Not Knowing

Every day she can get away with it, she practices not knowing. For ninety minutes, before the mind is too cluttered, she attempts to unknow. She tries to tolerate un-ameliorated cluelessness. To sit not knowing, without alcohol or sweets, without fantasies or reassurances. To sit, not knowing, in a chair beside the laundry drying area, garlanded on both sides by electrical wire. To sit enumerating things to be done -- and not do them. Not only letters to write but bills unpaid, vegetables rotting in the kitchen, mushrooms growing behind the toilet and nonetheless she's not doing anything, nothing but not knowing, attempting to tolerate not knowing. Sitting, doing knowing nothing as visitors rush through toward her through the air, most of them suggesting that, by the age she is now, she ought to know. Frequently it's quite remarkably horrible. To not know, to admit she does not know. Without even a glass a wine. Still, she sits each day and practices not knowing. Nothing but blank cards. At most a candle. Prayer beads. Pen. A lukewarm cup of coffee, half-strength.