“I sit here before my computer, Amiguita, my altar on top of the monitor with the Virgen de Coatlalopeuh candle and copal incense burning. My companion, a wooden serpent staff with feathers, is to my right while I ponder the ways metaphor and symbol concretize the spirit and etherealize the body. 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.” ― Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Monday, September 16, 2013

I've much left to go; it's very dark in here.

Entropy, from the Greek root “en” (inside) and “trope” (transformation), in information theory, is a measure of uncertainty in a random variable. I know very much about very little, I think this might have to do with entropy. From what I understand (which is close to nothing), entropy has to do with properties of gradual decline in order, i.e. chaos and disorder.

Some (random variable) argue that in order for creation to take place, there must be a destruction of some sort, or rather, some sort of entropic transformation.

Today was a day of entropic expenditure. Energy was pulled from me in various ways. I was stretched thin and bloated to the point of exhaling "theories" on words and philosophy (the art of argument of what words mean and the reasoning therein). I shifted from one mode of thought to another, never fully developing the icebergs I mapped out to those asking for an outline.

poof! I uttered once and Pff! I scoffed another time.

I felt like throwing up; my body was sweating. I was hot and cool. I grew dizzy. I had trouble breathing as though I had a mouthful of cotton.

I made sense of all these things under Entropy; there is a change occurring, though I've yet to formulate an idea of why or how.

As though instinctually, the first thing I did when I arrived home was throw up. My body was asking for it. Since I had eaten very little all day, I found this strange because I reasoned that my body needed all the nutrients it could absorb.

I wish my mind could do the same: I mean throw up. Purge the impurities. But it all remains in the brain: deep memory.

All that stuff you try to forget and cannot formulate yet never going away and receding into memory banks that slowly blur into the background.

Somehow, I feel that this entropy is only the beginning.

The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry (Hemingway).

Indeed, there is a crack in everything, or you will crack sooner or later, and "that's how the light gets in" (Leonard Cohen)

I've much left to go; it's very dark in here. 

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