The I resaliend The other day I saw my front neighbor washing the windows of her apartment. I wonder what motivated her to make such a task. If it was the quality of the view, her Sunday housework or she was simply bored. All of the three answers were answers, none of them was right or wrong. She wanted to do what she wanted to do and sometimes there is no reason, you just do it. Sometimes you don’t think, you just do. Impulses, I guess is called. You push yourself against the boredom, against the guilt of nonproductivity, against the dust, against stillness. You drive yourself in search of a reason to be. Even now if you stay outside static, resting or even just waiting, you get a sanction. Pressures come from external forces in all kinds of forms to remember you that you can not stay still, that you need to justify your existence by all means. The government asked to stay away from others, to not kiss, to not shake hands, to not get closer. You can not let people in your house, you have to reduce to go outside. Restrict and separate what should be whole. My body is defined by its skin, that I must wash 5 times a day. My promenades are mapped by my phone which is spied by the government. My mind is finite to the time that I am living, not further in the future because it is uncertain. And isn’t it so amazing? That suddenly future is no longer what I will but what I am allowed to will. As if future had become a right. In this case, I have the right to the future. I have the right to move, I have the right to want, I have the right to wish, I have the right to have, I have the right to live. When I say I mean Us. We all living beings have the right to move, We all have the right to want, We all have the right to wish, We all have the right to have, We all have the right to live, We all have the right of a future. After all, we are here related one to each other in this phenomenon so-called live and it’s because we living, we write, we right. All these concepts once free now held hostage by fear in our imaginary, by insecurities and our lack of power to move, to wish, to want, to have, to think. As if we had to prove ourselves of our ownership. Nevertheless, the future is not a price, either a fiction or a goal, but a fact. Because it is here all the time, because is due to us, because is what we should. But what should we due? Live. Life is due to us but what is that it’s exactly due to us? What is this future that is dues to us? What is future, if it’s not outside of us, but an idea? What is an idea but a plan? What is the future but the condition of the present? And what is present but existence? And what is existence but stilling, moving, willing, wanting, owning, living, thinking? We know it, is a fact, the future is about to come. We have thought about it, we have written about it, we have dreamt about it. We know it exists. Our multiple sensors, such as sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste, keep us informed that future is inside of us. The reason by which I do things is because they live in tomorrow, they will come back to me, they are data. Facts that notify the situation about something, in particular, reality. My neighbor decided to clean her windows, not because she was bored, or because it was a Sunday housework or because the view was dusty but because she needed to own her reality. She needed to converse with her environment, move in her surrounding, think the dispositions of her objects, talk to her plants because she cares for them, prepare dishes because she has vital needs, take showers because her body urge tidiness, exercise because her body needs motion. She performs her life at her scale. No bigger, no smaller. She holds her life because she is the size of her life.
And she is the size of her life, but what is the size of Life? What is the size of our Life as a We? Life is as infinite as it is finite. The idea of life is beyond ages, is out of our control, is unmanageable, is bigger than we think it is, that’s why is as finite as it’s infinite. But our singular lives are no bigger than they are, our lives are manageable, our lives are under our control, our lives are delimited by the factor of time. By this I mean, the factor of our body, the time it has, that we don’t even know but that we can make last as much as it could. However, it has been proved that We, individually as collectively, do not know how to rule Life and our life. Climate change is the first proof of it, inequalities are the proof of it, diseases are the proof of it, fear is the proof of it, language is the proof of it. We have been separated from our bodies an added them to a new function, that to serve to a bigger something. The body as an infinite product of its function to produce life. But when it is not a matter of body but I. Where does the I lie in all this? In which layer lays the I when it’s a matter of the collective sake? Where does my responsibility lie when it comes to my life towards Life? What leads me to see my friends is no longer the activities that surrounded us or the things that we could do, but the main reason why I want to see my friends is that I want to see them for who they are. I want to converse with them, I want to walk with them, I want to feel alive with them, I want to cherish their existence as they cherish mine. Reciprocate each other’s presence by appreciating the moment that we spend outside our isolation. Keep our reality actualized and ground ourselves to each other because the possibility to make new encounters seam unattainable now that we are enclosed1. The words tell it by themselves, en+close which means, “to make it inaccessible, become shut, to put an end, bring to an end the parts of”. Same for isolation, “to set or place apart, to detach so as to make alone, made into an island” and same for confinement, “set bounds”. It all begins with us, from the microlevel, which means, the cells, the blood, the organs, the skin, our body to the macrolevel, which means, our daily lives, our actions, our relations, our decisions when it comes to external factors (traveling, social, familial…). Even if the internet is there to give us a sense of community, the community is what is around us, more to say in the level that we can sense. And if this was a warning not to get wider but to get closer? Even more closer. Globalization as we know it has as advantages as disadvantages, we live in the era of both. Global which means that is universal, that is the whole globe, but I am not the size of the whole globe, my life is the size of what I can reach, not from my spirit, but my body. To clean the window, my neighbor used a stick and a rag. She could not have reached the edges of the windows if she only has had used the lengths of her arms. She transformed herself into this bigger being capable to reach bigger surfaces, longer distances. As in globalization, where we can do anything, because we have the means to get anywhere. How comfortable it is to feel that you can reach things that you could have never imagined before? We can go everywhere and even before we could have gone everywhere, but now we can go faster. Things are predisposed for us to get to them, to do the unimaginable, the unmanageable, the infinite possibilities. As if we had this illusion that we could control Life in some way. We can do everything we want, we are in control of our life, aren’t we? And here is, where the tricky part comes. All the things that we thought we could do, now come back to us as a possibility of power. As if in the beginning we didn’t have any, but the truth is and as crazy it might sound, we always could. We were always capable of doing things since the beginning, now we realize we can do it. Governments adapted the system in a few days, now our lives are reduced to what they are and we just realize that we could do it. Everything was a stake, we had to do it. And if this is a proof of change then we must adapt and reset. 1
Do we really trust internet, nowadays?
