“I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions.”
–Caine (Kung Fu)
“And still I will have told you next to nothing. For Shara sought more than freedom—she sought meaning. Mass was, above all, a spiritual event—its title pun paralleling its thematic ambiguity between the technological and the theological. Shara made the human confrontation with existence a transitive act, literally meeting God halfway. I do not mean to imply that her dance at any time addressed an exterior God, a discrete entity with or without white beard. Her dance addressed reality, gave successive expression to the Three Eternal Questions asked by every human being who ever lived.
Her dance observed her self, and asked, How have I come to be here?
Her dance observed the universe in which self existed, and asked, How did all this come to be here with me?
And at last, observing her self in relation to its universe, Why am I so alone?”
–Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Stardance
Upon reading the above question a friend of mine asked me: “Isn’t knowing the answers essentially the same as understanding the questions? It’s sort of a more obscure, mystical way of wording things, but how could you do one without the other?” I want to sit with this for a bit.
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Through the Warp by G A Rosenberg
Space Flower by G A Rosenberg
