Month: February 2017

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The Verge

Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights.

— Andre Breton

What divides the light from the darkness?
          The warmth of the egg

Q&A Session with Sharon Cunniff, Mary Ellen Binkele, and Michelle Tennison (2011)


What is the meaning of Grace?
          I heard you sing in your sleep

Question Harry Hudson,  Answer Michelle Tennison (2005)


What thoughts are weightless?
          I step out of my mother’s dream

Question John Levy,  Answer Michelle Tennison (2017)

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Eve Luckring: Another Dialogue with The Marvelous

 

 

What is poetry?
          Yours or mine?

Question Michelle Tennison,  Answer Eve Luckring (2017)

 

What lives in sincerity?
          apples:
          one to eat
          one to stone
          you with

 

What is remembering?
          Wanting to trust the shape a wave makes

 

What is stirring in my gut?
          (When) connecting the dots makes a circle

 

Questions Eve Luckring,  Answers Michelle Tennison (2017)

 

I have long been a fan of — and been inspired by — the work of Los Angeles artist and poet Eve Luckring. One of the gifts of haiku is that it allows us to recognize a kindred spirit, even across a continent. This is how I felt about Eve even before we connected recently through playing the Question and Answer Game.  I felt I could trust her with some difficult questions, and I was right. I hope I was able to answer a few for her as well.

 

 

Is God happy?
          The salt in seaweed

 

How will the world end?
          A bat released from a bubbling spring

 

Questions Michelle Tennison,  Answers Eve Luckring (2017)

 

What reveals disguise?
          When all the walls disappear

 

What do you call into your heart upon awakening?
          Like rain on sugar

 

What is forgiveness?
          A silence that rests inside fire

 

Questions Eve Luckring,  Answers Michelle Tennison (2017)

 

Thank you, Eve, for being you. It was wonderful, I would even say  Marvelous, “meeting” you this way.

 

 

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“There is another world and it is in this one” — Paul Eluard

christopher-herold

 

Sometimes the game itself transcends logic and seems to tap into another realm, suggesting a transpersonal consciousness at work. The following results from playing the game with Zen practitioner and haiku poet Christopher Herold give a glimpse into the more beautiful side of Surrealism, something Andre Breton called The Marvelous.

I asked Christopher 11 pointed questions, and he answered them, unseen:

 

What is the past?
          The taste of spring water at 12,000 feet

 

Where is the map?
          A brick path’s geometry of moss

 

What is the mind of God?
          The emptiness inside a mirrored ball

 

What is truth?
          This worn out pair of shoes

 

How do you know you’ve really made it?
          The scent of a pine forest on a hot afternoon

 

What is the one dream?
          Bagpipes skirling through a foggy dawn

 

What is kindness?
          The receding tide depositing driftwood on the shore

 

Where is the nearest exit?
          Linear time compressing as death approaches

 

What will happen when two snowflakes are exactly alike?
          Children’s laughter

 

How can I avoid suffering?
          Discovering and letting go of our attachments.

 

What is deep thinking?
          Nothing . . . in particular

 

Questions Michelle Tennison, Answers Christopher Herold (2017)

 

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transpersonal zinnia signedjpg

Photograph by Michelle Tennison

 

It is a cry of the mind turning toward itself and determined in desperation to crush its fetters.

Surrealist tract, 1925

 

What if a question does not have an answer?
          One more step

Q&A Session with Timothy Binkele, Anna Binkele (age 14), Seth Binkele (age 11), Cole Binkele (age 5), Ella Binkele (age 3), Mary Ellen Binkele, and Michelle Tennison (2015)

 

What is deja vu?
          A blind person’s description of a sea anemone

Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Paul Miller (2014)

 

How can you recognize your own despair?
          A phoenix rising

Question Michelle Tennison, Answer Eve Luckring (2017)

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Seriously, why am I here?
          anonymity: 
          the day lily
          in its splendor

Question Michelle Tennison,  Answer Sabine Miller  (2015)

 

Where do we fly to when we fly in our dreams?
          More of something,
          silence, more
          of this

Question Michelle Tennison,  Answer Sabine Miller   (2015)