Encountering new ways of knowing: These things are related somehow

My first reflection for this class included a copy of a methodology I had written for our Qualitative Research Methods course.  It is, to my mind, a good example of someone trying hard to hammer a nail in with a wrench.  I fall all over myself trying to account for the esoteric and emergent realities of my inquiry using the tools I had been given. The revelation of this term has been Arts Based Inquiry. Specifically, Arts Based Inquiry as methodology.  The answer to whether or not it should even be considered a methodology distinct from other qualitative research methods is irrelevant to me. The question itself has merit and meaning: it is an idea that I will roll it around in my mind with pleasure for many months – perhaps many years.  To engage with an evocative new paradigm – even just the possibility of one – is a remarkable thing.  To feel that my work may have a place in scholarship via Arts Based Inquiry is very encouraging.

Annie Dillard’s book Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek took me years to read.  The ideas – rendered so expertly in her distinct and exquisite creative-non-fiction – are so tightly packed, that I could barely finish a page with setting the book down to consider the depths of my own soul; the limits of my mind; the endless potential of the universe. I told my wife – I can clearly see the image in my mind, as if I had witnessed it happening in the real world – that when I encounter something beautiful and profound as Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek, it is like a thin glass vial breaks inside my skull and releases a golden, viscous liquid that coats my brain with a glowing warmth. I can only sit back, and let it take me over. For Dillard everything is text and subtext all at once.  Everything is symbol. 

My friend once said to me,

I hope one day, everything I say will mean what it means, and at the same time mean something more.  I hope that one day, everything I speak will at the same time be a metaphor. Everything.

I think he was drunk when he said it.      

I was telling my cousin Joseph – who is about to welcome his first child – how difficult it is to describe becoming a father. 

The best way I can explain it, is like this: It’s like your life is a house.  You live a full life, and your life fills up your house: your relationships, your occupation, your passions, hopes, dreams and fears. You know all about your house; it is your house after all and you aren’t convinced it can hold much more. It’s hard to imagine bringing another significant thing into the house.  Other fathers will tell you that having a child significantly disrupts your sleep, and that having a child will usurp any unencumbered alone time you might currently enjoy. It’s a worrying prospect, especially if – like me – sleep and alone time are things you really value. There is space in your house currently for sleep and alone time.

But the beauty of it is, having a child is like opening a door in your very familiar house only to discover a whole new wing has suddenly appeared.  The surprise is sublime.  The child immediately fills up the newly discovered space and your life is never the same again.  Not only has your world significantly expanded, but you are reacquainted with wonder on a significant level. You begin to realize that new worlds may yet crash into yours.

I wrote this song while watching one-and-a-half-year-old daughter play in a pool of light in our living room while I read a book nearby:

Listening to pleasure; reading to pleasure

I came-to over an artificial horizon: back to you

In a new light; your mouth was symbol

You were surprised; I was delighted in you

And I remember everything

What it is to move through

meaning to meaning

The pleasure of mystery at the edge of reality

And the blur of white light in myopia

I remember everything

How to think and feel the same

As I type, I can see a light on in the house next door to us.  This is the first time I have ever seen a light on in that portion of the house.  Our friendly, ancient neighbor Sylvia moved into long-term care at Grand River Hospital a few months ago.  She spoke five languages, survived the holocaust, ran a medical practice out of her home, and was well prepared for the apocalypse: her house was full of firewood, dry goods, bottled water, crucifixes, and one well-maintained .22.  She has no family save for a nephew in Saskatchewan.

Sylvia’s lawyer sold us her house and we took possession last Friday.

We turned the light on.