Utopia and catastrophe

Utopia and CatastropheBR

#academic, #borges, #exclusion

‘I dreamed I was awakening from another dream -an uproar of chaos and cataclysms- into an unrecognizable room. Day was dawning: light suffused the room, outlining the foot of the wrought-iron bed, the upright chair, the closed door and windows, the bare table. I thought fearfully, “Where am I?” and I realized I didn’t know. I thought, “Who am I?” and I couldn’t recognize myself. My fear grew. I thought: This desolate awakening is in Hell, this eternal vigil will be my destiny. Then I really woke up, trembling.’

Jorge Luis Borges: The Duration of Hell (1929)

While catastrophe is a threshold; a line existing of minimum circumstances, below which existence becomes unbearable, utopia is the ideal you can never grasp, your constant upwards aim and direction, in an attempt to reach perfection. Why is only the negative polar reachable in its full form? Nothing can be perfect, but nothing can be totally imperfect either. Imperfections’ entirety includes perfection too, as truth includes lies in itself. The Bermuda Triangle, between catastrophe’s bottom line and utopia’s highpoint, is our only certainty, the space we exist in. ‘Beyond the episodic, the present, the circumstantial we are nobodies’ (Borges). Beyond our triangle only before and after exist, immaterial thoughts. If you were to escape the triangle, would you end up in an infinite space, a nothingness, and would that be a catastrophe?

Feeling excluded can feel liberating, as you don’t have to care about remaining inside. Though, being excluded is catastrophic when you measure its consequences. To lose this longing of mind-numbing certainty is a risk in itself. In letting go of the grip, falling turns into weightlessness. Only the body

Cáfolata, Budapest: Gondolat, 1987 Újabb Az Idő Története, Örökkévalóság Az Borges, Jorge Luis. Rolls Frakció. Szabad Vagyok. Péter, Dorozsmai; András, Trunkos; Lajos, Boros; András, Trunkos, Budapest, 1981 remains without the web it’s entangled in. This vessel is your total domain where the two polars are ecstasy and annihilation. These comprehensible features restrain and drive you. ‘I’m free! Says the monkey to the cage, -I’m not! Replies the cage. -I’m locked around these monkeys!’ (Frakció) When you have gotten used to falling, you have learnt how to fly. This is the hardest part.

Those glances looking down on you. The fear of indignity which is present in all fears. When you don’t fit in you seem like a failure. There is a difference in the illusion of outsiderness. Like the extremity of choosing something just because you know it represents the opposite you reject. It’s only valid when, regardless of the context, you feel it is true, when it’s an instinctual reaction. Everything else is itself your choice, while if it’s a response the line between it is not clear. When figuring out what you stand for, the first step is to find out what you say no to. By ruling out, you voluntarily relate. ‘View reality as an endless set of situations which mirror each other’ (Sontag). These constantly changing reflections are not there to be ordered, but to be navigated through. See it as a sequence of decisions, not a premeditated strategy. The strategy is your awareness of making these decisions. Once you’re conscious you’re liberated, even in catastrophic circumstances. That gives back full dignity to the victim and overrides the perpetrator. This, however, is easier to understand in theory than through experience. So why should I write when I can live too?