Memento

“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 giving birth to itself through my body. It is this learning to live with la Coatlicue tht transforms living in the Borderlands from a nightmare into a numinous experience. It is always a path/state to something else. (73)

“She writes while other people sleep. Something is trying to come out. She fights the words, pushes them down, down, a woman with morning sickness in the middle of the night. How much easier it would be to carry a baby for nine months and then expel it permanently. These continuous multiple pregnancies are going to kill her. She is the battlefield for the pitched fight between the inner image and the words trying to recreate it. La musa bruja has no manners. Doesn’t she know, nights are for sleeping?” (73-74)

“The Writing is my whole life, it is my obsession. This vampire which is my talent does not suffer other suitors. Daily I court it, offer my neck to its teeth. This is the sacrifice that the act of creation requires, a blood sacrifice. For only through the body, through the pulling of flesh, can the human soul be transformed. And for images, words, stories to have this transformative power, they must arise from the human body – flesh and bone – and from the Earth’s body – stone, sky, liquid, soil. This work, these images, piercing tongue or ear lobes with cactus needle, are my offerings, are my Aztecan blood sacrifices.” (75)

Gloria Anzaldua - Borderlands/La Frontera