I is a foreigner

Marvel Lake

Eu son unha forasteira, sempre unha forasteira. I am a foreigner, always foreign. Loito nunha escuridade funxíbel con toda outra escuridade. I struggle in a fungible and obscure darkness alongside every other kind of obscurity. Son unha forasteira con historia, con historias multiples, historias que nunca vivín. I am a foreigner with a history, with multiple histories, histories I never lived. Historias xenéticas, de xenética. Genetic histories, of genetics. Sempre sei que idioma uso. I always know what language I speak in. Imaxino sen imaxes, senón con temperaturas e luz e vagaridades que me pican no pel. I imagine without images, but with temperatures and light and wanderings that prickle and disturb my skin. Indescriptíbeis. Indescriptible. Postures with furniture. And I age, I am aging. Limits of the body and mind.

And the text. It is here before me, in front of me, the text. É e está. It is in itself, and it is sited in time/space. And me, awake. With coffee. Without glasses. Light. The form of the letters in front of me.

I observe. What does observe mean? Absorb? Multitudes of cells. Letters. I have observed alphabetic letters since I was a small child, perhaps from the age of two.  With just two years of life I attempted to observe these letters. Would letters move on their own? Are they not something else as well? Their silence mutes me too. Letters.

 What does the lettering of letters say?

Today, clearly, I am much older than two, I am aging, I feel it in my body. In the morning, I have another face, in fact. Another mouth. Other hands? No, I have the hands I have always had.

And the text. Before me. The text composed of alphabetic letters from somewhere else. From other light. This text enters into me. Before this text, the body has no limits, just porosities and blood, heat and proteins.

 What is a mind? What is human consciousness? 

And a text. Letters.

And a language? It’s not letters or lettering, a language or idiom is a “Felt Thing,” a sensible thing, sensed or touched with the eyes, or even made by the hands. Translated through them.