“WHAT AM I,” then? Washed since childhood in the waves: milk, smells, stories,
sounds, emotions, nursery rhymes, substances, gestures, ideas, impressions, looks,
songs, and foods. What am I? I’m totally tied to places, sufferings, ancestors,
friends, loves, events, languages, memories, all kinds of things that obviously are
not me. Everything that attaches me to the world, all the links that comprise me, all
the forces that populate me – they don’t weave an identity, though I am encouraged
to wield one, but an existence: singular, common, living, and from which emerges -
in places, at certain moments - that being that says “I.” My feeling of inconsistency
is only the effect of this foolish belief in the permanence of the “I,” and the very slight
concern I give to what makes me.