If I do not attend classes, I will fail. I do not want to fail. I have never been a success at anything in particular, but I have never been a failure, either. My classes ground me, give me something to do. More than that: they suggest a truth. I am twenty-three, at a time in my life when truth seems elusive but necessary. What is knowledge? Socrates wants to know. But I’m more interested in truth. My favourite class is Introduction to Scottish Literature. The words that the professor reads out loud fill me with longing, a need that cannot be satisfied. Words create places, and places create words. Perhaps I can find words, create a place. What place? Already I am asking the wrong question. I need to start from the beginning. What is knowledge? What are words? If I don’t attend classes I will fail, and if I fail I will never find the words to invent my place—not a place, really, but my own personal epistemology, the answer to the age-old question Socrates never quite resolves. But I am failing. It is only possible to answer Socrates’ question through reference, metaphor, example. This, according to my professor and Plato, is no answer at all.
