what can I give you then
I can't take your pain
or even sit with it an hour
can't unmake years of unknown sorrow
or a lifetime of small disappointments
your accumulating years of not-enough
and quiet desperation
I can't make you better
you or the belabored world
but can I offer a few images to imagine
some small gifts of the road
should they lift your spirit
or raise your eyes to something more
and o there is something more
outside the plastic and the package they have sold you
outside the trauma and the thousand lies they told you
outside the media and all mediators unneeded
so many many paths to freedom
as many ways as there are humans
as many doors as there are moments
and here are just a few of mine
that opened the real
re-membered to belonging
broke me into beauty
and counted to One
sunbright clearing sung with dragonflies and hummingbirds
Colorado breathed from its blinding crystal summit
lightning crash and the bliss of safety stolen then returned
bear elk and owl shiver reason's edges as they pass
last weary roadbend opens onto to ocean
stranger's kind word at the farthest point from home
the dream is a map of the road is protection
those with the least give the wealth of their welcome to you
stories passed over pinon fire on a starry mesa
rain breaking midnight with tin roof song
the clarity of light seen through hunger
the vibrance of green after drought
baby smiles you message from the infinite: you are perfectly accepted
homeless man calls you angel and pulls back the veil
priest at the altar laughs spontaneous, good-humored, at his own mistake
silent room of silver-haireds in meditation bends and bursts on a wave of laughter irresistible
carrots that still taste of earth and peaches still of sunshine
dirt beneath your fingernails
endorphin ache of giving more than all to the dance
blessed imperfection of the thing you built by hand
one bird startling skyward out of cedar spiral
dreamtime welcome to your homeground and community's embrace
dawn over deep water as sky sings your secret name
recognition returning your tribe after so long apart
this is not all there is
this is suffering and this is love
it gets worse and it gets better yet
there is more
there is more
there is more...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
better
It's the sitting area outside a clinic, inside UNM hospital. I'm waiting for a door to open and somebody to call my name. And trying to ignore the everpresent TV just overhead, in the meantime. Or, failing that, to be grateful for the reminder, for the moment of perspective: few things like a public waiting room -- at any institution, really -- explain as well why so much of humankind is operating at the level that it is. The observations of the level of physical and emotional survival of so many are an invaluable insight. As are the inventories of what 'the masses' are given -- their diet of food, medicine, and mainstream media, to name a few -- with which to nourish body and soul. What they're given, and what they continue to accept.
I'm trying not to judge here. Really. Trying not to think in terms of motives or other things that I can't actually know about people. Just to explain, or at best to empathize. To imagine how my mind would function, if consistently exposed to the tangible and intangible mind-altering drug that is commercial television. To say nothing of the commercials themselves. After so many years of having been with decreasing frequency in its company, I'm just nothing but startled at what comes out of that little box. I truly can't believe that anybody ever thought of this stuff. Much less that others would choose to watch it, for entertainment. For any purpose not forced on them.
The program on right now involves a short thin woman asking a tall, slightly overweight woman how to shop for healthy groceries, while "staying on budget". They walk around a florescent-lit supermarket, pushing a loaded shopping cart down aisles as they talk. "What should we look for, if we want to be sure we're eating healthy?" asks the short woman. The taller expert advises scanning the labels of these many plastic-wrapped objects for the words 'organic', 'all-natural' or 'whole-grain'. Although, she points out, "'natural' means something different to every company, and is not regulated by the government like 'organic' is..." That's for sure -- "natural" is one of those words that should only appear in the public sphere surrounded by bold-face quotation marks. But, what's this? We need written directions, key-word-recognition, to inform us what foods nurture us? I know not everyone got the benefit of the high-intensity whole-foods experiment that my family subjected itself to when I was a kid (produce we planted, weeded, picked, washed ourselves; super-density bread that began with grinding wheat kernels in a food processor), but...really? Do we not come with any more help from our own operating systems? Is this what a lifetime of choosing one plastic bag over another does to the powers of discernment?
The expert is pointing out another budget strategy: using coupons that are good for all the items of a certain brand to get a more expensive jar of 'organic' tomato sauce, for example, for the price of the conventional. "It is NOT unethical", she assures her companion, "to use these coupons for the organic product." What a relief, that we're allowed to raise our sights just a little without compromising our consumer values. Just don't mention going for any ideals here: this is daytime TV...
