LatinosUSA

“At 1:30 she wants to rent a car and go for a drive through the Bois. He only thinks about urinating. “I love you… I adore you… —he says” (p. 133, Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer).

Last night in one of my dreams, I kept meticulously cleaning an old Spanish railway carriage that was in motion.

Do we periodically have this need to control our destiny?

This vital journey that we all undertake appears again and again among us humans. Unlike dogs or robots, we understand that the world is in turmoil, and this awareness sometimes tortures us, at other times gratifies us. Balance is key. But some seem to rest better on one side or the other. Henry Miller’s writing, so raw and real than we think, reveals this strange tangle we carry within us.

But I must say that I chose the books to write the quote from randomly. I go to the personal library on the side of the building leading up to the terrace stairs and spend a few seconds looking for the author who will be our companion (you and me) that week. And then the preceding sentence also arises by chance.

And that’s what we’re talking about: Chance. Google’s AI says, «it’s the occurrence of events that cannot be predicted with certainty and that lack an intentional or apparent cause.» And where does the word come from?

«Its origin comes from the Arabic az-zahr (orange blossom), which was carved on one of the faces of Arabic dice. From there it came to refer to dice games and to luck or chance» (ibid., AI). We are all increasingly affected by this random composition that has been present since the beginning of time and which, with algorithms, we have now made the reference point for our behavior. That’s why my obsession in the dream, meticulously cleaning the moving train car, was a way of mastering the cycle of probabilities.

But, it’s impossible to do so. Does that mean that in the dream I was resisting being trapped by the laws that will govern the coming years?

Yes. As Miller’s story says, she wanted to rent a car and urinate. And with so many rotations, sometimes chance dominates us.

Or… not?