{"id":8774,"date":"2024-09-15T18:14:52","date_gmt":"2024-09-15T22:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/an-illustrated-ode-to-loves-secret-knowledge-the-marginalian\/"},"modified":"2024-09-15T18:14:52","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T22:14:52","slug":"an-illustrated-ode-to-loves-secret-knowledge-the-marginalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/an-illustrated-ode-to-loves-secret-knowledge-the-marginalian\/","title":{"rendered":"An Illustrated Ode to Love\u2019s Secret Knowledge \u2013 The Marginalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Profit<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n

\n

\"An<\/a><\/p>\n

When Dante wrote of \u201cthe Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,\u201d he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of the universe, the knowledge by which everything coheres. All love is an outstretched hand of curiosity reaching for knowledge \u2014 a tender acknowledgement of a reality that is not yourself and a lively interest in its interiority. Bertrand Russell captured this in his essential distinction between \u201clove-knowledge\u201d and \u201cpower-knowledge,\u201d<\/a> for it is only by means of love that we get to know anything deeply \u2014 a landscape, a person, the world \u2014 and it is love that beckons forth our own secret knowledge of what makes life worth living. <\/p>\n

That is what poet Aracelis Girmay<\/a> and her artist sister Ariana Fields explore in What Do You Know?<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (public library<\/em><\/a>), inspired by the closing lines of Sharon Olds\u2019s tender poem \u201cLooking at Them Asleep.\u201d (\u201cWhen love comes to me and says \/ What do you know? I say This girl, this boy.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Page by page, love comes to the farmer and the seafarer, to the fruit bats and the honeybees, to the forest and the stars, asking each what they know, and their answers come simple and profound like a child\u2019s question. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

When love comes to the well and asks,
What do you know,
it says,
I know thirst, I know abundance.
I know depth, I know darkness.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

When love comes to the ash and asks,
What do you know,
the ash says, I know the secrets between the volcano and the sky<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It says, I know wandering,
and I know the language of fire.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

When love comes to courage and asks,
What do you know,
courage says,
I know speaking, even though I am afraid,
and I know the daily work of keeping on.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The constellations know \u201cthe story of distance and the language of light,\u201d the rocks know \u201cthat change is possible, even if it takes a million years,\u201d the land knows \u201cthe laughter of children who run below the birds\u201d and \u201cthe joy of going on and on and on.\u201d <\/p>\n

What emerges is a glowing sense that love is not something we do but something we are, something the world is, something vaster than space and older than time. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"
Aracelis and Ariana as children<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Couple What Do You Know?<\/em><\/strong><\/a> with Kamau & ZuZu Find a Way<\/em><\/a>, also by Girmay, then revisit Mary\u2019s Room<\/a> \u2014 a brilliant thought experiment about the limits of knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Profit<\/a>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Dante wrote of \u201cthe Love that moves the Sun and the other stars,\u201d he was shining a sidewise gleam on the secret knowledge of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}