brenda-roja

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Women's mural in Zacualpa

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The protagonist in the traje of the rgion
her home...
Right to identity

right to health

Book on the rights of the child

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loving and safe family.
Libre expresion
Education respectful of culture
Right to organize
The end!

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Chapter 14

April:

7"30 pm. I took one look inside the overcrowded microbus (the last of
the day), announced to the driver that I would ride up top, and hefted
my weight up the vehicle's skinny welded ladder before his machismo
could forbid it. There I found myself in the company of three obreros
flattened out on their backs, hiding from patrolling police. I joined
them, curving my spine between spare tires and heaps of rope,
brakelights illuminating the heels of our boots all cutely alined
along the steel roof rigging. We pattered and puttered small talk.
Appreciating the heat of eachothers' bodies warding off the biting
wind rolling down the mountain and I, remembered (as if I had ever
forgotten) what each majestic night looks like as it rolls from one
side of the horizon to the other.

October:

Every now and again, actually every week or so, sometimes every few
days, lately daily: the power goes out. The town is submerged in a
delicious darkness. People swarm the stores in search of candles and
just as quickly disappear behind closed doors. It is then that I can
walk the streets and look at the stars at every turn dodging the beams
of headlights stabbing their way down the streets. Chasing the opening
and closing spaces of anonimity and night as if they were gigantic
soap bubbles. It is so rare the opportunities that I have to move
freely without being confronted by hundreds of blank stares and a
report later that day from a total stranger telling me exactly where
she heard that I had walked that day.

There are many descriptions of stars, so many analogies to the cloudy
milky way, the total gallactic exhalation of Jehovah that unveils
itself as the clear blue day daily dissolves it is not worth adding
another. But I will say that in all these writings there is one thing
that is wrong: The sky is not black. The sky is a deep and turgid
blue, colored as the center of a mother's eye as she looks at her
nursing child. Black illuminated from behind by the blue flame of
Life in love with Itself. The dark that holds us and awaits the fire
of our creation as it shows us a diamondstung universe, sparks flying
off its own.

Chapter 15

And now, with a fungal infection, intestinal infection, and flea
infestation, I appear to have collected the set.

Chapter 16

They numbered about 400: the women who came down from the villages to
march for March 8 International Women's Day.
Brown skinned women barefoot or in thin plastic shoes. An indigenous
woman wears all of her wealth on her body: a typical costume sells for
a bare minimum of 750 quetzales (over a hundred dollars) and up to
various thousands. The blouses in our region of the highlands carry on
them approximately 20,000 tiny intricate stitches in various shades of
wine, burgandy, black and deep grape revealing the contours of the
surrounding mountains and symbols of local mythology. Around the neck
opening little black velvet triangles are neatly adhered with red
thread so that, if you happen to look straight down at a woman selling
vegetables in the market, her perfectly pulled back head of black hair
looks like the center of an eclipted midday sun.
Women tie a bolt of cloth around their waists with a flower
embroidered belt so tightly that the curve of their lower bellies pops
out because here, (mercifully) a curving feminine belly is a sign of
fertility and grace. The cloth of their corte in its most traditional
presentation is actually 4 pieces of navy cloth whose hems are bound
together so tightly by bright thread that it looks as if it were one
piece of cloth with an off center cross tranversing its length. The
center of this cross is typically arranged to sit just left of center
on a woman's left hip and falls just below the knee. It says a lot
about a people's value system if they are willing to spend three
months or more of their earnings on a single set of clothing, clothing
that sets them apart and subjects them to inhumane discrimination
because it defines them as member of a race people who together still
follow the rhythm of daybreak and harvest moons. A people that have
been under attack since 1492 and still haven't knuckled under. I look
at their polyester clad mestizo half brothers slaving away for an
overcomplicated Chinese cell phone and draw some pretty harsh
comparisons.

Me and my 2 coworkers scurried around with gunny sacks full of lilac
rice paper flowers between these women pinning them in their hair and
helping them blow up lilac colored balloons made special for the
occasion. The language barrier can be pretty steep as the majority of
people here reject Spanish as a form of communication. My K'iche is
lousy and serves only to eek out a few cheap laughs. Neverthless we
got the job done.

And so it began: the march. Women lined up in phalanxes in their
separate groups representing their communities. I set to work
distributing two gigantic puppet eyes (complete with brows), an
enormous puppet nose, two sailboat ears, upper and lower lips of a
giant face puppet to 7 women. In my artistic mind these marching
pieces perfectly conjoined to form the face of a Titanic woman. In
reality: they looked like a drunken Dali painting staggering down the
street: one eye higher than the other, the two parts of the lips
lagging eachother by about fifteen feet, ears wiggling in the
breeze....

People poured out of their homes, churches, and schools to watch the spectacle.

I stayed with the our other gigantic creation: the 20 foot wide bird.
Manuevering the four women who supported its weight around the adobe
and concrete corners of town, trying to keep us all vaguely in line
with eachother (though at times we came out looking like Kentucky
Fried chicken heaped together in the boxy streets)

The dream bird occurred to me as a possible way to bring to light the
hopes and dreams of women in the community. In our workshops they
scribbled their thoughts on long flowing strips of translucent lilac
and pink plastic that I stapled to long bamboo poles forming plumage.
The bird's head was quite a struggle: its three foot long beak
constantly gave in to the demands of gravity and plummetted to the
floor. The damn thing finally came together the night before the march
over two liters of shitty beer with a patient friend (The incomparable
Mr. Mu Son Chi) who sewed the cardboard pieces together with plyers
and rusting wire.

The creation "flew" in front of a banner that read "To dream alone is
just a dream, to dream together makes reality." (In essence, this
beautiful and simple phrase says it all doesn't it?)

The women converged in the munincipal theater for music and tamales,
sweaty and needing to regroup. There, in all its glory pieces of the
face puppet (AKA women organizers of the march) climbed onto the stage
and spoke one at a time: the ears "We deserve to be heard" The eyes
"We deserve to be seen as subjects and not objects" The nose "We
deserve to breathe in an environment of peace" The lips "We have the
right to free expression." I smiled. This is what art ought to do:
through one single work all the women present could hear themselves
speaking.

Chapter 17

When everything that grew between you and another human being is
flash burned to the ground and ashes rain. Color bleeds out of the
environment. All falls to grey. A leaden screen in still frame. There
is no sound. You watch the world move from the black branches of
charred trees and its noise doesn't reach you: the silence within
presses in on your ears. Nothing reaches you. Reverberations of
conversations held through touch, through making love, ricochet
voicelessly through your body seeking exit via destruction. Memory
embedded beneath skin. The inaudible screams the unborn make when
they know they will die: a hope, a desire... "Born in a night to
perish in a night".....

I passed months in this way, pacing the anteroom of my own alchemy:
struggling to amass the force of will to live completely in the moment
(if only for a moment) before my mind would drag me back into its
infinite imagined sacharine endings. Discipline.

In Spanish the word for grieving is "luto" from the Latin "combat
between two" A mortal combat between that the part of your mind that
has accepted losing someone you loved and the whole weight of your
being that won't, that kicks and screams around its corpse trying to
give it life again. When your heart breaks in two and the two sides
line up daily to go to war;
the struggle to turn the silence of the space within into an ally.

People would say "Ojos que no ven corazon que no siente." Eyes that
don't see, heart that doesn't feel to explain away the undoing of a
relationship that lasted over two years of my life. I found it to be
the opposite: when my eyes can't see all of my senses sharpen
themselves and pour over every detail of what I left behind: the scent
of greasy pink Mexican bread and coffee, the smell of his blue soap,
alone in bed: crisp morning air stealing his warmth out of pelling
flannel sheets and the sound of water falling on the shower floor, the
feeling of his lips departing from my forehead and the tender hush
they left in my mind, light catching in the narrow roots of his black
beard making them look almost translucent.

I find we do not siffer from not receiving the love we crave. We
suffer from having the love we bear turn into shades of blue inside of
us. Iceburgs beneath water. Morasses of snow. Barren and beautiful
landscapes of isolation.....

.

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7

Chapter 18

Snapshot:

Riding in the back of a pick up truck above the cloudline curving
around mountains as if they were crumpled patchwork quilts of cordoroy
green growing vegetables or brown rows of earth waiting to explode
into life.

Snapshot:

Swimming upstream between two jungle canyon walls my few possessions
tied to my waist by a scarf. The way that light bounces in narrow
spaces picking up every bit of color it can find and turns up their
volume so that you can feel it humming in your temples: a peach melba
sunday melted and covered by vines reaching down to touch the water's
calm skin. I feel like a crocodile with my eyes barely above the blue
black green line of water ahead of me reveling in adventure and
wiggling my four short limbs to push forward against the cool current.

Chapter 19

Standing hip deep in the flow of time and paying attention:

A girl is sweeping

The sky wide open

Flowers clutch little mantillas of dew beneath their chins

Bells, irises, geraniums

My mind empties itself of all that keeps it moving in circles

and fills with birds and roosters

Rain falls in gentle patters on the roof

and smells of cold.

Today I send the world my imperfect love

upturn my palms flat and receive the same,

Spread my fingers to let it keep moving

because, when held, it burns.

Chapter 20

By some really god awful stroke of karma I have managed to rent a room from not one but two remarkably crazy old widows here in Guatemala. I thought I had it bad in my first community. I really did. I thought, in moving to my second community that I was going to find some blessed respite from the constant onslaught of obsessive compulsive histrionic house cleaning widows... Oh I was wrong.. Oh so very wrong... I should have taken a hint when, trying to arrive to my new home in Zacualpa, the tuk-tuk driver (a sort of three wheeled taxi) said nothing but "Oh..... Really....... I know where she lives...." The tone in his voice getting slightly distant... Slightly damp. I should have taken a hint when I told people where I lived they all got slightly quiet...

And so began my aquaintance with Madame Psychopants.

