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At the End of a Long Drive


Shreesh and Neena Taskar

We didn't make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm - go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.


So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...

Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned

Apr 27th, 2009 by

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Contemplating Koi

To a certain extent this post assumes familiarity with the Borges’ short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, which you can find here.

The freeways around Buenos Aires form a vast labyrinth with snaking asphalt paths. “Take that exit. No that one, THAT exit!” “Fuck! We almost got creamed by that bus, you’re going to get us killed!” “Shit! Is this where we’re supposed to be?” “We’re lost. Where the fuck are we going?” “I don’t know. According to the GPS we’re right where we’re supposed to be.” “Okay, we’re on Pasco. And there’s Moreno.” “Here it is. WTF. Where are we?“

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the concurrence of a mirror and an encyclopaedia.
-Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

GPS: Fail. We were to meet Luis Alvarez at Pasco 261, cross street Moreno. That is exactly where we were, but it looked like a rough neighborhood with low-slung buildings. As it happens in Argentina, we were immediately surrounded by friendly and helpful people, who after their initial empuzzlement on finding us in Ramos Mejía, soon pointed us in the right direction. Several days later Luis called to say: “I was just reviewing Borges’ ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, and did you know that the mirror that led to the discovery of Uqbar was located in Ramos Mejía?” Sometimes the universe conspires to show us strange things – this time it had led us to the starting point for my favorite short story.

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Zodiaco – 1953, Xul Solar.

The story is rooted in the philosophy of George Berkeley, that objects are known by our perception of them. In fact Berkeley goes so far to say that that is the only way we know objects, so if our perception of the object changes, it changes the object itself. So that “cute colorful wiggly thing” drastically changes to “Oh shit, snake!” when it chews on your tent mate and leaves him writhing with agony. Borges cleverly keeps introducing unusual objects and concepts until Tlön is set to overwhelm Earth by displacing all perceptions about it.

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4 Responses to “Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned”

  1. Fred says:
    April 28, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Creating language tokins! What fun! Here is one of mine: “airlinehatred”.

  2. unawoken says:
    May 4, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Very interesting post! I will read this a few times

  3. Shreesh says:
    May 5, 2009 at 5:34 am

    @Fred
    Its been a long time since I have designed a language; I feel it is time to do so again. I don’t think I would include that token – maybe “RagePreto” 🙂

  4. Isense says:
    January 2, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    The mere classification and objectivity bounds ur mindset of tlom back to the sophism of earthly concepts. Borges was clearly a literary genius inspiring modern day Chris Nolan to produce such movies such as inception and memento. Cheers!

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