We break for commercials. I almost laugh out loud when I see that even the name of the show is a relative term: "Better". We can't possibly see our benumbed collective way to "Ideal" or "Real" or "Best". Only to some middle-ground plateau between our physical and intellectual poverty, and what (some of us believe) we were created to be.
Can't bear to see the commercials. Nothing in the reality I understand moves that fast, or is that garish. I glance around the room. Of the 13 people waiting, 7 have heads bowed, communing with a faraway someone through texting. A young couple is arguing, in painfully honest terms, over all the ways each has wounded the other and whether or not they can forgive. They sit barely making eye contact, separated by two empty chairs, but the tension that pulls them toward each other is palpable. Two women in the room have young daughters with them; one mother gazes into the crystal display of her phone while her girl plays with an electronic talking toy. The other is wonderfully engaged with her one-or-two-year-old, talking, gesturing, responding to the little one's happy incoherent sounds. Against the far wall, a man and woman in army drab and boots sit side by side, wearing the same name on their uniform shirts. They talk very little, mostly gaze straight ahead, but both are smiling as if they know a happy secret.
Perhaps I could feel some relief that all 13 people aren't turning identical glazed stares toward the TV set. Maybe our mediaddictions don't pervade the way I thought they did. I look around again. A sign at the reception desk reads, "please do not use cell phone during your exam". Nope. I think it's a collective habit we've got, if there's a need for a sign such as that.
The woman at the desk gives me a paper affirming that UNMCare is committed to a program of "quality, excellence and compassion". I'd believe it. Almost everyone I've dealt with - doctors, assistants, receptionists - has been courteous, willing to listen and to answer questions. It occurs to me that their vision statement would be useful to offer to oneself, on the journey of getting well and staying well. Do I maintain a standing offer of quality, excellence and compassion in my dealings with myself? In the health that I create for me, as far as it's up to me? In the terms and conditions of the everyday I inhabit? Maybe...maybe not. I do gift myself with a healthier-than-average diet (as plastic-free as possible, and natural without the quote marks), but when it comes to the kind of inner compassion and forgiveness proposed, for example, by the book I'm carrying (from which I read a few more pages, here in the waiting room, before the TV's electronic hum distracted me), I've got room for improvement in my own vision, as well.
Again, I don't want to criticize the fellow humans that I see in public spaces. We all sit in some limbo of our own here. We're all waiting, looking sometimes for a way from here to there. Reaching for some level of healthy, alive, free. The sincerity of our effort is sometimes as painful to consider as are our failures to try. But why don't we want to try more? How can we, so many of us, be fine with remaining in our seats, letting the TV tell us what things like health and quality of life are? Why don't more people trapped under the glare of televisions rise up in indignation at its suggestions -- or at least laugh out loud once in a while? How can they be content with its shrink-wrapped propositions? Don't we originate with, or at least find along the way, many more stimulating possibilities? Don't we have that in ourselves, whether or not we were educated to seek it? When I described this scene, a friend commented, "For some, dreaming is all they want from life." Wow. If this is dreaming, I could dream of a life a whole lot healthier, juicier, more free than what that little screen boxes in. Even when I don't have any idea how to get there. Doesn't anybody else dream of 'better', without quotation marks? Or even, dare I say it, of their own unlimited vision of 'best'?
I'm trying not to judge here. Really. Trying not to think in terms of motives or other things that I can't actually know about people. Just to explain, or at best to empathize. To imagine how my mind would function, if consistently exposed to the tangible and intangible mind-altering drug that is commercial television. To say nothing of the commercials themselves. After so many years of having been with decreasing frequency in its company, I'm just nothing but startled at what comes out of that little box. I truly can't believe that anybody ever thought of this stuff. Much less that others would choose to watch it, for entertainment. For any purpose not forced on them.
The program on right now involves a short thin woman asking a tall, slightly overweight woman how to shop for healthy groceries, while "staying on budget". They walk around a florescent-lit supermarket, pushing a loaded shopping cart down aisles as they talk. "What should we look for, if we want to be sure we're eating healthy?" asks the short woman. The taller expert advises scanning the labels of these many plastic-wrapped objects for the words 'organic', 'all-natural' or 'whole-grain'. Although, she points out, "'natural' means something different to every company, and is not regulated by the government like 'organic' is..." That's for sure -- "natural" is one of those words that should only appear in the public sphere surrounded by bold-face quotation marks. But, what's this? We need written directions, key-word-recognition, to inform us what foods nurture us? I know not everyone got the benefit of the high-intensity whole-foods experiment that my family subjected itself to when I was a kid (produce we planted, weeded, picked, washed ourselves; super-density bread that began with grinding wheat kernels in a food processor), but...really? Do we not come with any more help from our own operating systems? Is this what a lifetime of choosing one plastic bag over another does to the powers of discernment?
