Performative Inquiry

Rows and Ruminations: Performative Inquiry Reflection

Ingrained in me is the literary essay structure I learned as an adolescent: an introduction followed by a few body paragraphs to prove the thesis embedded in the final sentence of my introduction followed by a conclusion, a paragraph used to tie together all my miraculous findings from the research I have done about my topic. I teach this structure via colour-coded PowerPoint slides –– and I am very proud of myself for including such clear visual aids in my lesson plans. Ingrained in me is the gravitational importance of conclusions and findings; ingrained in me is the importance of the completion of projects and a grade that tells me I did a good job.
Therefore, I find exploration difficult. A piece of me panics at treading in the unknown worthiness of ideas and practices; the oppressive permeation of capitalism has shaped my perception of time and my role in society as an independent working professional. Luckily, I notice that piece of me continuously diminishing. I have observed in my consideration of the question “where is my energy best spent?” that the only way I am able to assess my use of time is to assess what my goal for time is. For me, the goal is not to make as much money as possible. It is not my goal to use every bit of my time to my productive advantage, nor is it my goal to chase frequent and extreme exhilaration at the sacrifice of my responsibilities. There is merit to these endeavors, and I applaud those who chase them. My goal for my time, however, is to be able to walk with intention in a sustainable way –– to create and tend to practices that help me find equilibrium and peace in the inevitable chaos of circumstance and living. I know that check marks do not exist in my ponderings, but taking the care and time to provide space for my own thoughts and feelings as well as others’ on this earth is a part of living peacefully as an individual in complicated communities. I cannot expect to understand the world, but I can understand the way I move in it.
My performative inquiry was, put simply, a stepping-stone in an exploration of what it means to “take care.” I sat down and unwrapped a large serving dish from my Oma’s china set from its cocoon made of a blanket –– provided for my home by my gentle, caring partner –– and a cloth grocery bag. Inside the dish were 94 folded pages and a handwritten poem “summarizing” my current ponderings of “care,” which I read out intermittently. On my hands and knees, I took the folded pages of my mother’s beginner German course out of the dish and slowly stood them up in rows of ten. Heini Haapaniemi observed that the folded papers looked like homes or a refugee camp –– others concurred that the papers looked like a community and remarked that my hands, eyes, hips, and relationship with gravity expressed the care I took in building it (2024). I didn’t have a specific plan for the performance. There was no script to follow. I had a task that I wanted to complete with little explanation for why. But that doesn’t much matter.
In my modest amount of time in this life, I have learned that processes rarely make sense at their conception, and that they sometimes progress to become more complex and, often simultaneously, more unclear. The survival instinct that drove me to take possession of a dish set that could easily fill the entirety of my studio suite does not mean nothing; I have learned to believe we need to trust urges before we “understand” them. Meticulous folding of beginner German pages on a Friday is an act of “taking care” of my grief. Listening to an urge that “doesn’t make sense” gives space to the spontaneous pits in my chest, and the unrelated but equally dire spontaneous remembrances of emotional danger that have threatened the connection I have to my family and to my own integrity of what it means to take care of myself. To suppress the grief of loss and trauma because it does not fit the linear mold of convenient timelines would be foolish; it is much more sensical to follow our urges and trust where they take us.





Taking care is taking time.
slowing down
making space in
minutes who feel full.
Deliberate
Direct
Decided.
Deciding to accept
To making space to
making room for
Listening in a loud world.

The careful work of firmly gentle hands
Some style, sadness –– symbols sing in tune of
work and grind
ground down the fruits of roots
and placed on table
and in hand
and
Folding a microfiber face cloth,
a pair of toddler’s pajamas.

Take care of the sacred nature
of a moment
made of invisible glass
a breath of where my soles
ground in the
ground of roots
who reach in fragments, ––
arms
in the cracks of sand,
the crack between each ticky of
your pocket watch.

I’m now down to 18.5 allotted sick days.
(and let me tell you a secret:
Everything will be fine.)
It’s good for them to daydream.
It’s good for me to walk in the sand
, to be cold.
It’s good for me to forget a jacket
and be reminded of the crispness that
is The World in Winter.
It’s good for me to learn to wait
behind the man in Save-On-Foods
who doesn’t know the code for garlic
F U C K.
Grow your own garlic!

Everything is the end of the world
when we give worldly weight to the details
of circumstance and matter.
Everything can be the end of the world when nothing is.
Nothing is actually dire.

Sniffle in a tub of water
On a Thursday
; everything will be fine.
I don’t want to be inspired
I just want some fucking peace and quiet sometimes.
I just want to move in a kitchen made for
Easter dinner
and a memorial service.

The only dire moments I’ve encountered are
–– the Urgent Golden Hour ––
and the crucial need to finish
a children's story
under the weight of a mask, gloved hands,
a heavy hospital gown.
––moments parallel in panic caused by endings.

Look at your hands,
your fingers––
the prints they leave.
Are you proud of your steps?––
the craters that fall behind your heels
where you have run blindly towards
…Something?
Listen. :||
What do you need?
Be still for long enough to
see which way you start to fall
and catch yourself.
Listen
to the gravity that pulls your chest
to , toward , from.
When you’re exhausted,
sit down.
When you’re inclined,
twirl.
When your bones shake under a ceiling fan
a raised voice
a fluorescent light
a question
a medical gown
a hand that pushed permission
a dirty floor
a conditional apology
a crash
a sleepless night–––
Drop it. :||
Flee.
Listen.
To take care is not to rumble on,
to spill and shout in the madness which drives us mad,
making order of intangible tangles
no.
to Take Care
is to Listen.