9 - On Heaviness 🍎

Light switches, crumbling glaciers, shadow work and resistance.

I know I’m not alone in the heaviness felt during this time.

Appetite is lost, enthusiasm is hard to come by, and simply getting out of bed is an energy-drainer. The insomnia spells, doom scrolling and cold sores are back, with an incessant twitch in my left eyelid that makes me feel like I’m just glitching my way through this godforsaken Matrix, witnessing the daily, unfolding horrors of femicidios, genocide, wildfires, crumbling glaciers and absolutely insane state violence.

I close my eyes in a futile attempt of blissful ignorance to get through the month, yet anxiety and depression creep back in, followed by guilt, and so on and so forth. An external exhaustion.

Mourning doves settled in a Saguaro cactus. Ph: S Suzuki-Martinez

I cannot find the words, so I search.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”, says Indian philosopher Jiddu Krushnamurti.

Si buscás, encontrarás. I continue..

Researching the connections between music and dreams for a creative project with ASTAR Editions leads me to Letters to a young activist during troubled times, a piece by Mexican-American writer and Jungian psychoanalysis Clarissa Pinkola Estés.

I cry as I read: “Mis estimados,” she writes, “Do not lose heart [...] We have been in training for a dark time such as this, since the day we assented to come to Earth.”

I can’t remember if I heard this through a friend who’s a social worker or elsewhere, but I asked someone recently how to keep people’s hopes up when reality is dire, without falling into superficial, false or unfounded optimism. And their response was to focus - not on what needs to be overcome, but on what is being done to overcome. A soft reminder to not let ourselves be consumed into stagnancy.

“There is a tendency to fall into being weakened by perseverating on what is outside your reach, by what cannot yet be.” shares Estés in her letter.

How can we not?

Ermitaño meditando by Remedios Varo (1955)

Loosely influenced by the major Tarot arcanas, this newsletter is a way of tuning into life’s synchronicities, and the archetypes I encounter and embody in my every day. This edition’s card is The Hermit: the Elder and quiet herald of introspection, solitude and retreat in order to reconnect with one’s inner wisdom and intuition.

I struggle with solitude, and fight with it often. I hate being alone and feeling left out. I get bored easily, can’t meditate for the life of me, and have FOMO more frequently than I’d like to admit. I also keep seeing self-appointed Western spiritual practitioners encouraging ‘self care’ as an antidote to a ‘broken’ society, the one true path to Healing™. Thousand-dollar wellness workshops and retreats, so far removed from the origins of the term, coined by Audre Lorde, which is deeply radical. Me hace ruido! It just can’t be right to centre oneself so much. It’s giving band-aid for the ego, something flimsy and surface-level and so individualist it hurts.

But then there are days when the loneliness of existing in the world (and in between worlds) becomes so loud it’s virtually impossible to do anything but go inwards.

Banff (2016) by Arkay Photography

I reluctantly understand The Hermit’s invitation. To take a deep breath and dive into one’s internal realms… to confront one’s fears, doubts, traumas and internalized prejudices. To slow down and spend some time on the dark side of the moon, just to listen. Shadow work. Lilith, for those who know. So tough, yet so necessary - especially at the speed at which our generation carries itself. A speed that is deadly to imagination, to world-building, to forging bonds with each other.

Going in to not go without.

(I had a dream the other night. I was in an apartment building looking out the window, where two little boys were calling me - Mamá! Mamá! I called back, but they couldn’t hear me. I removed the mosquitero, the window netting, then made my way to the door to go get them. Suddenly, a chaotic group of women enters the room, chattering loudly over each other and at me. One corners me and asks me where the light is. I point to the ceiling, and I realize it’s off. I then point to the light switches and realize it doesn’t matter where the light is, it’s the source of the light.)

On a related note, I attended an opening at Mooi Studios the other night and ran into so many lovely fellow artists. Plenty of conversations were had, including a discussion about funding for arts in Canada, where I came to the controversial conclusion that what we truly need as a city is not More Funding™. Obviously it’s welcome, and I’m a firsthand witness to how it’s supported my practice as well as those of my peers… but I believe that what we need the most, as artists, is to stop asking for permission to create. To shift our focus from ‘getting money to do the thing, getting a space to do the thing, getting a permit to do the thing’’ to just doing the thing. Because we need to get it out of our system, and into another. Bills are being passed left, right and centre in this province to criminalize live music, raves, nightlife, protests!! BIG RED FLAG to be criminalizing gathering under the false advertising of peace. Enraging and completely unsurprising for a nation founded on colonial violence.

Lake George Reflection by Georgia O’Keefe (1922)

Yet… Everything we need to move into the next phase/cycle/era, to build the worlds we dream of is at our fingertips, among us, within us. I’m once again reminded that it’s just a matter of dimming the lights and slowing down enough to listen and see what comes through. Alchemizing what’s right in front of us, whatever it may be, in order to connect with the depths and most importantly, those around us. Moving through the fear, with the fear!

Confidence is a myth, truly. Community isn’t. In a city where passerbys avert their gaze, flinch with physical contact, don’t know who their neighbours are, and are in 24/7 defense mode, there’s an URGENCY to build trust.

How I’m personally attempting to do it is by nurturing my closest relationships, defending the city’s cultural scenes with every fiber of my being and doing my best to show up with 100% sincerity, however cringey it may be. Perhaps I’m doing it all wrong, but here’s hoping that it reaches those it needs, and that strength and flexibility never abandons me.

“Look out over the prow; there are millions of boats of righteous souls on the waters with you.” says Estés. “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”

🍎TO READ 🍎

Baby nursing (Conchita with her mother Luz Jimenez) by Tina Modotti, Mexico City (1926)

I recently read Linea Nigra: An Essay on Pregnancy and Earthquakes by Mexican writer Jazmine Barrera. It’s a sincere collection of musings, diary entries and personal research on childbearing, early motherhood, lineage, the Earth.

🍎TO WATCH 🍎

El Eternauta just came out, which is based on an Argentinean science fiction comic created by Héctor Germán Oesterheld with artwork by Francisco Solano López, first published in 1957. It follows a handful of survivors in Buenos Aires after a series of ~unusual~ events. The production is excellent, and the legacy of the comic is worth reading about. Besides this, I am visually burnt out, so I welcome suggestions for films and shows in the comments.

🍎TO LISTEN 🍎

Some of the tracks I have on repeat. I also welcome recommendations.

Much love, until next time, run into you on the streets xx