In his song Blowin’ in the Wind Bob Dylan answers a wonderful bunch of big questions with his famous lyrics
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,
The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
The whole life is a pretty windy season. But until today, the answer has not been blown off.
He: How are you?
Me: I am trying not to answer.Then, an expression of complete mystery spread over his face.
Well, it startles me too every time i hear myself say these words :-)
“No answer is an answer.” (rattus rattus : )
We can read this in many ways. Though, if one says “No.” I’d take it for an answer. Even if the question was: “Do you answer?”
Luckily, this simple paradox again and again leads to fruitful discussions:
Karen Kastenhofer once sent in a quote of some lines of e.e. cummings:
when god decided to invent
everything he took one
breath bigger than a circus tent
and everything beganwhen man determined to destroy
himself he picked the was
of shall and finding only why
smashed it into because
Karen then asked if anyone dares to answer.
My immediate answer was: No.
Karen replied (maybe wittily) with “O.K., this [answer] was unmistakable. Does anyone else dare to answer?”
Some did and some did not. Yet, every answer is no answer and no answer is an answer. Thus, I wrote a poem as an answer to Karen and e.e. cummings:
Don’t search for contradiction in others, you have found it already.
there him was in her mind full
fear, hope and reason threaded
together a place that was and
because of her will – bethere where no man can reach
shall truth be kept hidden
for only trust in the was
keeps what began at a living
life.
Or, as e.e. cummings is said to have written:
No need to “stand with your lover on the ending earth”.
