The landscapes of my memories are filled with mountains, abuelas, aromas de café, pulque, freshly made tortilla and burning copal.
It was 2023, and a mid-life woman found herself plunged into a cleansing grief. Living in diaspora, she had been exploring notions around longing, belonging and [the idealisation of] homecoming for a long long time —she had a realisation.
‘What is a place if not another relationship. And what is identity linked to a birth-place, when this place only exists in the memories of the before. When no longer the registers in the body can sustain the past encounters’.
Because, having spent half of her life outside that place, pride in such belonging didn’t make much sense today.
While letting dusted feelings and romantic ideas about identity rot, the woman felt with excitement an openness in her heart for renewed roots to grow —the foundation for a (new) home.
But even so, every now and then, she puts her fingers at a vague and lingering nostalgia, as she feels the open wound of a relentless displacement.
A life’s journey, metaphorically speaking, does not have one single path. It is not a one way road. On the contrary, much like a root system, it is a complex network of possibilities and interactions.
No matter the route and the choices made along the way, the journey is filled with connectors that allow multiple encounters and almost infinite possibilities of sharing presence with, in space and time.
These encounters allow us the possibility of entering in relationship with. The question that follows is, with what or with who? And the [not always] obvious response is: relationship with all kinds of beings and things, be they territories, spirits, sounds, animals, minerals, plants or humans; the visible and invisible critters; and with the fields of energy of everything that exists, which can be sensed, whether in awareness or without it, through a process known as resonance.
Each relationship is an opportunity for connection(s) with what exists beyond the self.
where is the place that i long for in my dreams?
the landscapes i crave
the things out of reach
the intangible
the smell of jacarandas and cempasúchitl
a sound
ombligo de la tierra. tatei kie
the mountains –
this country has no mountains
floripondio. ajolote. humo…
you are no more
México de mis memorias,
i am at peace with you.