As it turns out I got shacked up with the town nut thanks to my well meaning nun friends who overestimated my sainthood (I remember one similar occaision when, as an 8 year old, I walked around on tippy toes in long pants in front of an old cowboy so he would think I was older and that I could handle a faster, and thereby more fun horse.... Later that day I kicked his damn rodeo nag full on the flank and sent her wailing into a dead run. The old cowhand galloped along side me grabbed me by the collar and tried to pull me onto his cutting horse. I panicked, leapt off and narrowly missed getting kicked in the head... This of course does not mean that I walked tippy toes in front of the sisters but I am always on good behavior, I think they overestimated the size of the fruits of my spirit...)

Madame Psychopants' son visited the first month I was there. When he left I lasted exactly 4 days before leaping off of her dead run of mental instability. In the end it was rather comical how jealous she was of her house. She slowly went about trying to take away my ability to perform the most basic functions of living...

It began by throwing the clothes I had hung up to dry in the rosebushes or on the woodpile to rot....

Innocent enough.....

It proceeded to kicking me off the dining room table as she was only renting me space in my room and not her table...

And then... randomly stealing my sheets and blankets off of my bed just before I came home from work at 8pm to kindly giving them to someone to wash (at my expense) and expecting that I would find somewhere else to sleep in the cold night. She entered my room at 6 am the following morning, surprised to find me there sleeping.

It progressed.....

Counting how many times I used the microwave...

How long I was in the bathroom...

Turning off the water to the shower....

Lying saying that the shower was broken and that I had to bathe in a tee shirt outside with buckets..

Pounding on the door while I was in the shower saying she had to use the bathroom and enterring only to throw water on the floor to wash away my evil gringa-lity.

Standing outside my door flipping on and off the light outside my window muttering to herself that my use of candles was going to smoke up the room. Forcing me to blow them out...

All of this occurred while battling an epic flea infestation, prepping and completing a mural in one week (about 10+ hours of work daily) with indigenous women from the surrounding communities who came down to paint with beautiful babies tied to their backs.

I succumbed to the thought that if I killed her I could hide her in her houseplants. Madame PsychoBitch. Luckily I went to visit another friend of mine (a beautiful nun from Chiapas, my age, who recently renounced her religious vows and is currently passing her final days of 12 years of religious life. We sat around with a guitar singing Mexican folk songs for her birthday. One of witch (a well deserved typo) sang of the delight of a man upon hearing of the death of his mother-in-law who he had long desired to turn into a lizard so he could throw stones at her....

Our bellies simultaneously errupted into uncontrolled laughter.

Chapter 21

To be a clown takes no special effort. Clowning is just being yourself but a very specific part of yourself. While your whole body fights for its daily bread these little guys survive inside your secret garden nibbling on rose petals. They are magical creatures who believe that a neck tie can lasso the moon. They climb invisible ladders, fall off, get back on and keep climbing because they know that anything is possible. Their magic rests in Never Ever Ever EVER giving up along the way.

A clown hides none of their feelings and offers themselves fully as they are. The world can forgive everything from three classes of creature: a child, a pregnant woman, and a clown. I have had the luxury of getting to know my clowns this year. There are two that run around in the center of my spirit and I have a feeling that more are on the way. My youngest is named Campanita. She is about 4 years old and is horribly shy. One Mondays and Thursdays her favorite thing to do is watch bugs while wearing scuba goggles; the rest of the week she likes to tie towels around her neck and leap off buildings onto fluffy clouds. My other clown is 16 and is named Mayonesa. Mayonesa is a barely veiled version of myself: she wears funny knee socks, tells really bad jokes and laughs at them..... alone, can communicate telapathetically with her ratty teddy bear sidekick (if only just to hear herself talk), and is so tragicly intense that everybody within earshot cracks up before she even opens her mouth. Her magic is in being so completely and unapologetically herself, warts, stinky feet, wanton impulsivity and all, she opens space for the rest of us to do the same.

As I have gotten to know my own clowns (and taken them out for the occaisional playful afternoon in rural villages and public squares) I have gotten to know other people's clowns and I have even gone out to help wake up (AKA theatrically train) the clowns within rural indigenous Carribean youth (see chapter 12). Clowns are tricksters, we know that reality is based on consensus and like to put whoopee cushions on everybody's seat before they sit down to take the final vote. It is very serious play. I forget the name of the leader of the Merry Weathermen when asked what he would do at the 1968 democratic convention in Chicago he replied "We are going to levitate the Pentagon and make it spin around faster and faster until all the evil spirits come flying out of it."

He wasn't joking.

We face a grave danger as humanity...... Anaesthetized by the constant drip of a reality we didn't choose for ourselves we forget that we are the music makers and dreamers of the dreams. Even in our struggles to cooperatize, to unionize, to autonomize we become automatized and forget that the best way to destroy the system is to plant roses in the cracks of its foundation, in the minds of we the people crushed beneath its weight. I mean we must reclaim joy as a birthright, have the courage to be happy (a deeply political act if you think about it), reclaim our innate creativity to create the world around us, and renegotiate the contracts that form the dimensions of the spaces that hold us. Art is both a means to the end and the end. .

Chapter 20

Syncretism:

Midnight. Mayan priests burn offerings in a small concrete oven in front of the cathedral sitting at the highest summit in town. At dawn their women run hands over rosaries worn smooth by years of miracles given and taken between husks of corn.

Chapter 21

Drop off Huesos' family in Guatemala City: Zona 18: El Limon. THe worst colonia in the worst sector of one of the worst cities in Central America. About an hour before we go in another bus driver is murdered for refusing to pay "taxes" to the local gangs. This means trouble. This means another strike. Transit will stop yet... No one seems preoccupied. Everyone is continuing with ther business. My friend (lover?), Huesos, shows me where he used to like to play in the dirt as a kid and he looks half sadly at the bands of children scurrying between the tightly packed concrete houses on the edge of the neighborhood hill's steep drop off. They have no place to go but here or worse, over the edge, where the cardboard squatter settlements begin. He has the eyes of his mother: they are dark brown and intractably hard making the smile lines around them seem like lies. She and I talk as any two Guatemalan women: what medicine cures what, the importance of the church, pouring over the small tower of aging photgraphs that comprise the history of a single mother whose life has been held together by her rosary. She never smiles and seeths criticism at her son who let his hair grow long, scratches a living from his art, left the church and rejected the rut El Limon laid out for him. He barely looks at me not wanting to give his mother the impression that he has at last found a wife. We move leave before night begins to fall; the view of the city is beautiful in the way that the red sun diffuses through thick grey smoke between mountains of the barrios, every inch drenched with sadness, struggle, and violence. By the end of the week the gangs will be moving onto this block to demand "war taxes" from the residents. It's one of the last blocks not to have gotten shaken down. I bend down to say goodbye to my lover's (friend's?) niece, a budding and gangly artist, run my thumb down the side of her 10 year old cheek and tell her to keep doodling and wink.

And suddenly it occurred, later, lying in a hammock gazing up at a long generous eucalyptus tree, that a sort of rapture fell over me. The way that light turned around the curves of its grey trunk speckled with hundreds of eyes, limbs and the feeling of two great rivers of good and evil flowing through and mingling inside my body, joining my rivulets of both. All the crazy shit that I have lived assimilating in a moment of profound bliss:

The amazing gentleness of men who raped and murdered dozens of innocents

The sputtering politics of an old soldier... dangerously quiet.... who still talks of the Berlin wall and the threat of the Russians. A captain with a heart stopping 2 year old daughter running her tender hands over his cheeks.

The heights and depths of ugliness and beauty and knowing that no they cannot be split...

Mercy and Malice...

It came down upon me in a sudden gust. Blasting through my every hiding place and all I could do was laugh, I throwing my head back so my arc of white teeth showed on my mouth's pink wrinkled cieling. He would take this as a sign that I was falling in love with him and run. I would take it as a sign that he was clueless and be all the better for it. It had nothing to do with him. He had tried so hard to carry me to the sublime, as a man's body can sometimes do to a woman's, but he never could. I didn't love him. And in that moment the floor fell out from under me. I floated through space and, in my rapture, remembered my zen master's two fingers waving in the air in the same position as Christ imparting a blessing "Not two" he crooned shaking his head "Not two..."

Epilogue:

I am drawing to a close in this long rambling retrospective. I think of all the faces I have grown to know in my time here, the warm company of Latin women, the powerful leaders whose examples I have taken to heart..... My firebrand nun friend Ana Maria who flips off bad drivers, dances with dogs and babies, shares homemade cherry moonshine, confronts angry vigilante lynch mobs in the middle of the night to singlehandedly prevent them from burning criminals alive, etc. She has taught me, by xample, that to be completely oneself is have a lived experiece of the divine. Her counterpart is Alba, my boss, a devout envagelical who, diplomatically and forceflly shows up day after day to do the work of transforming her town. She wears lipstick, has two children, periodically diets and is the most gifted popular organizer I know. She taught me how to engage in the tricky long term organic process of building alliances between people through flowery letters, thoughtfulness, and on occaision, feminine wiles. She has taught me, in the flesh and with infinite patience that "a true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love."

And so I return to this love where all things begin and end. If you are reading this you are one of the people I am connected to in my life, someone who is important to me and someone who I miss. I fear, in all this movement of my life that I will lose touch with you and as such lose touch with what really matters. Yet in the same I am trying to bring something into creation, an ideal, I am fishing for the language of a litany. Boycotting the apocalypse. I want to get more people looking up at the stars, naming themselves and finding eachother in the constellations of our shared human condition. And in all of this I am running risks (as my aging ovaries and thin soled shoes remind me) of walking so far down the dark path of the unknown that, even if I turn back, I will not find things as I left them.

There are two eternals:

Change is the first. Even God dies. A little boy asked me the other day, brain-blastingly astute for his 8 years, if god dies when the generations die. Yes, I answered, in a sense....

The cemeteries of K'iche Indians are nothing more than open fields filled with little mounds of dirt complete with stone slabs where families come to burn a candle, spread flowers and women kneel to wail for their dead every first of November. There are no nameplates: families remember exactly where they laid to rest their loved one and keep coming back to the same location until they too perish. Every now and again on the thin paths between the burial mounds there is a very large bump of earth and you don't know whether it is disrespectful or not to step on it but you do anyway because you have to keep walking. These are the true dead, those who have been forgotten, for whom no one comes to burn a candle.