The expert is pointing out another budget strategy: using coupons that are good for all the items of a certain brand to get a more expensive jar of 'organic' tomato sauce, for example, for the price of the conventional. "It is NOT unethical", she assures her companion, "to use these coupons for the organic product." What a relief, that we're allowed to raise our sights just a little without compromising our consumer values. Just don't mention going for any ideals here: this is daytime TV...
We break for commercials. I almost laugh out loud when I see that even the name of the show is a relative term: "Better". We can't possibly see our benumbed collective way to "Ideal" or "Real" or "Best". Only to some middle-ground plateau between our physical and intellectual poverty, and what (some of us believe) we were created to be.
Can't bear to see the commercials. Nothing in the reality I understand moves that fast, or is that garish. I glance around the room. Of the 13 people waiting, 7 have heads bowed, communing with a faraway someone through texting. A young couple is arguing, in painfully honest terms, over all the ways each has wounded the other and whether or not they can forgive. They sit barely making eye contact, separated by two empty chairs, but the tension that pulls them toward each other is palpable. Two women in the room have young daughters with them; one mother gazes into the crystal display of her phone while her girl plays with an electronic talking toy. The other is wonderfully engaged with her one-or-two-year-old, talking, gesturing, responding to the little one's happy incoherent sounds. Against the far wall, a man and woman in army drab and boots sit side by side, wearing the same name on their uniform shirts. They talk very little, mostly gaze straight ahead, but both are smiling as if they know a happy secret.
Perhaps I could feel some relief that all 13 people aren't turning identical glazed stares toward the TV set. Maybe our mediaddictions don't pervade the way I thought they did. I look around again. A sign at the reception desk reads, "please do not use cell phone during your exam". Nope. I think it's a collective habit we've got, if there's a need for a sign such as that.
The woman at the desk gives me a paper affirming that UNMCare is committed to a program of "quality, excellence and compassion". I'd believe it. Almost everyone I've dealt with - doctors, assistants, receptionists - has been courteous, willing to listen and to answer questions. It occurs to me that their vision statement would be useful to offer to oneself, on the journey of getting well and staying well. Do I maintain a standing offer of quality, excellence and compassion in my dealings with myself? In the health that I create for me, as far as it's up to me? In the terms and conditions of the everyday I inhabit? Maybe...maybe not. I do gift myself with a healthier-than-average diet (as plastic-free as possible, and natural without the quote marks), but when it comes to the kind of inner compassion and forgiveness proposed, for example, by the book I'm carrying (from which I read a few more pages, here in the waiting room, before the TV's electronic hum distracted me), I've got room for improvement in my own vision, as well.
Again, I don't want to criticize the fellow humans that I see in public spaces. We all sit in some limbo of our own here. We're all waiting, looking sometimes for a way from here to there. Reaching for some level of healthy, alive, free. The sincerity of our effort is sometimes as painful to consider as are our failures to try. But why don't we want to try more? How can we, so many of us, be fine with remaining in our seats, letting the TV tell us what things like health and quality of life are? Why don't more people trapped under the glare of televisions rise up in indignation at its suggestions -- or at least laugh out loud once in a while? How can they be content with its shrink-wrapped propositions? Don't we originate with, or at least find along the way, many more stimulating possibilities? Don't we have that in ourselves, whether or not we were educated to seek it? When I described this scene, a friend commented, "For some, dreaming is all they want from life." Wow. If this is dreaming, I could dream of a life a whole lot healthier, juicier, more free than what that little screen boxes in. Even when I don't have any idea how to get there. Doesn't anybody else dream of 'better', without quotation marks? Or even, dare I say it, of their own unlimited vision of 'best'?
