In the beginning there was translation. Without it there’s no expression, not even gene expression, no life. Even the untranslatable is vital for the process. And to splice one must first excise. Memory, with its trident of recall, imagination, and transformation is translation’s muse and taxonomy. Memory is sometimes unconscious cognition, other times absence. In an integrative age, grid and matrix rename the prongs, erect isomers or chiasms, employ catalog, entropy or the enzymatic for reproduction’s sake. Not all creation is equal. We’re not all butterflies. Meaning burns us as we burn it. Our predilection is replication and mimicry.

- Fady Joudah, In the Name of the Letter, the Spirit, and the Double Helix