‘We Are Ourselves and Each Other’

An excerpt from ‘Most Famous Short Film of All Time’

Detail from the book cover. Artist: Cel La Flaca

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…