‘We Are Ourselves and Each Other’
An excerpt from ‘Most Famous Short Film of All Time’
My novel, Most Famous Short Film of All Time, will be released in two weeks. It’s fabulously difficult to explain, so here’s a quick excerpt of a non-narrative part that reads more like what’s called “creative nonfiction.”
From a Section called ‘Flyleaf — Epcistemology and Cistalgia’
Ch’ixi
The Aymara word “ch’ixi” refers to “un color producto de la yuxtaposición, en pequeños puntos o manchas, de dos colores opuestos o contrastados: el blanco y el negro, el rojo y el verde,” explains Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. The juxtaposition of dots of opposing colors, like white and black, like red and green, produces another color. It’s not a full mix, not an equilibrium. This is the Aymara idea of something that simultaneously is and isn’t — “la idea aymara de algo que es y no es a la vez, es decir, a la lógica del tercero incluido” — according to the logic of the included middle.
Coincidentia oppositorum
Nicholas of Cusa saw how opposites come together in the idea of a supreme being. He called it “coincidentia oppositorum.” Mircea Eliade used the term to describe mythic narratives that let us have it both ways: the boss is…