Friday, July 22, 2011
raindance
unlatch latent atmosphere
unlock water's bond with air
and inundate and sate this waiting ground
let earth exhale its weight of tension
pure survival in attention held so long
fine light find every separate surface
diamond it with drops of life
unite again above below
put to flight doubts of abundance
droughts of substance sustenance
and of beauty
recall leaves true green
lost shine verdant vibrance
land's life lease renew
oppressive heat release
let sky sign message of continuing
rewrite secret ciphers
drops rearranging dust
a hundred hidden messages on
every occluded surface
leave us to decode, conclude
or only joy in mystery reexposed
breeze away stagnation
breathing scent of infinite
in finished and unfinished
finesse of essences
blessed presences manifest
tell us we are not deserted
on this high and dry
but cycling in circle of completeness
time and timing poverty and sweetness
re-rhythm us free drink deep dreaming
sink new roots to share save circulate
all our regeneration
unlock water's bond with air
and inundate and sate this waiting ground
let earth exhale its weight of tension
pure survival in attention held so long
fine light find every separate surface
diamond it with drops of life
unite again above below
put to flight doubts of abundance
droughts of substance sustenance
and of beauty
recall leaves true green
lost shine verdant vibrance
land's life lease renew
oppressive heat release
let sky sign message of continuing
rewrite secret ciphers
drops rearranging dust
a hundred hidden messages on
every occluded surface
leave us to decode, conclude
or only joy in mystery reexposed
breeze away stagnation
breathing scent of infinite
in finished and unfinished
finesse of essences
blessed presences manifest
tell us we are not deserted
on this high and dry
but cycling in circle of completeness
time and timing poverty and sweetness
re-rhythm us free drink deep dreaming
sink new roots to share save circulate
all our regeneration
Sunday, July 17, 2011
volando
Charango, guitar and a long arc of percussion wove a waiting forest clearing into which his wooden flute's music alit. Never had I heard a simple flute played with such sweetness and clarity of inflection. I had to keep my eyes closed while he was playing (even though he was in fact beautiful to look at, flowing black hair and all), because with sight it was just another afternoon in the desert, a crowd of people dancing up dust under a big cottonwood. Without -- or rather, within, inside that spontaneous sonic unsighted space, the music's essence portalled another world. A winding path opened through vinelaced primordial trees, sunshot illumination filtered slowly down, and a giant greengold butterfly waved sinuous wings above and ahead of me. I left all the world behind just to know where that butterfly would go, and in the moment even that wish vanished: it was enough just to follow (feet not touching the ground, at times) and watch its luminous lilt catch the treelight now on one wing, now the other...
Monday, June 27, 2011
dancing quotes
A few lines I copied down from a recent read: Dancing in Cuba, by Alma Guillermoprieto.
There was a prevailing sense of immobility, and since nothing ever seemed to happen, the hours abounded.
It was a fervor that came to find me as I trotted through my daily itinerary...deeply immersed in my ongoing arguments for and against myself and my life.
...it seems...when he distanced himself from the gangsterish student groups who controlled the political life of the university, Fidel opted for romanticism as an existential posture...the one who excited and moved me was not the Marxist or the troublemaker but the armed dreamer.
"There should always be avant-garde, but not everyone should have to endure it."
"It's just that we're still living like consumers of culture here...Why don't we produce it ourselves?"
But we were afraid of the void and longed for the order of the Revolution.
Determined to find some answers, I spent that whole night in dialogue with myself, and though I listened very carefully, I was impossible to understand.
(Jose Marti) He admired the vigor of the North American culture he inhabited for so long, and by writing he found ways to keep from drowning in it.
There was a prevailing sense of immobility, and since nothing ever seemed to happen, the hours abounded.
It was a fervor that came to find me as I trotted through my daily itinerary...deeply immersed in my ongoing arguments for and against myself and my life.
...it seems...when he distanced himself from the gangsterish student groups who controlled the political life of the university, Fidel opted for romanticism as an existential posture...the one who excited and moved me was not the Marxist or the troublemaker but the armed dreamer.
"There should always be avant-garde, but not everyone should have to endure it."
"It's just that we're still living like consumers of culture here...Why don't we produce it ourselves?"
But we were afraid of the void and longed for the order of the Revolution.
Determined to find some answers, I spent that whole night in dialogue with myself, and though I listened very carefully, I was impossible to understand.
