Monday, January 1, 2007

On Not Knowing

http://www.fema.gov/storm/building_on_success/photos/building_on_success2.jpg
FEMA Trailers
Pensacola, FLA



Anne Carson quoted in a recent interview in The Guardian, "Not knowing what one is doing is no prohibition on doing it. We all grope ahead."

Which is a bit how I approach the work of this blog project. I'm not exactly sure what to make of this and although I listed some things to do here, there's a part of me that wants this to be spontaneous or at least a tad open to the whims of a day. Here on the first day of the new year.

On that note, perhaps it's a good time to highlight some books I'm reading and podcasts I'm listening to -- a rather schizoid accumulation: The Architecture of Happiness on how we react to the spaces we inhabit, how the buildings and other structures in which we spend our time move us; What is the What, Dave Eggars' latest on the Lost Boys of the Sudan. He retells one story in that young man's voice. Very moving, another tale of children ruined by grown-ups. All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward Jones, his short story collection, really great writing in here. A soon-to-be-published poetry collection that I'll read again (poetry does indeed need to be read several times at least to take in the full force of the work). Let's see for pod casts, Bookworm's Michael Silverblatt interviewing Jorie Graham and John Yau and Italo Calvino...each one a kind of unexpected synchronisity on the work of remembering, among other topics covered. Oh yes, a several video-casts from TED, one on love by an anthropologist and the other on the brain.

Where's this going...who knows. To end on Carson again, "when I get too many words, I don't feel I'm saying anything." Which happens to me a lot these days. Strange sensation for one who loves words.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting beginning. Thought you'd be interested in knowing more about not knowing, so here's a link. As stated there, "Just as our capacity to know can be developed, so can we cultivate a wise practice of not-knowing."

Pam said...

A practice of not-knowing -- I like that concept and thanks for the link, which was very appropriate. I wonder too about trying to know through "not-knowing." What can we learn when we open ourselves to the not-knowingness of daily living?