Connection is the second. We are never separated. We will walk this earth together until death do us part and even then, if the above is any example, we are intertwined in the memories and lives of the people we have touched. I carry all of you with me and send you my prayers. There is a room with a candle lit waiting to welcome you when I see you again, to share a moment and water the little gardens that grow in the spaces between us. To share the changes of the time we have passed apart and know that we will always be moving forward together

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2008-10-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

2008-10-27T11:12:00.000-07:00

wedding of friends

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2008-10-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

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Shots from Quiché next town over

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My friend Charlie

Retrospective 2

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Interlude:
Neron, the convent puppy, my favorite dog in the whole wide world, has, in fact, grown up. He has fleshed out and, it has come to pass that Neron, the convent puppy, has recently come into heat. This is of course a very bad thing for a convent dog as it is quite unseemly to have a big heap of beagle uncontrollably humping nuns and leaving little wet spots on the hems of their habits. And it is quite difficult to keep a straight face while watching a sister with her left leg in the air trying to shake off an amorous and determined Neron struggling not to let out profanity or another trying to discreetly walk faster to literally get him off her tail.
Lately I've taken to giving him friendly advice
"Listen buddy I know exactly how you feel..."
(This is happening in English so that no one can understand us)
He cocks his white and blonde head to one side.
"No really I do."
Tongue wag.
"But you're in a convent and there are rules about this sort of thing."
He disregards my advice and decided to let it whale on my right calf.
The sisters comment that they are going to have to find him a box of condoms.
Chapter 6
And now for something completely different.
Little indigenous grandmothers, on a few occaisions, have come up to lay hands on me. I love those moments. They speak a language that sounds like wind rushing through trees. They pat the bones on the sides of my hips. Mutter something in a crackling wind whooshing voice nd walk away never to be seen again. Once, while walking on a country road seeking directions I stopped two women. They did not speak spanish but put their hands on my shoulders smiled and muttered "Bendita... Bendita" The little blessed woman. I think that Mayan women carry God in the hollow of their hands. In fact I know they do, but we haven't gotten to that part of the story yet. Keep reading.

Chater 6.5
I am building for my heart, a resting place
Melting snow white linen off a bed of crocuses,
the first flower of my Spring.
I am dusting windows while singing my walls wide open
to make a room in this sunlit hermitage.
The shutters are already tied back for the summer months ahead when sage breezes will kiss our body with night’s sweet reprieve.
Sleep well, for all the air is conspiring in pollen grains a heavy harvest and fat winters.
I am busy breathing silence so my story may drift through me,
Peacefully,
back to its origin,
That I may just listen as the revelation unfolds,
And abandon tomorrow in the deep navel of eternity.
Where
All is well
And forever will be.
Chapter 7
It just so happened to pass that I stumbled into a meeting of Franciscan Sisters, Brothers, and Fathers from all over Central and South America a few days back. I did not realize what I had gotten myself into because many of them do not wear habits. I walked through the parish gate into the garden got their damn dog to quit humping leg without ruining my relationship with him (I usually have to do this with humans: I can think of one specific example a few months back when a naked man jumped into my hotel bed and put his arms around my waist. Not realizing that I should have screamed I turned around and asked him: "What's your problem? Are you too cheap to buy drinks and make small talk?")
And so began the beginning of friendships that would change my life. Franciscans area different kind of catholic animal. They are still Christians but their focus is different. They follow the path of a Saint who wrote ecstatic poetry, sang to birds, kissed lepers on the mouth, stripped naked to give back the clothing that the system had sold him and walked without shame barefoot, because he knew that the earth, the source of life, is holy. If you combine this inflection with a theology that declares that Christ was a man who discovered his divinity as he walked the path that lead to his own liberation and that we are one people walking on the path together towards our shared liberation: justice, love. The kingdom of god pulled down to the earth by the strength of our own hands. You will find a people whose passion for life is electric and whose joy like an earthquake, buckles the concrete covering over the humanity of those around them.
I sat down for a moment and spoke with a friar about what comprised his faith. Looking for something that would shed light on my eternal flirtation with Christianity and my simultaneous loathing of what it represents in the world.
He explained very simply that God communicates to us through others, spirituality is only real if it is shared, that the only sin is social injustice, that Christ discovered his divinity as he walked through life and that we too are walking through life unveiling the beauty of God within us. The sun was setting, beams of the falling day came in diagonal through the windows and moved through his eyes: blue like water. I ate his words like bread, slated starvation and returned to the fold of my own understanding, for the first time shared by women and men who have the deepest of my respect. I no longer felt the need to cover that secret unfailing faith that I have in myself around those who fear god. I too could walk naked.
Chapter 8
The cave was full of soft sand. Moist. Currents of cold air criss crossed the heat of our candles burning in a small bonfire surrounded by flowers. I wanted to scream when I descended. I could not see anything and had to crouch: following the movement of flames and shadows. This is where they took the village. To this very cave. This is where they slit their throats and left them piled on top of one another to die. According to one of the two survivors a little boy, his throat not fully slit, cried to his father "Daddy let's get out of here." softer and softer until he too perished.
We, nuns friars and me, left our prayers and offerings. I clutched the yellow cascade of flowers that I held as an offering against my chest so tightly that its vital fluid welled up around my knuckles. We prayed for the strength to continue fighting for a justice that comes from peace and a peace that comes from justice. I laid my mangled offering in the ring with the others touched the walls and spoke for a moment with the spirits of the place. Those martyred in our struggle.
2 days later I collapsed on the bed of my friend, screaming and crying uncontrollably. Evil too is beyond comprehension.
Chapter 9
Guatemala has tucked sculptures away inside of me that I cannot reach, like rivers on sandstone are all of the experiences that have formed and transformed me here. I can only vaguley intuit their contours, guess at what they are and wonder how they will feel to the people I am going home to.
Chapter 10
Snapshot:
Pressing a purlple flower into the palm of a lover I will never see again in a city park full of shady trees and laughing children. A man from Argentina with soft eyes full of joy and gentleness. A man from the gold prairies that stretch to infinity where only the sight of a single black railroad car connects you to civilization. A man who lives by selling his art from town to town and "regalando sonrisas." Happiness is a thing that moves. It cannot be grasped. I did not look back when we parted ways but carried the delight of our dance: barefeet on concrete beneath rain, with me as I listened to his footsteps disappear.
A dream.
Snapshot:
The ocean beneath the sun. What is most beautiful is watching the light change as the sea foam comes rolling in on the jet black sand. Watching the neck and chin of a gangly blonde woman light up from the reflection as she clutches her straw hat around her straw blonde hair and throws her head back. Clouds above like static reflections of crashing waves. The moon on the water. The blue light filling the negative space around our bodies, again, the thin sheet of glassy water on sand throwing light back at us from below as if the earth played for a night at being heaven.
Snapshot:
My adopted grandfather: a campesino, 70ish wrinkly, splotchy skinned, stooped, barely able to speak Spanish clasps my arm "Mamaita," he says. "Your heart is so full of kindness." He can always be seen strolling up and down the town in a 1920's style straw hat, knit vest, and striped button down. Everything perfectly clean and ironed despite the thick mud of the ever falling rainy season. We walk toward a little shop on the sidewalk my arm hooked around his elbow, stooping to accomodate his 5 foot stature. "Buy whatever you want my treat, mamaita." I am touched and mortified by his generosity (knowing that every dime he has represents many hours of work in the cornfields) and set to working my way through the rolls of acrylic ribbon hanging from the cieling and rows of glass and beeswax candles to find the simplest thing I can: a miniature plastic red rose.

Chapter 11
15 de Septiembre 2008
Alayna likened the city to the carcass of a rotting dog full of ants. I was enchanted. I would expect no less from an Independence Day commemorated in one massive orgiastic typo spewed across Guatemalan currency for the past 100 years: 15 of Setiembre 1861. Cross reference to the above. No one dare correct the spelling error and so it continues under the guise of tradition.
The entire center of the city was cordoned off, as if forming the railing around hoardes of marching bands playing musical bumper cars in NO recognizeable order within its limits. At one point three marching bands converged at an intersection, all slightly out of tune, all playing some variation on the theme of God-awful, and participated in that really weird ritual that happens when you try and avoid running into someone, move, run into them again, move, run into them again, multiplied, however, by the power of 100 wearing star trek outfits and hats that look like oversized Q-tips on Viagra.
Its really funny to observe people's facial expressions while they struggle to maintain dignity in the face absolute ridiculousness.
Alayna my giggly, portly, puerto rican artist friend and I continued to walk through the capital trying desperately and sleep-deprivedly to make it through the central plaza to catch a bus on the other side. Good luck. Besides the throngs of food vendors and slightly dazed and over sunned lolly gaggers trying to wiggle their way into the scarce shade or spray blowing off the immense central fountain, in front of us sat the big dark intimidating presidential stage and palace.
The central plaza of Guatemala City is a total anomaly: surrounded on all sides by large imposing surreal European castle architecure and crowned in the center by what looks like a cross between Old Faithful and a giant Chess Pawn, it forms a small bubble of granduer in a sea of crumbling buildings. The plaza was the idea of President Ubico: one of Guatemala's many dictators and only architectural fanatic. Walking into the plaza is walking into his madman's world: all self-created monuments to his greatness, like a maze of circus mirrors that make you look larger than life. A world walled off and disconnected to its surrounding reality.
Not knowing what to do I set to locating the epicenter of the hundreds of slices of blue and white cake that seem to appear in alternately the hands and mouths of said dazed and over sunned. I decide that I need a slice. I am getting closer. The slices are multiplying. And there it was lying in all its glory beneath a red tent: the mack daddy of all confections 12 feet by 18 feet of sheet CAKE iced up to look like a gigantic Guatemalan flag. Enough white flour and sugar to launch a small army into insulin shock. Enough whipped butter icing to transform my minute stature into Jabba the Hut. Eat your heart out Marie Antoinette. I allowed myself to drift into the pleasant fantasy of leaping into the cake's center wearing a retro swimsuit cap and doing solitary syncronized swimming. I get in line: THEY ARE GIVING IT AWAY FOR FREE!!! YES FREE!!!!!
I won't have to buy lunch! My cheap-ass heart screams out for joy! Even Alayna, slightly wilted from our 4 hour long traffic jam to get into town, brightens up and takes out her camera. Perhaps emboldened by the sudden jump in my blood sugar levels I grab her arm.
"Alayna I think we can get through the other side of this parade let's give it a shot."
And so it came to pass that we, two very white women discretely pried our way into the throngs of people in front the presidential stage's corner watching a (decent) marching band. To our left a phalanx of police in riot gear pushed passed us. Seeing an opportunity to move forward I grabbed the strap of her backpack and shimmied in the thin allyway of body's created by their imposing passage. Standing, now, just in front of the French horn players I kindly explain to their guard (in harmless I-am-so-cute-take-pity-on-me gringa speak) that we need to cross as 6 angry looking heavily armed men with their hands on their pistols move to surround us. Just when I think we will have to give up and turn around THAT ONE DUDE shows up. He is ubiquitous i nthis country. HE is THAT DUDE that speaks really shitty English and is always looking for a chance to practice it. THAT DUDE has shown up in many bodies and seems to consistently save my hide. This time he magically appears from between the rows of polyester clad musicians, diplomatically tells the cops to F-off and guides us across the street while explaining "I rrrreally need to prrractice de speaked de English."
I hate THAT DUDE. I love THAT DUDE. THAT DUDE is my annoying Guatemalan guardian angel.