(Jose Marti) He admired the vigor of the North American culture he inhabited for so long, and by writing he found ways to keep from drowning in it.
loco motor
Just a little found-poem I came across today in a borrowed book on Alexander Technique. The author (Missy Vineyard, How You Stand, How You Move, How You Live), is explaining the challenges and advantages of being bipedal, beginning with a bit of an evolutionary biology lesson. But her review of invertebrates and quadrupeds also seemed to offer some nice implications about personal, inner evolution, and the drive to move and advance: within the self, among life's elemental forces, and as part of whatever greater context that self may perceive...
all
possess their own
complex locomotor strategies
move individual parts
as well as the whole
earliest
in a watery world
range of motion
spanned the length
generating rhythmically alternating contractions
this sideward bending was not random
functioned to orient and propel
body followed head's direction
moved out of the water
strategies were derived as offshoots
turned scales
into feathers
leave the ground altogether
supported
upward from below
the body up off the ground
nature layered new
double helix arrangement
wrapped around the trunk and spiraled downward
onto the limbs
means of propulsion
no longer a laterally bending
leveraging against water's resistance
but
coordinated synchrony
pushing against the ground
forward
not through water but air
still toward its head
now a second orienting direction
toward the earth and gravity's pull
every weight-bearing step
musculature
coordinated its movement
ground
standing on two feet
a delicately adjusting and readjusting
balancing act
step onto each successive forward limb
toward the front
transfer
entire body from single limb to single limb
we run
become limbless again, propelling
into space and leaving the earth
(for brief moments) altogether
all
possess their own
complex locomotor strategies
move individual parts
as well as the whole
earliest
in a watery world
range of motion
spanned the length
generating rhythmically alternating contractions
this sideward bending was not random
functioned to orient and propel
body followed head's direction
moved out of the water
strategies were derived as offshoots
turned scales
into feathers
leave the ground altogether
supported
upward from below
the body up off the ground
nature layered new
double helix arrangement
wrapped around the trunk and spiraled downward
onto the limbs
means of propulsion
no longer a laterally bending
leveraging against water's resistance
but
coordinated synchrony
pushing against the ground
forward
not through water but air
still toward its head
now a second orienting direction
toward the earth and gravity's pull
every weight-bearing step
musculature
coordinated its movement
ground
standing on two feet
a delicately adjusting and readjusting
balancing act
step onto each successive forward limb
toward the front
transfer
entire body from single limb to single limb
we run
become limbless again, propelling
into space and leaving the earth
(for brief moments) altogether
Sunday, June 12, 2011
el círculo
!Como extraño a mi círculo de danza cuando no estoy con ellos! How I have missed my circle, la danza. My most beautiful community. Today we gather beneath skies finally blue again, instead of copper-grey from the smoke of distant forest fires. The space we're given at this event (the annual fiesta of a Catholic church in Barelas, just off downtown) is mid-side-street, across from the main stage where the ranchera band plays. Fewer than ten people wander over to observe. But as always, I'm pleasantly surprised at the willingness of those coming from very different places in this life -- even from 'organized' religion -- to simply observe our form of embodied prayer and song. This is certainly not the world of angry closed minds that I grew up in.
And I've got no desire for 'audiences' anyway. This is personal: between us and Earth. La danza is an offering. And as always, it asks me to offer everything I've got. The asphalt surface starts to raise blisters, even with huaraches on, by the second dance. My legs are stronger than they used to be, but my lungs still don't quite make it, and by the time I offer my dance I'm nearly always close to collapse. I try to put mind over matter, drink air like water, welcome the copal smoke as the nourishment that it often is. But I'm swaying on my feet, under this sun that seems to have found a hole in the top of my head, and is radiating straight into the center of my brain. And I'm thinking that pretty soon, in these rays, I'll change from the only gringa in the group to la roja - the red one - and wondering if that'll be an improvement.
What in the world am I doing here? I still wonder -- and yes, at times, feel fairly uncomfortable -- about my place in this circle. Not only because it's possibly the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm not of the right genetic or cultural background for this. Obviously. Once, at some event, an observer asked our jefe more or less that question. The man's intent seemed a curiosity more friendly than otherwise (there certainly are those of the sincere opinion that nobody with my skin color should be part of any circle). El Jefe answered with his usual charisma and inclusive enthusiasm: "She is here representing that aspect of humanity that is without race or color or borders." Wow, I told him, I hope I can live up to that.
What am I doing here? Simplest answer: I'm here because, almost two and a half years ago, I had a companion whose life orbited this circle, and he invited me to join them. I soon found in the group an expression of kind community, of whole-being, nonideological prayer, and of self-challenge that left my previous definition all of those concepts in the dust.
