Answers

1. B
2. 3
4. pain
5. play

Jack is looking for answers to questions he doesn't know. Without the questions, the answers still make sense to him because he knows he can make them up. But he won't know if they're right. The questions, not the answers. The answers are what is there, what he sees plainly. The questions are what get him there. To Jack, we know all the answers, even if the answer is "wait and see." What he needs are the questions. Like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Obsessively. Jack knows some people whose relentless pursuit of ? have driven them to inexpressibility. He thinks, no knows, he isn't like that. He just wonders why the pieces fit so neatly together.

Jack sometimes thinks he's deluding himself. But he knows that he isn't. If he didn't have the questions or the answers, ... Jack is mute, he cannot think. Did anyone know that knowledge was so precarious? Why didn't anyone tell him? Jack is looking for an answer again, or is it a question?

Two years later, Jack has no answers. But he has found his thoughts again. When I asked him how he did it, he mumbled, ";." Punctuation, the space between words, questions and answers, is where our thoughts lie. Where we think quietly. We both knew what he meant. To communicate, to ask, to pause, and to answer. Without answers and only questions, we all need space to feel.

1. "
2. ?
3. ,
4. .

Posted on March 10, 2009 02:42

Included in zines: Jack's #2

Average score: 4.5/5

Email article to a friend Add to Wish List


Read or add comments (1 comment so far...)