We Just Don't Know

“…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know...” 

In March, my colleague put this quotation up on the large screen in Shanghai, and inwardly, I cringed. Donald Rumsfeld—why? We were holding an orientation meeting of students joining us on a three-day writing retreat in a month’s time, and this was her idea of an icebreaker. (Like her, I will skip rehashing the Rumsfeld/GWB/WMD context, though I will say the ellipses above are important in that light. Also important is that Rumsfeld here is pilfering from numerous psychologists and philosophers, and that Zizek (another man who’s not a fav but says more useful things) adds a fourth category, “the unknown known,” which is perhaps realest to Rumsfeld and his ilk.) My colleague (who I have loved getting to know and is brilliant and amazing and I’ll miss her dearly!) asked the students to write for ten minutes about the upcoming trip—for which they would have to complete required readings and take a no-alcohol pledge—in light of the quotation. Then each of them was to read aloud just a part of what they wrote with the group, and the collage the group shared was utterly moving, a gathering of fragments of hope and limitation about their bodies, the world, their position as foreigners in China, as Chinese in China who don’t know their own country.

And now June has just begun. Beyond our time with those students and colleagues in Jiuhuashan, Lee and I have also now visited Shenzhen, Guanghzo, Guillin, Kunming, Chengdu, and Leshan; tomorrow we are off to the next stop.

There is an element of attraction to unknown I’ve been exploring here, and then of self-consciousness about the attraction. Am I co-opting another culture? Am I having the right experience? Can I speak the language? Do I know enough about the people? The history? The politics in order to most responsibly experience all this? Do I know what I know? Am I working to be conscious of what I don’t know? And why does it matter any way?

I have had some fascinating conversations about the facts above—likely being lied to, inordinantely and otherwise, sometimes being told the truth. I have walked down so many blocks and avenues, learned and forgotten new words, listened to so many speaches—some in languages I know but mostly in language I don’t. I have used my translator and looked up things on Wikipedia, reaching for my phone, again and again—thankful for this this tool of knowing. I have given up and pressed on. I have forced myself to put my phone away. I have sat, for hours, with tea, with beer, with Lee. I have been told I am beautiful, I am tall, I have been told so many things I couldn’t decipher, woman staring at me, poking, yelling, smiling, men taking my picture, parents nudging their children forward with an English phrase, bold children. I have read signs I will never understand, made out a few new letters I do. I have avoided new things sometimes, sought out familiar things, shut myself away. I have gone out. I have swayed to the music made by people I will never meet again, tasted and smelled flavors delightfully beyond my previous catalogue of sensations. I have pointed to random words on menus, to pictures, to dishes being demolished by others. Looked at brushstrokes I will never see again, touched fabrics that won’t be mine, precious stones. No way to record or know them all. Grateful for knowing things I don’t know. Stunned dumb by the peppers, the flowers, the fruit, the light, the thousands of kindnesses I didn’t know to expect…