Q&A Game

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Version 2

 Poppy Pod, Michelle Tennison

 

 Reprise of an earlier post, worth revisiting

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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A Surprisingly Simple Game of Chance

hibiscus signed

— photograph by Michelle Tennison

 

How to play The Question and Answer Game:*

 

A question is written down and the paper folded to conceal it. Another player writes an answer without reading the question. The paper is unfolded to reveal the results.

 

What is a dream?
          one note
         of
          Mozart

Question Dietmar Tauchner,  Answer Michelle Tennison (2017)

 

 

*(Also known as “Definitions”) as found in The Book of Surrealist Games, Shambala Redstone editions, Boston, 1993.

 

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“The surreal is but reality that has not been disconnected from its mystery.” — Rene Magritte

Version 5
Music Coming from the Missing Pages,  Michelle Tennison

 

What do I absorb from the sun and stars?
          My mother’s voice 

Question Mary Ellen Binkele,  Answer Michelle Tennison (2014)

 

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“Poetry should be made by all.” — Lautreamont

Many of the French surrealists of the early 20th Century were poets.

Maybe that’s why this game they invented (which is so easy to play) has a lot in common with exceptional poetry.  At times it hits home with an epiphanic jolt and even an aesthetic rush …  and it’s full of metaphors, which Aristotle considered the mark of genius.*

The fact that we’re playing a game and we laugh a lot more than we usually do with poetry is a just a nice bonus.

 

*The greatest thing by far,” said Aristotle in the Poetics (330 BC), “is to have a command of metaphor. This alone cannot be imparted by another; it is the mark of genius, for to make good metaphors implies an eye for resemblance.”

 

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“The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.” — David Bohm

Version 6

Dormez Vous,  Michelle Tennison*

 

 


what is your
still, small voice
saying?
          That which is overheard while in a coma

Question Sabine Miller,  Answer Michelle Tennison (2015)

 

*The bee must have spent the night on this cosmos flower. It awoke about a half hour after this photo was taken.

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poplar quote copy

Walt Whitman quote from Specimen Days, Crystal Spring Park boardwalk, Laurel Springs,  NJ, photograph by Michelle Tennison

 

What is the shortest distance between two points?
          A fully formed body of light

Question Sabine Miller,  Answer Michelle Tennison  (2015)

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Pod Mind

 

Dolphins use more of their brains’ capabilities than we do. The efficiency of their mode of communication becomes obvious in the wild, when they all move together as a unit, surf the waves at the same moment, make direction-changes simultaneously  … How can we develop instant, open communication like this? When we have no secrets, no hidden agendas, no negative reactions. This is achieved through truthfulness, integrity, and Pod or Group Mind.

— Joan Ocean, on her years of experience swimming with dolphins

 

Why do some people who swim with dolphins and whales feel so profoundly affected by the experience, perhaps even healed, or changed forever? Often they describe it as pure joy.   Cetaceans do seem to know something we haven’t quite figured out yet as they wordlessly and synchronistically move together — something about community and oneness, and something about play and the space of joy itself which is so abundant that it seems a bit foreign and even miraculous to us. Maybe that’s why sometimes, in their presence, we feel like are receiving answers long before we know the questions.

 

Why do we say we “fall” in love?
          A rain barrel overflowing

Question Michelle Tennison,  Answer Mark Harris, (2016)