Answer harder to put (few) words to: I'm here because, three years ago this month, I walked out of the Hostal Catedral in El Centro de Mexico D.F., el Ombligo del Universo (as I was soon informed), and plunged into a sonic ocean of heartbeats magnified ten thousand times and shooting skyward in every direction: the reverberation of the four wooden drums of four separate circles of danzantes, bouncing off the storied stone walls of El Palacio Nacional and the other four facets of this titanic and troubled diamond called the Zocalo. It was like nothing I'd ever heard, or felt. I could not move anywhere other than toward the heart of the sound, and there, seated on a low stone ledge in sight of the Templo Mayor, shoulder to shoulder with the tourists, travellers, and weary walkers of the City, to try and drink it in. First a man came by playing up the tourist crowd with a printed sheet on Mexica cosmology; I gave him a few cents for one, just to be neighborly, but when he asked where I was from and heard "Nuevo Mexico" he smiled and exclaimed "Ah, eres vecina entonces!" and I felt, suddenly, welcome.
Then, a short time later, a quiet voice materialized next to my left shoulder, and began, without preamble, a detailed, unhurried discourse on the history of the danzantes and the society in which they had their origin. The source of this voice looked like a young homeless man, my age at most, with waist-length dreds matted into one massive plume down his back, wisp of mustache over friendly smile, tattered NFL-logo jacket held together with safety pins and duct tape, holy shoes. He didn't ask my name, didn't offer the slightest hint of flirtation like I'd already seen round that block, didn't ask for anything. Only murmured, like a clear stream, an astonishing current of seasons, origins, social orders, details of dress, diet, medicine, rhythms of songs and of stars. It was a dream of wholeness, of right relating with earth, the pueblo, and the heavens. He said he had learned these things while studying to be a shaman, but had to leave off his studies. Of course, having lived in Santa Fe, a declaration like this comes of necessity as somewhat suspect. But his humility impressed me: this was obviously a guy with little to prove. As did the expanse and conscientiousness of his information. And I was later to hear many of the same details repeated by others; as far as I can tell, this strange traveller spoke well.
I spent about a week at the Hostal, and the drums pulled me back outside every evening. The dancers were there every day. In sun, in rain, in darkness at times. They didn't stop for anything. They were clearly there for the audience - some even put out little baskets for donations - but they weren't showy. There was an inwardness, a collectivity, a focus about the groups that I found attractive. I drank in the color, movement and sound at every chance that week. Not at all imagining, of course, that it had anything to do with me.
I continued not to imagine this for the first several months that I came to the circle here in the South Valley of Albuquerque. The glaring difference of my background alone was always with me, even though everyone was friendly and accepting (and although, when I started, there was another gringa as well as a Navajo woman in the group). The physical endurance was a greater challenge than I had taken on in almost twenty years, and I was sadly unready for it. The complexity of the dances eluded me for months, and when there came the time that I was asked to offer one on my own, I cringed at my lack of memory, skill, and grace. And, strange as it may sound, the 'acceptance of being accepted' by a solid, almost family-like community touched childhood psychic wounds not, at times, like healing balm, but more like the alcohol that burns away a potential infection. It took all the will I had, every week, to keep going back to what body, mind and spirit were both wary of and craving intensely, at the same time. And even coming up on two and a half years, I can still say the same at times: it's perhaps the most impossible and the most necessary effort I've ever taken on.
That's a lot about the personal. What of the bigger picture? What is the circle doing here? How, here, now, after centuries, after conquest and defeat, after materialism and industrialization and forgetting and loss and the burial of Tenochtitlan under time and earth and blood and asphalt? I can only, at this point, speak a regrettably small and subjective response. I can't properly cite and footnote, only retell and respect. I've been told of survivors of la Conquista who, seeing their imminent assimilation and their worldview's disappearance, began quietly and in secret to preserve in the collective memory the songs, dances and other knowledge of their past, often cloaking them for their own survival in the terms and forms of Church and Empire (sounding somewhat similar to the historic response that's always fascinated me on the part of the Celtic peoples). I've heard that the threads of continuity were spun out over surprisingly long years, thanks to their being woven into the structures of extended family. I've also heard suggested, and would imagine, that the effort found much of its momentum reclaimed in the years of the Chicano Movement. John Ross identifies the discovery of the eight-ton Coyolxauhqui stone with its carved 'moon goddess', during the Capital's Metro excavations in 1978, as the moment that 'set the wheels in motion for a revival of pride in the Aztec past'. With how few threads can you span five centuries and arrive, to some degree unchanged, in the now?
