Ithaca

“I write the myths in me, the myths I am, the myths I want to become.”
In a world full of absurd repetitions, where each life reflects the life and the search of the other, in a world governed by corruption, superficiality and everything that defers our dreams, I do need a memento of why I do what I feel, of what I have to do, of what I try to mold through my insanity and wildness.
“Writing produces anxiety. Looking inside myself and my experience, looking at my conflicts, engenders anxiety in me. Being a writer feels very much like being a Chicana, or being queer – a lot of squirming, coming up against all sorts of walls. Or its opposite: nothing defined or definite, a boundless, floating state of limbo where I kick my heels, brood percolate, hibernate and wait for something to happen.” (72)
“When I write it feels like I’m carving bone. It feels like I’m creating my own face, my own heart – a Nathuatl concept. My soul makes itself through the creative act. It is constantly remarking and…

Am mers mereu pe principiul de a privi întregul, nu o felie, nu o față, nu o simplă perspectivă. Nu cred că trebuie să fim cu toții extrem de empatici, așa cum nu cred că trebuie să cădem pradă unui egoism complet. A ne iubi pe noi înșine nu înseamnă a ne opri de a-l vedea pe celălalt. Prea multă empatie strică propriei persoane, așa cum mult prea mult egoism devine psihopatie.
Nu știu încontro ne îndreptăm. Nu știu ce lume ar rămâne moștenire unui viitor copil. Ne considerăm specia superioară, când unele animale ne arată uneori ce înseamnă a fi uman.
Nu vorbesc de empatie, de morală, de egoism, de competențe și incompetențe, de pile și de realizări, de inteligență sau de prostie, ci de simpla calitate de a fi om. Mergem mai departe, fără remușcări, când alții se bat, când cineva este tâlhărit în fața noastră, când cineva strigă după ajutor, când cineva cade în spatele sau în fața noastră, când oameni – cunoscuți sau nu – se îneacă în fața noastră, iar noi stăm. Dăm la o parte oameni c…

“Educated or not, the onus is still on woman to be a wife/mother – only the nun can escape motherhood. Women are made to feel total failures if they don’t marry and have children.”  (Gloria Anzaldua)
Non serviam. Some of us choose to be our own creations, what we make ourselves in the end. We rebel from the beginning. In front of families, religions, nations. We run away from the stories encrusted in our skins in childhoods. We abandon that cruel, meaningless God, with which we have been raised and listen to our voice within. To reason. We search for our own language, playing with words, searching. We search for our own people, our own families, despite our misanthropy and our inheritance of lack of trust. Because this is what we have inherited. And even in our wilderness, our wild nature, we are haunted by our past – how couldn’t we, living, growing so much under so powerful myths? No matter how many myths we deconstruct, no matter how up we go, how many theses we write, no matter ho…

Because I have always preferred wilderness to civilization.

We get born. We grew up in more or less dysfunctional families, and we start searching for our own families, promising we would not repeat the mistakes of our parents. Or, on the contrary, we fully embrace them. Somewhere, we start working, becoming so workaholics that we can’t remember when or how we started this, and since when work is the only thing we really have. We read books, we find a job that suits us, we write PhD.s, ignoring all our social life for something we are not quite sure why we’re doing (and we'll probably end in bankruptcy), we work too many hours, we search for connections in this absurd, meaningless world, although we have been fully aware from the beginning how lonely we are. We work. Swallowing all our words that we want so desperately to scream. We work. Swallowing all the feelings. We work. Swallowing all we want to say if someone asked us how we really feel. Work on our jobs, on our theses, if we still have time, even on our relationships. We work so mu…

Call it the Wild West, Humanity, the human being, or simply Life.  
"There was a lull in the dancing and a second fiddler took the stage and the two plucked their strings and turned the little hardwood pegs until they were satisfied. Many among the dancers were staggering drunk through the room and some had rid themselves of shirts and jackets and stood barechested and sweating even though the room was cold enough to cloud their breath. An enormous whore stood clapping her hands at the bandstand and calling drunkenly for the music. She wore nothing but a pair of men's drawers and some of her sisters were likewise clad in what appeared to be trophies - hats or pantaloons or blue twill cavalry jackets. As the music sawed up there was a lively cry from all and a caller stood to the front and called out the dance and the dancers stomped and hooted and lurched against one another. 
And they are dancing, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideou…