Fit to Inspire

Gloria Anzaldua, from Borderlands/La Frontera


"It must be a vestige of a proximity sense that’s lain dormant from long-ago times. Fear develops the proximity sense of la facultad. But there is a deeper sensing that is another aspect of this faculty.It is anything that breaks into one’s everyday mode of perception, that causes a break in one’s defenses and resistance, anything that takes one from one’s habitual grounding, causes the depths to open up, causes a shift in perception. This shift in perception deepens the way we see concrete objects and people; the senses become so acute and piercing that we can see through things, view events in depth, a piercing that reaches the underworld (the realm of the soul.) As we plunge vertically, the break with its accompanying new seeing, makes us pay attention to the soul, and we are thus carried into awareness-and experiencing of soul(Self.)

We lose something in this mode of initiation, something is taken from us: our innocence, our unknowing ways, our safe and easy ignorance. There is a prejudice and fear of the dark, chthonic(underworld), materials such as depression, illness, death, and the violations that can bring on this break.

Confronting anything that tears the fabric of our everyday

mode of consciousness and thrusts us into a less literal and more psychic sense of reality increases awareness and la facultad." -GLORIA ANZALDUA

From Borderlands/La Frontera.