Snapshot:
Rabinal's market at night: lines of tightly packed wooden stalls alit by single flames like fairy queen's hands waiving slowly at spirits hanging in the humid air. Rough hewn tables and stalls surrounded by the shadows of humans and dogs pushing their way through space towards their next meal: bean stuffed plantains sprinkled with sugar, tostadas heaped with magenta colored beets, fried pork skin, roast chicken, ponche, tamales...... I move towards a crowded stall wherein a woman is pouring atol into hollowed out gourds and throwing in bits of chicken with her fingers and order a small gourd full. It is heaven, warm laced with corn mush, clove, garlic and chicken broth. I drain the first and order another watching its steam rise in the orange light.

Chapter 12
The sky changed color. At first turgid with gold, the great sack of blue above our heads drained to pale magenta and ever darkening hues of evening. Tony, my clown friend, and I got onto the boat watching the color show with our gigantic drums, puppy dog and box of 1,000 AIDS education stamped condoms and headed across El Lago de Izabal to go train indigenous AIDS prevention clowns in the rural Carribean. White cranes dotted the impasto strokes of green thick forestation. Like baldspots on the canvas, like flying orchids, ridiculous and elegant, devastatingly beautiful under the rising full moon, the slick parting of water around the bow of the boat mimicking the liquid obsidian of night. Sometimes things are so beautiful I feel my entire insides implode, my eyes roll back in my head, and my body moan in a strange mixture of gratitude and longing. This was one of those moments.

2008-10-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

2008-10-24T15:42:00.000-07:00

My boss giving her two cents

Mari the school director

Signing their work

Mural in Zacualpa

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2008-10-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

2008-10-05T12:03:00.002-07:00

New Project!

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Titulo:
Mision Murales de Mujeres
Concepto:
Aplicando arte comunitaria como modalidad de explorar temas de los derechos de la mujer y violencia intrafamiliar.
Antecedentes:
La interiorización de la subordinación, inferioridad, y discriminación contra la mujer contribuye en mayor parte a la explotación de los derechos de la mujer, su sexualidad, y fuerza laboral en el ambiente social. Disimulados muchas veces debajo del piso de tradición y costumbres sociales, estos procesos atrapan mujeres en un espiral debilitante de autodevaluacion, censura, inseguridad, y culpabilidad.
Preposito:
Juntas con las mujeres de la Carcel (NOMBRE????)Mision Murales de Mujeres busca de confrontar los aspectos psicológicos de la opresión de la mujer, explorar posibilidades por cambio positivo, y plasmar un mural representando estas dos conversaciones criticas sobre un muro central y publica en pleno vista de las residentes.
Meta:
La creación de un mural de entre 15 y 25 metros cuadrados con el apoyo de entre 10-15 deprivadas de libertad.
Metadologia:
A través de la metodología de la educación popular, arte terapia, y pedagogía participativa el proyecto va a sacar un diseño basado en la experiencia personal de cada participante e implementar el propio ingenio y fuerza de estas mujeres para plasmar el imagen final.

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2008-10-05T10:42:00.000-07:00

2008-09-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

This is where our atol comes from... The schoolkitchen....

Preface

As most of you know I am a former disgruntled art student come art school drop out. I think I only completed 3 college level art classes in my life. Like many of you I wandered about the pearly gates of academia with a resounding hollow in my heart and hunger in my mind. Something was missing and I couldn't put my finger on it. That something was outside the vocabulary they had given us, the fishbowl of language and concepts whose narrow perimeter we swim inside and intuit the vastness of what lies beyond. That something of being a whole human being and living hip deep in the eros of touching life to life, quickening our visions and watching as they take form under many separate hands. That a canvas, a theory, theater, dance, and ideas MUST be the footprints we leave as we walk towards our wholeness and the axes we use to smash statues of gods who make us sad.

This is my art. This is what I came to Guatemala for. This is what I aspire to: conviving convibing collaborating co-existing co-evolving communing: waking up together. Elbowing people who are still sleepy and getting elbowed when I nod off. I need you and you need me. We also need paint. Prefereably finger paint.

And so comes this very long letter: a jumbled personal retrospective after 8 and a half months here. What in the hell just happened?

Chapter 1

Sometimes proof that God exists is a small curl of surprise kitten rising and falling on your chest as you breathe on the day that you think you just can't hack it. She is a recent arrival to the house one I am infinitely grateful for. No bigger than my hand but capable of receiving all the affection in the known universe without flinching or creating reasons more significant than the house mouse for running away. She doesn't run away: she scales my pant leg and sweater and perches on my shoulder. She is Milkshake the fabucat, one of many snapshots that will comrpise my time in Guatemala.

Snapshots: there is a balance to be struck between this strangely modern phenomenon of "capturing the moment" and letting it flow through your hands like water. I think that is a lot of the drive behind the art that I do for me: I must absorb something beautiful until the barrier between it and me falls away and there is only the curves and color and form of it informing me, I have to dance until I am no longer moving my body by my own will, I have to act until the spirit moves me. I look to die a little every day of my own accord. If I don't, I don't feel alive.

And so goes my snapshot collection of the week:

On the rooftop teaching an old sailor how to play "Casas de Carton" an anthem of the El Salvadorian guerrilla while dozens after dozens of streaming kites move through blue sky above like fighting fish, elegant languid defiant. Devastingly graceful and slow. Below: gangs of barefoot brown children crowd on the tin and concrete rooftops covering the hills watching their octagons of hallowed sticks and colorful rice paper dance: Ninos el color de mi tierra.....

Tomorrow I would take a kayak across a lake in search of clean water to bathe in: dock on the dock of a phenomenally wealthy white naked women (who is present in this story, covering her thin breasts with a corinth colored towel and looking on half aghast) on the edge of a pristine cove and, to her English horror lather up my body suds up my hair and go cannonballng into the choppy water the world's deepest lake. I come up gasp for air, bobbing and shaking off soap as the 7 volcanoes surrounding me wax in and out of view according to the sting in my eyes. Literally breathtaking. Shake off the water, slither into my kayak and paddle away.....

Always there is the flow of color through my being. The thousands of rainbows handwoven into cloth wrapping the hips, thighs, and breasts of millions of indigenous women who refuse to be conquered. The way that light moves across their skin whose accents roll into shadows of deep coppery purple... The way that light comes out of their eyes when they wish you together with all of the generations that live within them: Good morning.

But this is just the week.

After spending 8 months here in Guatemala I figure I am due for contemplation. What have I learned here? What did I do here? What am I leaving with? What did I leave?

Chapter 2

The mural, all 120 square meters of it is done. When I arrived the space in front of the wall was a a fairly fetid stretch of earth littered with disposable diapers, plates, and plastic whatnots. The wall was covered in mud and only painted about 50% of the way up its 12 foot height. As I began to scrub the wall and prepare it people slowly started to take mind that the space aswell needed cleaning: a friendly grandfather showed up on Sunday afternoons to pick up trash with his bare hands.

In groups of 4- 6, my supporting artists from the local high shcool, came to help paint the wall in turns of three days. They had drawn all of the designs themselves with the help of a friend from Grupo Apoyo Mutuo: a testament to the armed conflict as lived by their families, visions of their Mayan culture and hopes for the future of their people. When they came to paint, I felt as though I could reach out and touch the effects of an educational system designed to turn out obedient plantation workers: they respectfully waited to take orders and looked panicked when I refused any and all authority projected on to me:

"Ma'am, what color do you want me to paint this?"

"Maria (Juan, Jose, Irma, Marylin, Tomasa, Nixon, Diego, Manuel, Manuela, etc. etc.), what color would you like to?"

Blank stare.

"Listen, I trust that god gave you a good brain and creativity. I leave you to that. The great thing about paint is that if you don't like it you can cover it up so experiment and make sure that you are having fun while you do it."

I must have had this same conversation or variations of it about fifteen times daily. Without fail by the third day of the kids' time with me they were all smiling and enthusiastic and MOST importantly they did not look to me as the source of all answers in the universe. And so it came to pass that as the jovenes transformed themselves, transformed the wall, so too the strip of earth in front of the mural became a corridor for butterflies. The butterflies came slowly: at first just one a week. And now after two months of hard work, at least six flutter by daily. Huge drooping orange, red, and yellow ones. Logically they are attracted by the colors on the wall but I believe, deep down, they are called there by something more. The mural is more than paint: this work of art helped close the wounds of the armed conflict for many of the people who helped me organize it, it gave the opportunity for the school's director SEnora Maria, to give her testimony for the first time: she hadn't breathed a word for over 20 years. It helped kids get in touch with their innate power to touch, move and create the world that they live in. It liteally granted the space to speak truth into silence. The mural is a testament to the beauty and richness of a culture under constant attack by anti-indigenous educational policies and racism. It is full of the pride of young people who have few opportunities to have their talents realized. It is full of magic and blessed by butterflies.

