Octopodes

 

Enjoy yourselves. Take only what you need from it.

I once heard a French man in Mexico say that octopodes would become the dominant species on Earth after the demise of the human species. They are, he said, extremely intelligent, and they also posses eight arms –contrary to common belief, their appendixes are not tentacles, but actual arms. Octopodes will rule this world, he told a group of us –university professors–unless we stop using fossil fuels. Of course, everyone knows there’s not much a university professor can do about fossil fuels or anything else, so we paid him, he left, and that was the end of it. Octopodes are very intelligent.

They are also somewhat beautiful, and they taste good.

Ruthless as they are, humans have already started to figure out ways to interact with the possible new lords of the planet.

Happy New Year, my  beloved 4 readers!

Dead butterfly

¿Vives cerca de aquí?, le pregunto. No, me contesta, trabajo a unas calles de la estación. Lleva un libro pequeño en la mano. ¿Qué lees?, le pregunto. The coming insurrection, by the Invisible Committee, me contesta. Le pido que me cuente de qué trata su libro, y me responde que es un texto escrito por unos franceses que quieren acelerar el fin de los tiempos.

Parece ser que el mundo está a punto de colapsarse.

A fin de escapar del frío, entro a la estación del metro y tomo una fotografía.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Roland Barthes: “When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that they do not emerge, do not leave: they are anesthetized and fastened down, like butterflies”.

Stealing

A pause, before I continue uploading Polaroid pictures. I loved this Ex libris:

 

I found it at the Cabinet of the Solar Plexus. It’s a nice blog, you should check it out: http://dolorosa-reveries.blogspot.com/. The best part, at least for me: the toes, though it’s maybe because I’m writing a paper on fetishism and, everybody (i.e. Freud) knows that feet are the most popular fetishes ever.

Entre paréntesis

The photograph “represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter”.

 

That, there, that’s not me.

We’re all spectra. We’re all objects. What’s interesting, though, about Barthes’s words is the fact that they collapse mater and energy, body and soul, ghost and machine: the subject becomes object and spectrum at the same time. Like Einstein said, mater and energy are two sides of the same equation. It’s not quantum physics.

(Spanish version ahead; for English, go up)

Al final de cuentas, todos somos espectros. Se camina por el Lower East Side o la East Village y se es un fantasma; alrededor, otros fantasmas penan por la ciudad. Por otro lado, todos somos siempre objetos, cuerpos que provocan placer, horror, asco, interés, indiferencia. Pero es en el instante en que otros ojos me miran cuando me doy cuenta de mí mismo, cuando abandono la ilusión de ser sujeto, ser quien mira y estudia y repudia o desea a los demás, y me doy cuenta de que soy un cuerpo, un objeto, un fantasma que sólo sale de su marasmo cuando es observado. Ese instante es el clic de la cámara, la mirada furtiva entre la multitud, la sonrisa a través de las ventanas del metro. En ese instante la muerte se acerca (como entre paréntesis).