more questions than answers
WINTER 2018
December 2018 Copyright spamsilog
This zine is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike.You may copy, share, and reproduce this zine in its entirety with proper attribution, as long as it's not for commercial use.
The best thing I’ve ever done is admit that I don’t know the answer. These past few years, as I’ve taken on more responsibility in my life, my work, and in movements for justice, I’ve noticed the weight of expectation that comes when people ask me hard questions. How, “I don’t know,” is disappointing, or even unacceptable. I’ve done this to myself, too. For years—I had to have the answers in school, had to say the right thing to those who had power over me, had to convince others that I knew what I was doing. I had to know everything, all the time. But I don’t. I don’t know so many things. And now, I’m working on celebrating that. I’m working on cherishing ‘not knowing’ as much as I cherish knowledge. This year has been incredibly trying for me, and through that struggle, many hard questions have come to light. In this zine are just some of the questions that I’ve been asked, asked myself, or asked others. They’ve come after therapy, during frustrating moments, and before big breakthroughs. I wasn’t always my best self when I asked these questions. They’ve been hidden in email drafts, on post-its at the bottom of my backpack, or in notes on my phone. They are messy, pointed, reflective, rhetorical, and genuine. And they are purposefully unanswered. What don’t you know?
1. Are you making decisions based on true intuition or is it a trauma response? 2. How can communities committed to liberation balance personal healing, individual needs, and collective goals? 3. Why do we keep eating our leaders alive? Why do we take big bites, chew on their bones, and spit out what we don’t like? Why do we build people up into leadership positions when the same positions are built on unrealistic and dehumanizing standards? 4. Do you really feel like you’ve never met anyone like you? Or, have you just distanced yourself from like-people (in regards to identity, experience, or idea) because your social capital is predicated on exotification and self-tokenization?
5. When can I quit my job? 6. Do people not think we’ll need to make sacrifices in a liberated future? 7. Who is organizing with Asian, immigrant, trans sex workers? How can I support them? 8. If the mantra of movements is to ‘educate, agitate, organize,’ what are we doing to hold people after they get agitated? To heal with them?
9. What is queerness without trauma? 10. What harm are you willing to inflict, just to prevent yourself from feeling shame? 11. What gets you out of bed in the morning? 12. What do people feel after they call another person a “cry baby?� Does it make them feel better? Do they want to cry, too? 13. What am I so scared of?
14. When did people start stating all their identities before (or, as a precursor to?) their stories? Wouldn’t your identities just come out in your stories? 15. How can we hold high expectations for folks to be rigorous in their personal healing, committed to strategic sacrifice, and in the practice of collective work? 16. With who? For who? In what way? 17. What does it mean to listen to my body, when my body isn’t aligned with my emotions? 18. Am I fearful of finding out that my body is telling me that all I’ve built in life is wrong?
19. How can people in my life not just understand my boundaries, but also understand why my boundaries?
20. How can I respect my deep urgency to change something, while also letting others take responsibility for that change? 21. When did tenderness become synonymous with ‘don’t make me uncomfortable?' When did tenderness become an antonym for ‘being direct?’ When did being uncomfortable become synonymous with violence? 22. Where can I feel Pilipino in a place that isn’t my body?
23. What’s the opposite of knowledge? Is it ignorance? Is there a word that has a better connotation? 24. Will we all be ancestors one day? 25. For every pointed question that I ask others, how can I turn it on myself to ask the same thing? 26. How do I sit in these questions without judgement? Without a need to know?
questions
what are some of ur questions?
answers
not that you hafta have any...
thank you to all the ancestors who asked hard questions so we could get closer to the truth.