Chapter 3

I continue to leaf through the photos of my mind and try and find the ones worth saving before they all dissolve in the rapidly softening focus of age:

There are places here where you can walk in the streets and there are so many women clapping corn dough between their palms to make tortillas that it sounds as though its raining. To the Mayans, corn is their connection to god. Corn is the basis of life and the clay that is used to make women, children, and men.

The richness of this tradition is always juxtaposed by poverty. Wild dogs stare me down in front of the tortilla stands and people are reduced to standards of life that are not much better. I remember sitting in the plaza next to one such man. He was covered in dirt and sour stench from head to toe and had just finished some kind of labor. People here wear straps on their foreheads that connect to heavy loads carried on their backs behind their necks and his lay cast at his feet. He was eating tortillas and chicken surrounded by wild dogs. I tried to speak with him but he must have misunderstood reached a filthy hand into a sack and pulled out a tortilla to offer me at the moment a spindle of drool fell from his mouth. I accepted:

Buddha ate the leper's fingers that fell into his begging bowl.

Large groups of brothers and sisters move like flocks of pidgeons. Sometimes clothed and clean, sometimes not. They are curious about the strange red headed foreigner yet at any moment their shyness (and wariness) will send them running away to hide, giggling nervously. Grown-ups aren't always much different, they are just better at dressing up the same reaction. And so I have spent much time, walking through the streets as an outsider. Sometimes joyfully, enjoying how easy it is to make people laugh with my funny foreignisms and sometimes with pain splitting me in two as I take root in solitude. (If I could see my heart on those days I think it would look like my childhood horticultural experiments: usually an avocado pit stuck on all sides with toothpicks, suspended over non-nutritive water, and splitting up and down the middle with growth.)

Solitude is a funny animal and one I have had great stretches of time to contemplate. Even in prison, where people get together with the express purpose of creating hell for one another, solitary confinement is one of the most inhumane and feared punishments. I have come to the conclusion that it is our desperate need to love and be loved that is at the root of all evil. If we are not trying to buy love with our elaborate "ME" project of personality, wealth, physicality, or then we run from it because we think we can't or on some hidden level, are not good enough. I think of my brother who, at his core, joined the Marines for the purpose of gaining esteem, became a combat engineer, went to Falujah (a noted spots for civilian casualties in Iraq), and came back a man not changed for the better.

Everyone has an emotional vaccuum within them. It is deeply feared psychological territory and everytime I travel I seem get thrown into it. We run to fill it with as many activities and mental movies possible at any given time. Yet after 8 months (preceded by years of travel, Buddhist, Hindu, and Contemplative study) I have found that this space is synonymous with the silence below all sound, the space from which spontaneity and creativity arise. It is why there is no ego, no abiding self. Out of this space arise our habits of mind, that become habits of speech and body. At every moment they are getting spat out of this well of solitude, trying madly to cover it over. Without those habits, only silence remains. Before I label it as loneliness, existential angst, mal de amores, or whatever else: learning to live deeply from the inside of it is the key to something very rare that forms the core of our humanity: authentic freedom.

Chapter 4

How this relates to my work as an "Artistactivista"

For large chunks of my stayhere I have been working on the interminable project of gigantic canvas books: one on the rights of the child and one on integrity written by a group of teenagers. And much of those large canvas books has been painted by children. And I have watched them half jealous wondering at what it looks and feels like to see lines of color magically coming out from under their hands for the first time. They are in touch with this silence without even knowing it. They have never been apart from it They are fully present and they are awake to the magic of creation. They fall in love with it. They are nowhere but alive and in the moment. They are exercising art's only law: freedom absolute.

In two days the book on the rights of the child will be read in front of a group of 500 little ones. I hope that when all of their little faces, upturned and expectant in front of the turning pages, pages full of messages of human dignity and intrinsic worth that at least a little slides off the giant canvas pages and lands inside the center of their minds, never to be touched or taken from them. I hope it contributes to permanently corrode their ability to take orders from anyone.

Chapter 5

We will return to the snapshot collection:

Stay tuned.......

2008-09-30T07:26:00.000-07:00

belly dance css

2008-09-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

antigua.. A pretty colonial city

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antigua...

2008-09-23T16:56:00.001-07:00

antigua...

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hitchiking home in flat bed sand truck

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cumpleaños

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this egg was cooked inside an orange peel.... Cool.. Less dishes to wash

The abandoned Christian Camp where we camped

2008-09-23T15:45:00.000-07:00

the fire that would only lite for 20 second segments at a time

Heguel.... my buddy

Camping in the hills outside Guatemala

2008-09-23T15:35:00.001-07:00

this is a parasite... Beautiful like so many parasites of the mind...
Gloria....

2008-09-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

Locked out of my friends house in Guate 45 minutes after the party´s start time... oh tiempo chapín
playing guitar in the street... Mercedes Sosa to be exact Gracias a la vida
Before our ritual (yes I had an all women's ritual for my birthday)
the buddies
the buddies....

preparing for my birthday

2008-09-23T15:16:00.000-07:00

Flowers from the market for my party!

Holy shit I am 24! (my boss at right)
Singing!

Loaded with things on way to Guate City

Every day we stop and drink a glass of Atol

2008-09-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

Cowboy Condoms.... Gotta lov ¨em

Elote or Corn on the Cob

2008-09-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

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rituals outside the temple on top of the hill....
these guys watch us work everyday...

Chiché Market

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meet the goylz

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Painting

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More shots

2008-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

My friend Frida!
The school
The eternal vending...

Mural updates

2008-09-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

NADIA ROCKS!!!!

Mural updates

2008-09-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

Chiché...

2008-09-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

Shots from my principal life in rural Guate

2008-09-01T14:40:00.000-07:00

Main street
The milpas (cornfields)
The school on whose outerwall we are painting the mural
The market.... Every Saturday wall to wall people coming to sell.. Mosh pit with fruit.
la milpa

Shots from my second life in Guate City

2008-09-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

So I picked up nadia from the airport and we went gallavanting around with friends in the capital and stopped midway for lunch. I was about to faint. We sidled up a long flight of stairs and sat down in the kitchen of an indigenous woman preparing chuchitos (small tamales pequeños). It wa sbeautiful to watch her....
This is Nadia and my friend Patrick who is obviously into Nadia....

mural

2008-08-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

2008-08-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Cute kid...
I went to a week long contact improv, juggling, clowning workshop... I was having too much fun to take more pictures than this one...

2008-08-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

Saturday Market
Girls from Joyabaj
Papel Picado... This is the room that houses the village saint. The village saint travels from person to person.. It is unannounced. I stumbled across this room walking back from painting....
The village saint....

chamelco

2008-08-07T16:50:00.000-07:00

traditional costumes of my region

my favorite...

2008-08-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

traditional dance of COBAN

2008-08-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

Befriending local wildlife..........
Still trying.....
Playing guitar.. for said "talent show"

Jackie rocks... She works for the library headquarters....

2008-08-07T16:31:00.000-07:00

More from Chamelco COBAN

2008-08-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

Still not convinced this counts as a talent show...
My boss...

Beautiful Kekchi women in traditional dress

2008-08-07T16:21:00.000-07:00

Here is our talent show display... No comment

2008-08-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

Dinner Before the big outing

"sleeping" in the library

Much talk....

2008-08-06T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is my friend Nancy.... She is a bomb of energy and knows how to get shit done... I love her for that .....

This is one of the little ladies who went with us to Chamelco... She became quite my little friend and companion... We talked a lot about how to grow fruit and different bugs...

2008-08-06T16:12:00.000-07:00

Another quijote painting from the Spanish cultural center....
This is my tragically gothic painter friend in guatemala city....
OH THE HUGE MANATEE!!!!!!!!!!!
Another quijote painting from the Spanish cultural center....

Cute kids!

2008-08-06T16:09:00.000-07:00

Crazy baby!!!!! RAR!!!!!

2008-08-06T15:56:00.000-07:00

We call this guy El Chino. He comes to the library every day and has for about half of his life time
This is Pablito... He is a special needs child and is also one of my best friends... He is very unabashedly affectionate... SEÑO!!!! He yells and wraps his arms around my hips, smiles, and skips away...
This little girl is adorable... I love the fact that her father brings her very often to the library to spend time with her which is nearly unheard of in this macho culture....

2008-08-06T15:48:00.000-07:00

The wall is right in front of the football field in front of the cemetery. this is my neighbor lady on her way to leave weekly flowers for her loved ones....

Pintando por fin!

2008-08-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

I keep my camera in a sock. It happens to be a patriotic sock with stars and stripes. It sometimes likes to take pictures inside my bag. This is one of my favorites.....

Poema

2008-08-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Busco el silencio
como dos manos grandes e invisibles dentro de aquellos yo paso momentos
ahogando en las gargantas profundas de flores:
en las arrugas abundantes brotando en los ojos de viejos bienvividos:
crysantemos adornando tumbas sencillaz.
Me ahogo:
La fragilidad y fuerza de gladiolas cortadas
rectas en los brazos de mujeres orgullosas
haciendo guerra de echar su perfume en el aire porque saben que van a morir
y que estan moriendo
poco a poco
como nosotros todos
haciendo guerra de no cerrarnos
frente de la vida.
Me ahogo:
Las curvas de rosas
sus venos oscuros como estrillas sobre las barrigas de embarazadas
poco a poco
desnudandose frente á la luz
petalo por petalo
revelando el grand espacío que llevan adentro.....

2008-08-03T11:32:00.002-07:00

Untitled

To spend a life living on a prayer for beans, for rain for life to continue despite the worms of evil continually gnawing at its core

to be reduced to need raw merciless because in this life there is no mercy

The space between thoughts like the space between meals widens

Thighs widen and another life comes into the world

The rains come

The corn is cut

The belts tighten and people fill their bellies with God

And god bends his knees to ask forgiveness.