I could read up a lot more on this. But I haven't, maybe because there are so many books and so little time (an easy answer). Or maybe because this is personal. This isn't at all intellectual for me. I don't know if it's possible to say that, because I'm not Chicana, or Mexicana, I have no cultural or political point to make in this discussion. Maybe not. And I suppose I've taken on a similar personal responsibility, or lack of same, for the particular implications of the 'Aztec past' as I have for the particular implications of the USAmerican present: I claim marginal acceptance of categories, as an (in many ways) marginalized and barely-existent citizen. I am both victim and chooser of all my names. There isn't a clear answer. But I often don't expect that from Life, so I often don't demand it of myself.
But yes, I'm here, in a sense, precisely because I have no cultural background. I come from ancestors who immigrated and then assimilated as quickly and completely as possible. No language, no traditions, no history. Barely a few old photos. I spent almost 40 years of life without knowing the support and structure of a tradition, and then one was offered, and I met it on the terms with which it spoke to me: engagement with elemental, cyclical, humble and human bearings. And I'm here because, after I accepted the invitation, it was renewed time and time again. In the pain and the healing of muscle and heartbeat and breath. In the acceptance of the comadres and compadres who keep welcoming me. In the affirmation of luminous dreams and of momentary visions so exquisite, so intense that I feel obligated to honor them with my grateful silence. And in the reconnection that I know each time my feet speak their prayers directly to the listening earth, and the voice of the drum realigns my heart with a true pulse. That's the circle that has encircled me.
And I've got no desire for 'audiences' anyway. This is personal: between us and Earth. La danza is an offering. And as always, it asks me to offer everything I've got. The asphalt surface starts to raise blisters, even with huaraches on, by the second dance. My legs are stronger than they used to be, but my lungs still don't quite make it, and by the time I offer my dance I'm nearly always close to collapse. I try to put mind over matter, drink air like water, welcome the copal smoke as the nourishment that it often is. But I'm swaying on my feet, under this sun that seems to have found a hole in the top of my head, and is radiating straight into the center of my brain. And I'm thinking that pretty soon, in these rays, I'll change from the only gringa in the group to la roja - the red one - and wondering if that'll be an improvement.
What in the world am I doing here? I still wonder -- and yes, at times, feel fairly uncomfortable -- about my place in this circle. Not only because it's possibly the hardest thing I've ever done. I'm not of the right genetic or cultural background for this. Obviously. Once, at some event, an observer asked our jefe more or less that question. The man's intent seemed a curiosity more friendly than otherwise (there certainly are those of the sincere opinion that nobody with my skin color should be part of any circle). El Jefe answered with his usual charisma and inclusive enthusiasm: "She is here representing that aspect of humanity that is without race or color or borders." Wow, I told him, I hope I can live up to that.
What am I doing here? Simplest answer: I'm here because, almost two and a half years ago, I had a companion whose life orbited this circle, and he invited me to join them. I soon found in the group an expression of kind community, of whole-being, nonideological prayer, and of self-challenge that left my previous definition all of those concepts in the dust.
Answer harder to put (few) words to: I'm here because, three years ago this month, I walked out of the Hostal Catedral in El Centro de Mexico D.F., el Ombligo del Universo (as I was soon informed), and plunged into a sonic ocean of heartbeats magnified ten thousand times and shooting skyward in every direction: the reverberation of the four wooden drums of four separate circles of danzantes, bouncing off the storied stone walls of El Palacio Nacional and the other four facets of this titanic and troubled diamond called the Zocalo. It was like nothing I'd ever heard, or felt. I could not move anywhere other than toward the heart of the sound, and there, seated on a low stone ledge in sight of the Templo Mayor, shoulder to shoulder with the tourists, travellers, and weary walkers of the City, to try and drink it in. First a man came by playing up the tourist crowd with a printed sheet on Mexica cosmology; I gave him a few cents for one, just to be neighborly, but when he asked where I was from and heard "Nuevo Mexico" he smiled and exclaimed "Ah, eres vecina entonces!" and I felt, suddenly, welcome.
Then, a short time later, a quiet voice materialized next to my left shoulder, and began, without preamble, a detailed, unhurried discourse on the history of the danzantes and the society in which they had their origin. The source of this voice looked like a young homeless man, my age at most, with waist-length dreds matted into one massive plume down his back, wisp of mustache over friendly smile, tattered NFL-logo jacket held together with safety pins and duct tape, holy shoes. He didn't ask my name, didn't offer the slightest hint of flirtation like I'd already seen round that block, didn't ask for anything. Only murmured, like a clear stream, an astonishing current of seasons, origins, social orders, details of dress, diet, medicine, rhythms of songs and of stars. It was a dream of wholeness, of right relating with earth, the pueblo, and the heavens. He said he had learned these things while studying to be a shaman, but had to leave off his studies. Of course, having lived in Santa Fe, a declaration like this comes of necessity as somewhat suspect. But his humility impressed me: this was obviously a guy with little to prove. As did the expanse and conscientiousness of his information. And I was later to hear many of the same details repeated by others; as far as I can tell, this strange traveller spoke well.