I change my clothes every day and even if every day I am the same, I don’t feel the same. Skin has fallen in my bed, I’ve lost hairs, I’ve peed during the night, this morning I eat breakfast and I shitted. I am changing every day but some changes are not seen as obvious. I started exercising a week ago and I still haven’t seen changes. Matter take time to take form, it takes time, as plants take time to grow, as the light takes time to reach Earth, as the Moon takes time to complete its cycles. Living beings need time to be, to understand what are they, what they need and therefore what they want. The other day I could to go back home. The notes I’ve once put on the walls had felt, the ambiance was cold, the mattress was rigid. I felt soulless in my room so I started to rearrange the shelves, my clothes, my books, I tidy some papers and I lay on my bed for a while. Since I’m now living at work, going back to my house felt like meeting again the reasons why I chose to have this job. I left a cleaner room behind me and a fulled soul. I was inhabiting again my body, my mind, my soul, like if I was back into the essence of myself as if I was owning my reality again. Yet the essence of myself is resumed to my job, my function as an assistant and if we lived in a civilization detached from its systems, this job would have never existed as such. This job would have be a natural reflex to help another person out. Anyhow the only one to blame for this situation is capitalism and how it transforms what is natural in something artificial, desirable and profitable. I blame this system for the inequality that creates, I know that nobody is to blame because of the circumstances of my job by the capitalist mindset, where I also find myself in. And I say I find myself in because I end up being in it. That’s the bias you take when you want to be part of the XXI Century, to live in the city, to access electricity, to have a vow, to possess, to be close, to have a life at a scale you can manage. Or at least believe you can manage. When I say I ended up here I mean, I was brought here. My mom took me here to access education, sanity, profession, to have a family. Taken by the belief that this was the best for me. It feels strange to find ourselves in places we don’t know exactly what we are doing in, precisely because this is not the world we want. After all, this is not the world we wish, because this is not the world we have or will. (And I say We because I suppose you also have struggles accepting what was have been prevailed and what might will come, or just accept thigns has there are because we have a new approach to it) Existential quests and deep doubts about life come inert in ourselves. Who Am I? Where I am? Where I am going? What is the purpose of life? Am I alone? Maybe I am myself, maybe I am on a planet called Earth, that some call Pachamama or Gaia or X, maybe I am going to die, maybe I just exist, maybe I am not alone but another living being among many living beings in this piece of rock floating in space. All of these answers are answers, none of them are the rights or wrongs. I am just doing what I am best for, think. That’s what human beings do, ask questions, seek answers, create problems and solve them. At this moment that I am asked to go to the essentiality of my needs, I ask myself, what I need? Who am I? And Where am I? Where am I going? I think about my future and I don’t have answers to it because the problem is bigger than me. The situation turned in a way that I can not even think to have a future because it not depends on me but on all. I can not even think because I already have an answer, stay home. Stay where your body can be silent while others can solve the problem for you. We have created such a big problem that we can not even seize it. And this presumption is false because we do know how to solve it. We are just too comfortable not asking questions, not seeking answers, not creating problems, and not solving them because they are not at our reachable scale and because others will do it for us.
My neighbor thought about the stick and the rag to clean her windows. It was the quickest and simplest solution she had at reach. But when it comes to problems that involve all of us and we can’t deal with that we can not see them because it’s beyond our attainable reality, and then what? What is our reality when we can not even go outside to see it? When we can not discuss it? When we can not do something about it? When we are scared of doing something about it? I have issues with authority, I don’t like to be told what to do, I feel powerless over life, I’m slowly learning how to say no. I am learning how to ask for what I need and articulate what I want. Capitalism comes as if I could have plenty of possibilities but I don’t, even if you could get out of consumerism and productivity, capital per se, I would have to defend my existence in the territory whereas with papers or identities or attestations that sustain my reality but when my reality doesn’t fit with what has been stated? When my reality is not yours, will that mean I am insane? We have got to this point where I have to substantiate my existence in words I don’t even recognize. There are no words to express my existence. Even the sentence “I am”, I am provoking a singularity in the point of the i, because is just a line and to differentiate it from another line we have to put a point. To know when a sentence is finish we have to put a point. To end something with have to put a point to it. IIIlllliiillIIIiIIIIIIIIIIiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllIIIIlllllllllllliiiiiiIIIIIIllllllllllliliiiliIIliiilIIiiilllIIllliiilIIIliiiiIlIIIi The title of this essay is The I resaliend by which resaliend means: First, in french, the verb resilier which means “Terminate a contract, an agreement either by mutual agreement, or, for the successive contract, by the will of only one of the parties, using a clause which provided for this termination.”/“Abandon or renounce to something”. Second, in english, the adjective resilient “able to quickly return to its usual shape after being bent, stretched, or pressed”/“able to improve quickly after being hurt or being ill”. Third, in english, the adjective salient “leaping, skipping” “the "starting point" of anything”. The d at the end because is a voiced alveolar occlusive consonant that need airs from the lungs to be pushed to the mouth and finish by the teeth like it was cut. Derivations: Resaliendo from Spanish verb re+salir which means re- “back to the original place; again, anew, once more” “Undoing” “to turn” and salir “to go out away from someone or something, for a short time or permanently” Rest+alien+d from english verb rest which means “to (cause someone or something to) stop doing a particular activity or stop being active for a period of time in order to relax and get back your strength” and alien which means “strange, foreign” “of or belonging to another”.
Stop being strangers to yourselves Invent words that are not in the dictionary Share them with your community Put a point to the things you don’t need anymore Get out of I and get back to your body home is missing you ·