Untitled freewrite

Archived to the cemetary in my head

All that came before: came and dead

I am fragile: linked in iron to this terrible need for love you me we are bound to kneel before in some corner of our minds driving us to madness:

Its in our nature

He put 2 pistols on the table and said this:

My ability to kill you

your ability to kill me

This is our nature

And back they went into the small of his back and the curve hollowed between his hip bone and belly.

And this is still what makes us me we equal before all men my terrible need for them

touch be touched

be taken given

Take:

Hidden behind guns and funds and whatever else we can find to run from this great candle flame burning down the

wick-spine-middle of our bodies.

Gypsy's secret:

Have no future and no past

Movement devoid of direction is dance

have the the courage to stay in only one place:

walk vertically through heaven and hell

pray for solace

cycle through realities

and move on.

Todavia

Estoy perdiendo sangre

La tierra y yo sangramos juntas

haciendo pinturas sobre el suelo

y ahi nacen arboles

llenos de dulce gotas de

cerezas caendo.

2008-08-03T11:32:00.001-07:00

Luto

Its nothing really

but the slow awakening to a cold bed

the drain of color from the memories that are filled with you

The kind quiet inside our kiss has turned into a great silence

around your footprints

I should have paid more attention to the sound

the door made when it closed behind you.

I should have known it was the last time.

2008-08-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

Stile

I am building for you, my heart, a resting place

Melting snow white linen off a bed of crocuses,

the first flower of my Spring.

I am dusting windows while singing my walls wide open

to make a room for you in this sunlit hermitage.

The shutters are already tied back for the summer months ahead when sage breezes will kiss your body with night’s sweet reprieve.

Sleep well, for all the air is conspiring in pollen grains a heavy harvest and fat winters.

I am busy breathing silence so your story may drift through me,

Peacefully,

back to your dream’s origin,

We can just listen as the revelation unfolds,

And abandon tomorrow in the deep navel of eternity.

Where

All is well

And forever will be.

Historia de los derechos del niño

2008-08-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

LA HISTORIA DE SHIN

Pagina 1

En una bella aldea rodeada por los arboles verdes y frondosos en donde los pajaritos hacen sus nidos y su sombra cubre a los caminantes cansados, una aldea en la que lo apartado de la ciudad la hace más pura, más sencilla y más humana, ahí vivía una niña llena de vida y de ilusiones.

Su nombre era Tomasa y la gente del lugar la llamaba Shin, Shin era de ojos negros y profundos como los barrancos que rodean nuestras tierras, sus dientes parecían granos de elote blanco, su piel era color de barrial y su cabello largo y liso parecía anunciar la noche.

Apenas siete inviernos había vivido Shin y había aprendido que la tierra hay que alistarla para la siembra, que el maíz se escoge para que de buena mazorca, y en sus labios se habían saboreado las moras, las guayabas y las anonas dulces y jugosas.

Todo parecía normal en la vida de Shin, pero…. Un día encontró un librito chiquito, un poco torcido, manchado con huellas de manitas pequeñas. Ella lo abrió ¡Que bonitas figuras! Tenía flores, pájaros y unos dibujitos pequeños, muchos de ellos. ¿Qué era eso?

Ella se fue corriendo a través de los campos à la cocina de su casita donde se encontró su mama tortillando con todas sus hermanas.

Pagina 2

Shin pasó el libro à su mamá, quien, limpiando la masa fresca de sus manos con su gabacha dejó de tortillar un rato e inspeccionó las páginas chiquitas. Ella suelto un gran suspiro y rió... "Hace muchos años desde la ultima vez que vi un libro…" Una sonrisa picara cruzó su cara: " Nadie quiso dejarme ir a escuela pero me fui. Decían que las mujeres no necesitan ir a la escuela. Yo no les puso coco. Ahora yo sé leer y tus hijas y nietas y tataranietas también van a saber leer y escribir." Dijo orgullosamente.

Su mamá abrió el libro y dejó sus manos tocar las caracteres y dibujos que habían dentro. "Mira m'hija….."

Pagina 3

"Tu eres especial…."

Entre todos los seres humanos tu eres única: una creación de Dios que merece todo el bien que hay. Tienes el derecho a un nombre y una nacionalidad. Tienes el derecho de ser quien eres con todos sus dones y atributos. Eres tan importante que toda la gente grande en el mundo se juntaron y escribieron leyes específicamente para protegerte: las leyes se llaman los derechos del niño. Y que es un derecho, quieres preguntar, un derecho es algo que siempre tienes y algo que los demás siempre te va a respetar y dar. Este libro te va a explicar algunos de sus derechos.

Y porque tienen ustedes derechos, quieres preguntar.

Sencillamente porque tú, y todos los niños, son el divino tesoro del mundo y nosotros, las personas grandes, te queremos muchisisimo!

Pagina 4

Tu cuerpo también tiene el derecho a comida saludable y cuido medico: para mantenerse sano tu cuerpo necesita muchas diferentes comidas. ¿Puedes leer algunas? (Fruta, elotes, frijoles, vegetales, tortillas, pollo, huevos, leche) ¡Tu cuerpo no puede sobrevivir comiendo solamente chatarra! Así te va a decir tu doctora. ¿Por que? ¡Porque tu y todos los niños del mundo merecen disfrutar una buena salud para que tu cerebro, huesos, y músculos puedan crecer súper bien!

Pagina 5

¿Y que mas necesitamos para crecer súper bien? ¡Amor! Cada ser humano necesita amor para crecer súper bien y encontrar su lugar en el mundo. Por esto tu tienes el derecho à ser parte de una familia que te ama. Tienes el derecho de desarrollar tus talentos, jugar y explorar en un ambiente de amor. Ningún niño merece ser maltratado: de ser golpeado, de tener miedo que alguien les va hacer daño, de ser amenazado con palabras fuertes, o que alguien toca tus partes privadas a la fuerza. ¡ Porque tu y todos los niños, son el tesoro divino del mundo y nosotros, las personas grandes te queremos dar todo el cariño que tenemos!

Pagina 6

Es cierto con amor crecemos bien. Crecemos siendo personas honradas, simpáticas y podamos convivir con los demás. ¿Cada uno de nosotros vivimos en una comunidad llena de gente y sabes que? Cada uno de ustedes tiene una voz y sus propias ideas que merecen ser escuchadas. Cada niño tiene el derecho de expresarse, tener sus ideas tomadas en cuenta y participar en los actividades de su comunidad. ¿Por que? Porque cada uno de ustedes tiene una voz e ideas diferentes. Tienen inteligencia y creatividad que tu comunidad necesita para enriquecerse. Tu voz es tan hermosa que gozamos escucharla. ¡Y, mas que todo, nosotros las personas grandes tenemos mucho que aprender de ti y todos los niños! Entonces explora tu mundo, levanta tus manos y comparte lo que piensas.

Pagina 7

Puedes empezar a participar en tus escuelas. ¿Estamos todos y todas en escuela verdad? Sabes que no solamente vamos á la escuela para divirtirnos y ver á nuestros amigos pero también tenemos el derecho á una educación. Todos, los niños y las niñas, tienen los mismos derechos de aprender á leer, á escribir, á aprender matemática, explorar nuestro mundo a través de la ciencia, y sobre todo aprender á pensar y hablar para nosotros mismos. ¡ La educación es un gran oportunidad y hay que aprovecharlo!

Pagina 8

¿Ahora que vemos aquí sobre esta pagina? ¿Qué dice aquí abajo? LA UNIDAD HACE LA FUERZA. Es cierto la unidad hace la fuerza. Nosotros, los seres humanos, nos necesitamos para vivir, convivir, y enfrentar los problemas que suelen pasar en la vida. Por esto cada niño tiene el derecho de juntarse con otros niños y organizarse. Cierra tus ojos e imagínate una cocina desordenada. ¿Será muy difícil de cocinar en esta cocina no? Ahora imagínate una cocina limpia y ordenada. ¿Será muy fácil de encontrar todo lo que uno necesita para hacer una rica comida verdad? Por esto, niños y jóvenes en todas partes del mundo se organicen en sus escuelas, iglesias, bibliotecas, y aldeas para compartir trabajo, divertirse, y aprender à servir mejor sus comunidades.

Pagina 9

La mama de Shin cerró el libro y se acerco á dar su hija un abrazo.

“¿A todo esto tengo el derecho?” preguntó.

“Si m’hija” respondió la mama.

Las dos se quedaron mirando sonriendo. Porque las dos sabían que Shin, y todos las niñas y los niños, son el tesoro divino del mundo y que son importantes, preciosos y sobre todo muy muy muy querido

2008-07-16T17:04:00.000-07:00

mural designs

2008-07-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

Fundraising chapter 2

2008-06-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

In order to help the kids at the library get to their anual retreat I organized a mural job in the next city over..... Here's how it turned out.....

Here is claudia mi patrocinadora..... She owns the only bohemian place within a 100 mile radius..... Of course we hit it off..
Hurray We're done!
Dexter.... The ground cloud.....

Mural de los jovenes

2008-06-26T13:35:00.001-07:00

2008-06-18T18:11:00.000-07:00

2008-06-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

2008-06-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

2008-06-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

2008-06-18T18:02:00.000-07:00

2008-06-18T17:59:00.000-07:00

Contents od poemario

2008-06-18T17:43:00.002-07:00

Here you go the contents of the new anthology...... Stay tuned for illustrations as soon as they can be uploaded from thw Word doc

poesia de Tomas Amado Perez

2008-06-18T17:43:00.001-07:00

Canto de Esperanza Para El Meme de Guatemala

I
Manuel, Meme a largas
como quien dice “nadie”
Meme de mi pueblo,
Meme de mi tierra,
Meme de Guatemala.

Meme hijo de esta tierra aborigen
corazón de chirimilla en tun milenario;
Meme hijo del esperma ancestral
del espiral jeroglífico tropical
ascendido al sol Maya-Kekchí.

