I’m suspicious of certainty. 

 

So often it can feel like little in this world is worthy of our confidence. Show me an indisputable fact. Prove destiny. Convince me. How perilous, then, to claim truth when everything—our hearts, our minds, our bodies, this earth—is subject to change.

 

Certainty is a conviction in our core, a decision in our mind, a settling of our nerves. It replaces doubt with assuredness. It fixes our gaze. Certainty asserts reliability in and on the truth. In a way, it ends the conversation. 

 

The work gathered in this issue uncovers the rhizomatic structure of certainty. These words and images suggest a simultaneous acceptance and rejection of perceived reality. They lay bare the effort required to engage with truth. They take time—because it seems as though some aspect of certainty is jessed to time itself—to interrogate, reorder, admit, deny, declare, and regenerate. 

 

I am certain of two things: the sun rises each morning and spring will come again. I am hesitant to say more. Where does your certainty lie? Is it rooted in your gut? Does it motivate your courage? Can you hold it in your hands? Are you sure? Unlearning is its own exercise in truth. Come closer. Peer over the edge. Anything is possible when you stand on the brink of certainty.

​

—Nina Lohman