I spent about a week at the Hostal, and the drums pulled me back outside every evening. The dancers were there every day. In sun, in rain, in darkness at times. They didn't stop for anything. They were clearly there for the audience - some even put out little baskets for donations - but they weren't showy. There was an inwardness, a collectivity, a focus about the groups that I found attractive. I drank in the color, movement and sound at every chance that week. Not at all imagining, of course, that it had anything to do with me.
I continued not to imagine this for the first several months that I came to the circle here in the South Valley of Albuquerque. The glaring difference of my background alone was always with me, even though everyone was friendly and accepting (and although, when I started, there was another gringa as well as a Navajo woman in the group). The physical endurance was a greater challenge than I had taken on in almost twenty years, and I was sadly unready for it. The complexity of the dances eluded me for months, and when there came the time that I was asked to offer one on my own, I cringed at my lack of memory, skill, and grace. And, strange as it may sound, the 'acceptance of being accepted' by a solid, almost family-like community touched childhood psychic wounds not, at times, like healing balm, but more like the alcohol that burns away a potential infection. It took all the will I had, every week, to keep going back to what body, mind and spirit were both wary of and craving intensely, at the same time. And even coming up on two and a half years, I can still say the same at times: it's perhaps the most impossible and the most necessary effort I've ever taken on.
That's a lot about the personal. What of the bigger picture? What is the circle doing here? How, here, now, after centuries, after conquest and defeat, after materialism and industrialization and forgetting and loss and the burial of Tenochtitlan under time and earth and blood and asphalt? I can only, at this point, speak a regrettably small and subjective response. I can't properly cite and footnote, only retell and respect. I've been told of survivors of la Conquista who, seeing their imminent assimilation and their worldview's disappearance, began quietly and in secret to preserve in the collective memory the songs, dances and other knowledge of their past, often cloaking them for their own survival in the terms and forms of Church and Empire (sounding somewhat similar to the historic response that's always fascinated me on the part of the Celtic peoples). I've heard that the threads of continuity were spun out over surprisingly long years, thanks to their being woven into the structures of extended family. I've also heard suggested, and would imagine, that the effort found much of its momentum reclaimed in the years of the Chicano Movement. John Ross identifies the discovery of the eight-ton Coyolxauhqui stone with its carved 'moon goddess', during the Capital's Metro excavations in 1978, as the moment that 'set the wheels in motion for a revival of pride in the Aztec past'. With how few threads can you span five centuries and arrive, to some degree unchanged, in the now?
I could read up a lot more on this. But I haven't, maybe because there are so many books and so little time (an easy answer). Or maybe because this is personal. This isn't at all intellectual for me. I don't know if it's possible to say that, because I'm not Chicana, or Mexicana, I have no cultural or political point to make in this discussion. Maybe not. And I suppose I've taken on a similar personal responsibility, or lack of same, for the particular implications of the 'Aztec past' as I have for the particular implications of the USAmerican present: I claim marginal acceptance of categories, as an (in many ways) marginalized and barely-existent citizen. I am both victim and chooser of all my names. There isn't a clear answer. But I often don't expect that from Life, so I often don't demand it of myself.
But yes, I'm here, in a sense, precisely because I have no cultural background. I come from ancestors who immigrated and then assimilated as quickly and completely as possible. No language, no traditions, no history. Barely a few old photos. I spent almost 40 years of life without knowing the support and structure of a tradition, and then one was offered, and I met it on the terms with which it spoke to me: engagement with elemental, cyclical, humble and human bearings. And I'm here because, after I accepted the invitation, it was renewed time and time again. In the pain and the healing of muscle and heartbeat and breath. In the acceptance of the comadres and compadres who keep welcoming me. In the affirmation of luminous dreams and of momentary visions so exquisite, so intense that I feel obligated to honor them with my grateful silence. And in the reconnection that I know each time my feet speak their prayers directly to the listening earth, and the voice of the drum realigns my heart with a true pulse. That's the circle that has encircled me.
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