Meme hermano del vuelo de mariposas
de alas verdes entre esperanzas de quetzales,
Meme, hermano de viento frío
de montañas y volcanes inolvidables,
de ríos clamorosos en distancias paralelas.

Meme del campo sin cultivo,
de la luna sin noche,
del arado sin buey,
del verso sin poesía,
y de la vida sin alma.

II
Yo sé Manuel, que una nube gris
ciega tu mirada de esperanza;
yo sé que el ruido de las olas del mar
ahogan el sonido de tu palabra;
yo se que la verdad de tu vida
se conjuga en el abecedario
de cada hombre humilde,
de cada campesino, de cada obrero
y de cada estudiante.

Yo sé Meme, yo sé
que si cien veces nacieras,
mil veces… mil veces
apagarían la vela de tu existencia
las balas de la metralla asesina.
Yo sé que por tu estrella
sembrarán una cruz
y por esa cruz sembrarán miles de cruces en este calvario que puebla
la tierra fértil de esta patria inocente.
Meme, yo se que no te has ido,

1

porque mientras que haya injusticia,
porque mientras haya explotación,
porque mientras haya opresión
estará tu voz de protesta,
reclamando lo que cientos de voces
reclamarán a estallidos.
Estarán tus manos obreras
tejiendo alfabetos de esperanza
para miles de campesinos olvidados.
Estarán tus ojos de estudiante
Señalando el camino verdadero
Entre las sendas de ideologías demagógicas.
Estarán tus pies de gente sencilla
fuertes, firmes y de frente
sobre esta tierra mía.
Yo sé que no has ido,
yo sé que estás presente, aquí,
de pié levantando a esta patria,
porque los hijos buenos nunca se olvidan,
nunca mueren, se quedan de pie,
se quedan de pie para volverse patria.
Yo sé, que de tu sangre y de la sangre
De todos los que asesinan injustamente,
Será el néctar de las generaciones nuevas.
Yo sé, que tu pensamiento es una antorcha que encenderá la llama de los TECUN UMANES mil veces resucitados…

Yo sé, Meme, que el canto de tu lira
vibra y vibrará con ímpetu inefable
dentro de las arterias de los hombres libres de esta patria adolorida.

III
Meme, con todas las tristezas de la raza,
con todos los dolores de la vida;
Meme con todos los sufrimientos azules,
con todas las esperanzas marchitas.
Meme es el hombre de llanto,
Meme es el llanto del hombre,
Meme es el pueblo sufrido,
Meme eres tú, Meme soy yo,
Meme es ella, Meme es Guatemala,
Meme es el dolor de mi patria.

2
¿Cuántas veces te he visto sangrar?
¿Cuántas veces te he oído gemir?
¿Cuántas veces soportarás tus angustias?
¿Cuántas, pero cuántas veces volverá tu pena?

Meme de mi pueblo,
Meme de mi Guatemala,
yo admiro los callos
de tus manos laboriosas
que jubilan centenares de jornales diarios.
Yo admiro el sudor de frente inagotable
que humedece el surco sin semillas.
Yo admiro tus pies descalzos
que marcan tu dicha ausente
a cada paso insultada.
Yo admiro tu tristeza constante
que está llena de amargos luceros
y estrellas mil veces desteñidas.
Yo admiro tu esperanza que es tan fugaz como el eco de un canto ligero
que se ahoga de ilusiones.
Yo admiro tu indiferencia al frío,
tus ropas raídas y viejas
que acarician tu piel desnuda.

Yo admiro en tus ojos
siempre
el cielo nublado
de mi pobre patria enlutada.

IV
Manuel, el Meme, ese eres tú,
ese es ella, ese, ese soy yo,
ese es el retrato del hombre
del hombre de mi patria.
Meme ¡Oh mi buen Meme!
Meme sin alegrías, Meme sin sonrisas,
Meme sin familia, Meme sin casa,
Meme sin zapatos, Meme sin pan,
Meme sin nadie, Meme sin nada,
sin nada más que la luz del día
que enciende tu larga pena.

¡Oh, mi buen Meme!
¿Qué hacer para aliviar tus penas?
¿Qué hacer para despertar tu pesadilla?
¿Qué hacer para darte lo que nada tenemos?

3

¡Oh! Si esta es la realidad,
la cruda realidad nuestra
…y por ti,
hoy mi verso llora,
hoy el corazón se me deshoja
y las palabras se ahogan en mi garganta.

¡Oh! Meme que caminas solitario
por las veredas polvorientas de mi tierra,
por las calles empedradas de pesares…
Sí, anda, despierta, grita con compasión,
alza tu mirada hacia el confín,
levanta tu voz,
levanta tus manos,
levanta tus brazos,
ve, y asciende a las montañas
que mi patria, que mi Guatemala
aún te reclama.

-Fin-

4
La Noche de la Ultima Serenata

Mario del Río, un simpático mocetón que oscilaba entre los diecinueve a veintiún años de edad, de estatura regular, sus músculos proporcionados y ágiles lo hacían aún más joven de lo que era, sus ojos parecían dos grandes avellanas incrustadas en su piel morena, sonrisa en la flor de sus labios, romántico y enamorado del sexo bello; las muchachas de cabello largo eran su fascinación. Era todo un tipo estilo Juan Tenorio. Por algo le decían sus amigos: vos Mario sí que sos un cabronazo pa’ las traídas…
La aldea donde vive es pequeña. Dista de uno a dos kilómetros del pueblo de donde es originario; la cual está rodeada de cientos de pinabetes y bellas casuarinas. Por el centro de la comunidad se levanta humildemente una rústica iglesia, con su convento y corredor al lado del camino ancho, por donde pasa la mayoría de personas y donde los transeúntes hacen una pequeña parada, para después seguir su caminata.
Los días domingos a temprana hora, bajan las muchachas más hermosas luciendo sus acorralados y multicolores rebozos, ataviadas de sus más lindos chachales; a escuchar la ceremonia religiosa que el cura del pueblo semanalmente viene a celebrar.
La casa donde Mario habitaba, era de su patrón don Ramiro, dueño de la mayoría de las tierras fértiles de la aldea y se la dio a cambio de que le cuidase todos los terrenos sembrados de maíz y fríjol y que las cosechas fueran cada vez más abundantes. Esta casa la cuidaba como propia y la cual siempre se mantenía desolada porque Mario, no tenía madre, ni padre, ni hermanos, ni mujer, ni hijos, ni pariente cercano, todos habían muerto ya hacía muchas lunas y muchos soles por una peste que se llevó a toda su familia. Por lo cercano que estaba la casita a la iglesia la mantenía bien limpia y ahora

5
luce de cerca un ordenado corralito de caña de carrizo que Mario le hizo para el día de Esquipulas.
Mario del Río, el muchacho sin destino acariciador del cielo y nubes, por naturaleza era romántico y despreocupado, cuando por casualidad a su paso encontraba alguna muchacha. Oh bien que él las buscara les echaba las flores más bonitas, los piropos más sonores y a veces le brotaban hasta versos rimados, que él instantáneamente improvisaba.
Todas las noches salía de la aldea, se dirigía al pueblo, con su guitarra al hombro y machete a la cintura. Ya era conocido por todos por su habilidad en la interpretación de sus bien acompasados corridos y por su voz empíricamente educada. Era tanto el hábito de ir al pueblo noche a noche que en Mario se hizo costumbre, aunque hubiese frío, tronara o lloviera, salía con rumbo al pueblecito que semejaba una paloma acurrucada entre las manos poderosas de la montaña.
Iba a diario, porque a diario le daba serenata a la muchacha de quien estaba locamente enamorado. La Juliana: pero la mentada Juliana además de ser bonita era muy tímida y nunca correspondía a los amores que Mario le ofrecía.

○●○

Cuando en el pentagrama azul de nuestros sentimientos, se interponen colores de incomprensión y se marchitan lentamente las flores cubiertas de felicidad; entonces todo nos parece un sueño negro e inacabable, una pesadilla loca y absurda… Así es la vida de ingrata e injusto nuestro corazón cuando es caprichoso, pero, si se lucha, si se esfuerza por alcanzar satisfacer nuestros más grandes anhelos; veremos con júbilo cómo nos elevamos en espiral, así como eleva un tornado, observaremos a nuestros pies la anchura de un mar esperanzado, jinetearemos un corcel de

6
transparencia verde y atravesaremos por el espinazo nuestros gigantescos problemas hechos volcanes de granito; entonces nuestra palabra se convertirá en fantástica mariposa de cristal para decir; ¡Lo he logrado!... ¡Lo hice!... ¡He triunfado!

○●○

El pobre Mario cada vez se sentía más enamorado, por ratos especialmente en la noche sentía cómo su corazón le iba creciendo, rápidamente se le hinchaba y ya por horas esperaba que le reventara pero de puritito amor que le guardaba a la Juliana. A eso se debía que cuando daba sus serenatas, a las melodías que interpretaba les ponía cada vez más delicadeza, más romanticismo, más sentimiento, con la esperanza que la ingrata Juliana cediera, pero ella, ella ni siquiera se asomaba a la ventana donde él llegaba noche a noche a llorar sus desventura y a cantar con los sentimientos más profundos de su apasionado corazón. Mario sabía que a ella le gustaban sus canciones, que ella las escuchaba gustosamente, pero ¿Por qué no sales? ¿Por qué no me hablas? ¿Acaso tienes corazón de piedra? El se hacía uno y mil pensamientos aunque ella la Julianita no saliera, aunque no le hablara, él seguiría insistiendo porque él tenía un lejano presentimiento, una esperanza de que alguna noche la llegaría a convencer.
Entre sus adentros Mario se repetía: mañana volveré… sí amor, volveré….
Una noche de esas hermosas, cuando la luna con su luz opaca impregna los horizontes con su tinte lechosos y los coyotes con sus aullidos parecen alcanzar el infinito de los astros, Mario del Río, después de haber concluido nuevamente su infructuosa serenata, regresó a la aldea a eso de la media noche, con su guitarra sobre el hombro proyectada directamente hacia el nishtamalero,

