Sarape-wrapped (wallflower) in space
Ilwikanemíni — I
— (versión en Español aquí) —
I’d like to say I woke up in a space suit or a capsule, alarms blaring and broken screens blinking, all the cinematic markers of the distressing escape scene in a space opera.
It would have been easier, it would have made much more sense for you and also for me.
But this is not how space works, at least not ‘my space’.
Whilst in stasis, I only caught fleeting glimpses of my surroundings. As a result, it took me a while to parse and begin to comprehend and navigate my environment and determine my kind of location. Making sense of it all required patience, careful observation and increasing my ability to gently expand those brief windows of awareness.
As I also was here and simultaneously somewhere else, many somewhere elses, the puzzle was very challenging to solve. There were so many details that I didn’t even remember seeing until the umpteenth time when they were shoved in my face, forcing me to address them.
Eventually, I managed to grapple that my protective halo and I were not only in space but falling, not floating. A more alarming observation was that the accelerated speed of my fall intensified my brain fog.
I sensed it wouldn’t take long for the halo, that organic shield that nurtured and safeguarded me in space, to become incandescent. Space debris entering the atmosphere.
Somewhere else in some other timeline, I listen to Slavoj Zizek’s most recent Substack piece (I chuckle when his name is pronounced Slay-votsch Zai-zek by the AI reader) where he mentions ’The Three-Body Problem’ story whilst discussing the ecological-economical chaos we are heading towards.
I haven’t read the book, although I watched the Netflix show. Does that count? (The TV series kept me engaged enough, though I smirked at the propaganda: the ludicrous idea of Western technology as the only one capable of reaching for the stars and establishing interplanetary communication. [BTW, I express this not to validate the “ancient aliens” racist conspiracies but to invite curiosity and question materialism and the scientific method as the only way to go about this.]
The ‘3 body problem’ show is OK. It’s OK just as ’Arrival’ is OK. [‘Arrival’ felt fabulous when I first watched it. Now it’s just OK. The idea of a Global North mayosapien woman as the one cracking the code began to feel ignorant, naive and silly as soon as I dabbled in learning Nahuatl. Still, the film is OK because I credit the film with incepting a possibility, a different way of perceiving and expressing a reality. I often recommend it to my frielatives learning Nahuatl as it illustrates the type of shift I believe is needed to foster a relationship with that language.])
I orbit around many countries, truths, worlds, objects, and beings. Many pulling bodies. What is the rhythm there? (for sure, this makes the three-body problem laughable).
I get handed constraint satisfaction problems to solve, infinite-size sudokus, one after the other. Sometimes, I even have to tackle a constrained-optimization problem. But I am not alone in my struggle. So many face life without buffers and solve similar survival-related problems every day.
I survive, like many others do, receiving limited or no assistance from the sprawl that cages us. We don’t have the luxury of faking it until we make it. Instead, we somehow make it through each day.
I keep being alive. I keep living this little life of mine (really little, in some senses, unlike this one). One day, today, is all I can keep my attention on.
It’s not a matter of having a choice. I wake up because the spark is not out. Again, I feel that chaos and the rhythm calling me to sync up with it. I go on. I am alive for one more day.
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