The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border

This part begins with a brief introduction to the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who toward the end of his life after World War II wrote that the psyche of humanity was now separated between good and evil, and that everyone now suspected that the people around them were capable of kindness and horror. Governments, which he referred to as “the mass State” (163), were not interested in fostering goodwill and understanding between citizens, and this would lead us to continue to designate groups as “others,” leading to further war and conflict. Jung’s psychoanalytic theory focused on the dissociations between good and evil selves, as well as the conscious and unconscious mind, to have a better, more complete understanding of the whole person. Dreams could then be used to navigate a person’s unconscious impulses. He explicitly writes that dreaming of creatures like wolves symbolizes “the animal impulses of the unconscious” (165), elaborating to say, “You would like to split it off, you experience it as something alien—but it just becomes all the more dangerous. The urge of what had been split off to unite with you becomes all the stronger” (165).

Cantú’s personal narrative resumes early one morning as he opens the coffee counter at the shop where he works as he pursues his MFA in writing.