Where You're Going, Where You've Been

I’ve been having dark thoughts. . . though I’m happy to report that in times of existential and global turmoil, creativity is my parachute. One of my mentors in college gave me an assignment once when I went crying to his office like the Tracy Flick-ensian neurotic that my conditioning to date had rendered. He told me to take a deep breath, go home and to write one hundred times ‘Art will make me strong.’ And so I did . . . and I guess it has.

This is my fourth winter-spring in Guanajuato, which – for those of you who are new to the Ill Hil seasonal blog – lies in the northwestern highlands of Mexico. Yes, the Mexico of which I speak is the same one you’ve been hearing about in the news, what with the latest media hysteria about the flu. Though predictable, it’s a topic that this week is impossible to avoid.

My dos pesos: more people have probably died in the last week from overeating, depression or guilt than have died from this new virus. Are these infirmities? If so, are they contagious? Who can say? In any case, I’m not convinced that walking around wearing a paper mask, breathing my own recycled air is better for my health than relaxing, getting plenty of sleep, and waiting for this to pass. At the risk of fomenting conspiracy theories, it’s hard not to wonder if there might be a subtext. Those of us who have tolerated two stolen presidential elections and the attendant terms in office, not to mention the months and years of media sensation following September 11th, have ample experience with the power of the media to distort the truth, shape reality and sway public sentiment. I’m not saying that the flu isn’t real – of course it is, and we should take reasonable precautions to avoid its spreading.

My lack of expertise in viruses and disease notwithstanding, there are things we can learn/remember from this: First, we are connected -- no getting around that. Maybe this is part of being a ‘global community,’ or does that only apply when corporations want to modify trade regulations or side-step environmental laws? I suppose a wise consistency has never been a defining characteristic of humanity. Furthermore, fear remains the most powerful and most often utilized mechanism of control. There is no faster way to mobilize and manipulate millions of people than by inciting the fear of death and destruction. I suppose our response to fear is indeed an important function of our survival – but our evolution depends on using our brains and our equally fundamental capacity to reason. It has occurred to me that disease is a form of population control (isn't it?) and it could be the unfortunate cause of my untimely death (though who's to say what my time is?). I could be exposed to this super virus and I could drown in a cytokine storm because of my youth and good health. While I hope this doesn’t happen, if that is my fate, then there it is. I control the factors that are within my control and have the best and most interesting experience of life that I can imagine . . . imagination being the only limiting factor.

But really, what are we supposed to do? A friend who was recently here in Guanajuato is a biogenetic scientist. She says that 99% of viruses are transmitted through the eyes. Maybe we should wear goggles? I guess all we can really do is wash our hands, sneeze with our mouths closed and do all that those of us who live in densely populated petridish-like city environments are accustomed to do anyway.

I was reading about the Mexican folk art tradition, which is celebrated in the collection at Casa de Espiritus Alegres, one of the two bed-and-breakfast hotels managed by my friend Hugo here in Guanajuato. Most of us are familiar with the paper maché skeletons with moving joints, which are usually associated with the Day of the Dead -- a day to honor and remember those who have passed away, and when the spirits of the dead return to Earth for a visit. While there is an element of ‘hanging on’ that could be inferred by the tradition of making skeletons that maintain the earthly identity of the deceased, there is more in this tradition that embraces the duality of life and death than in our culture of infinite youth and preservation in all things (mostly in our food). Pre-Hispanic manuscripts and artwork depict both the god of life, the earth and the sky, Quetzalcoatl -- and the god of the underworld and the dead, Mictlantecuhtl. They appear together – equally important and complimentary parts of the same whole.

I’ve also been reading The Wisdom of the Dream, in which various scholars and psychologists discuss and debate the interplay of Freudian and Jungian psychological traditions. Freud is characterized as being mostly concerned with where you’ve been, where Jung is concerned with where you’re going. Aren’t both of these important in understanding where you are? Although I try to avoid footnoting myself, these thoughts bring me back to my yoga-stoner realization from a few weeks ago – that everything is everything. Why must we always default to binary oppositions? Must one always dominate the other, or can there be some kind of graceful unity between opposites -- for isn’t it from within the tension between opposites that everything interesting is born? Just asking . . .

Getting back to creativity. . . Hugo and I have been living ‘art camp’ for the past week, spending hours in his studio making felt and making prints from copper plates. The felt-making process is rife with metaphor – carefully arranged tufts of wool are bound together in a process that involves agitation and ‘shocking’ with extremes of cold and hot water. The agitation stimulates the barbs in the wool to bind together, forming something stronger and more unified than it began. Think: dredlocks -- same principle. We’ve also used silk as a base for the wool. The barbs of wool adhere to the silk, resulting in an end product that is, at once, strong and delicate – a harmonious union of opposites. Perhaps it is in this type of union that we have a vehicle -- not only a form of transport between where we're going and where we have been, but a way of getting around wherever we are.