold enough veracity that they are worthy of our life’s energy? Take this as your invitation to stand in these questions with us. | TDS