7
que era un diamante suspendido en el joyel nocturno. Al pasar frente al corredor que está en el convento de la iglesia de la aldea, con atónita sorpresa, vio a una mujer con su caballera extendida sobre su rostro y vestida de blanco, parecía una primorosa flor que ofrecía su belleza tentadora…
El inmediatamente pensó: mi Julianita, es igual a la Juliana, es ella, si, si es ella, ahora es la oportunidad para hablarle, hoy si no se va de las manos.. ni que yo fuera tan d’ialtiro pura lata.
Mario del Río, desde lejos comenzó a echarle flores y los piropos más bonitos que sabía, pero la muchacha de la blanda caballera extendida, estaba callada, no parecía escucharle, estaba como ausente y parecía más bien divagada. La mujercita de túnica blanca se hizo hacia el fondo del convento. Se sentó sobre el blanco de ocote que toscamente labrado a mano servía para descanso a los que allí llegasen. Mario, dejando su guitarra yuxtapuesta a uno de los pilares, se dispuso conquistar a la mujer que era dueña de sus sueños y que le inspiraba todo el cariño de su ser.
Acercóse macilento, le dijo clamoroso:…. Julianita, mi Julianita chula…. Quiso abrazarla, pero vio con sus propios ojos cómo la mujer se le esfumaba tan raramente de sus brazos, era algo así como abrazar un vacío porque no sintió abrazar nada, no sintió ese roce placentero de tocar lo que se quiere.
Mario levantó su mano temblorosa hasta el rostro cubiertos por los cabellos sedosos de la muchacha, para verle su cara, para acariciársela y miró extrañado cómo su mano atravesaba sus cabellos, le atravesaba su rostro, le atravesaba su cabeza y todo lo que tocaba de ella lo atravesaba con facilidad, y no lograba a tocarla, no sentía palparla ni mucho menos ver su rostro…

8

La mujer parecía ser como de aire con figura humana: era como orgánica pero hecho de sombra, aunque estaba presente y se podía ver era insustancial.
En este instante Mario, con voz quebrada, con voz que se le ahogaba en la garganta, musitó quedamente:
Julianita…a puchis, si está no es la Juliana.
E-e-esta, e-e-es, la-la, me-mera, si-si-siguanaba…
¡Y se oyó un grito, hecho un trueno rompiendo los tímpanos del silencio de la noche, la luna palideció y las estrellas quedaron absortas…!

○●○

Los vecinos de la pequeña aldea, muy de madrugada, encontraron la guitarra hecha en mil pedazos y a Mario del Río, el muchacho de las románticas serenatas, nunca más se le oyó cantar… porque apareció muerto bajo el banco ocote del convento, con el cuello amoratada los ojos bien abiertos y la lengua de afuera. Tal vez su otro yo y su voz huyeron muy lejos, más allá del límite del horizonte, o quizá la mujer del vestido blanco y cabellera extendida sobre su rostro se lo llevó consigó mismo… Quien sabe a dónde…

9

Poesia de C. Afre Arevalo

2008-06-18T17:22:00.000-07:00

Chiché el Municipio Amigo de la Paz
Título Ganado a nivel Nacional,
en Noviembre del 2,004
Declarado por El Comisión Presidencial de Derechos Humanos

Invité a la violencia
al concierto del amor,
ella respondió: no puedo asistir.

El trinar mañanero de pájaros,
el sublime susurro del viento,
el rítmico sonido del agua
y el sonido armonioso del bosque
solo invitan a la paz.

Las manos encallecidas del hombre,
la frente trabajadora de la mujer,
corazones abiertos de sentimiento.

De sentimiento chichelense,
en armonía con Dios,
en armonía con la humanidad,
que hoy canta a los cuatro vientos
en concierto de campanas, marimbas
y sones los albores de la vida.

Alborada de vida
en un nuevo amanecer de amor,
en un amanecer de hermandad
donde éste Chiché de mis amores
muestra con su gente al mundo:
que somos el municipio
“Amigo de la Paz”

EL ARBOL

Papá sembró un árbol,
era un árbol de pino,
un día patié la semilla,
papá me dijo: . . .
¿Por qué estás matando el árbol?
yo respondí
¿Cómo? – no está parado pues
–entonces papá replicó:
esa semilla permite que este
viejo pino al morir siga viviendo.

EL AZADON

Parado en la esquina esperandoel llamado del campesino está
el azadón,
como un centinela cuida
el sueño del dueñoque carga energías en pazpara madrugar y cultivar la tierra,
juntos van los dos, no se hablan,pero son inseparables al compartir.

EL ZOPILOTE

Como un vigilante incansable
el zopilote vuela alto,
busca su alimento, cuida de mi vida,
busca el equilibrio,
no solo en su vuelo estiloso,
sino también
en el equilibrio de la naturaleza,
es ecologista, planea seguro,
come lo que sea y vive en armonía.

LA LLUVIA

Cuando cae la lluvia en mi aldea,
las gotas vienen como perlas de cristal
que al pasar por los rayos del sol
una a una va cambiando de color
y en conjunto van formando colores
que dan un fondo a los ranchitos
de mi comunidad, al igual que los
nacimientos de navidad.

LA VIDA

Pasa, la vida pasa
la vida va al compás del tiempo,
del tiempo que no frena su caminar
recuerdos y suspiros van quedando
del tiempo que se ha ido,
detenerlo quisiera, pero cada día,
es un día más vivido y solo quedan
recuerdos de los momentos que se han ido,
por eso vive y vive hoy,
¡ mañana. . . . Dios dirá!

TRISTEZA

De la frente de los hombres corrían gotas de sudor
la piocha picaba la tierra, no con fuerza de trabajo
sino con sentimiento de tristeza.
Lágrimas salían de sus ojos,
y aquel sol quemaba sus espaldas,
el sol no se sentía, no había lugar
para el ardiente sol.

EL HORMIGO

En la montaña hay un árbol grande y frondoso,
el campesino lo taló,su madera pulió,la madera salió morenacomo el color de mi genteformó un conjunto de trocitosy con ellos construyó un teclado,tecla a tecla emite un sonido,sonido de nota musical,teclas que al unirse hacen conjunto
conjunto que forma la marimba,de donde emergen sonidos maravillosos
con sabor a pueblo, con sabor a son,
sentimiento nacional que canta su canción.

EL DESCANSO

La neblina gris cubre la montaña
todo parece entre nublado,
el pájaro ha cesado su canto,
es hora de dormir, la tarde ha caído,
el sol se ha escondido,
solo un guardabarranca
acompaña la música del son,
que suena en el radio del campesino,
que regresa al rancho con el tercio
de leña a la espalda.

LA ZARABANDA

Ya está tronando la zarabanda,
los sones de mi pueblo se escuchan
con alegría en esta tierra mía,
sonido de son que replica su canción.

El cofrade prepara comida típica,
acompañada esta de trajes vistosos
y sonido de marimba, la fiesta arranca.

¡Ya se rompió la zarabanda!
el Pedro y la María bailan
al compás del son,
entre sus pies llevan pino,
pino oloroso a fiesta de pueblo.

Las jícaras de atol con suchil
se pasean por el salón de baile
dando la bienvenida a la
fiesta costumbrista
se oyen gritos y risas. . .
¡Mi pueblo está de fiesta!

LA LLUVIA Y EL SON

Caída de lluvia al final de la tarde,caída de lluvia al entrar la noche, a lo lejos un radio
toca música de son,se escucha el llorado
de una chirimía,suena el llanto de la marimba,
sus lágrimas son las gotas de agua que el cielo envía.
Mi pensamiento se entristecemi corazón emite
un suspiro de amor,al recordar a ese ser
que me abandono,a ese ser querido que se adelantó
al viaje sin retorno,a ese ser amado que hoy goza
de la presencia de Dios.
Así es la lluvia y el son
a veces nos alegran
y a veces nos ponen tristes.

LA TAPIZCA

Llegó la tapizca del maíz,
allá en el sitio, allá en mi terreno
se escuchan gritos alegres de
tapiscadotes que con afán cortan,
cortan y cortan, la mazorca de colores,
granitos que brillan al encender
los rayos del sol.
Se llenan los costales,
se llenan las redes,
hay abundancia de cosecha,
hay bendición de Dios.

Llega la mujer con el almuerzo
en canasto gigante sobre
la cabeza con soberbio equilibrio,
nuevamente el grito del tapiscador
se escucha de surco en surco,
hora de comer los deliciosos shepes,
musachiles y lacatamas acompañados

EL BARRILETE

Surca el cielo el barrilete de colores,
tiene formas geométricas distintas,
en lo alto forma un verdadero arco iris.
Arco iris de alegría infantil,
arco iris de colores alegres,
el niño aprecia el vuelo del barrilete
crea imágenes fantásticas e inocentes en su pensamiento puro y limpio.
El adulto emite un suspiro de recuerdo por aquella infancia perdida,
por esa infancia que partió junto con el tiempo.
El viento de octubre los lleva y los trae,
el barrilete, antesala al recuerdo
del ser que se ha ido,
del ser que ha partido.

LA NOCHE

Entrada la noche
los luceros encendidos en el firmamento
brillando con intensidad,
son el anuncio de una noche tranquila,
de una noche de descanso.
El trabajo agotador del día, ha terminado,
la tarea está cumplida,
la noche llama al descanso.
Descanso reparador cargado de paz,
cargado de sueños profundos de tranquilidad.

LA SIEMBRA

Tiempo de siembra,
tiempo de inicio de lluvia,
lluvia que cae como perlas de cristal
a mojar la tierra.

Suena la guitarra y el violín,
son los Ixiles que presentan su rito
a la semilla del maíz.

Maíz, fruto del trabajo del hombre
y la mujer campesina
que con amor y con afán,
siembran cuidan y cultivan.

Inicio de siembra, tiempo de un Sajbichil,
fiesta Maya-Ixil
rito de agradecimiento a Dios
por la semilla... sinónimo de vida.

EL RIO

Quisiera saber cuántos años
tiene el río, sí, el río que baña mi pueblo.
Quisiera saber cuántos años
vivió con agua pura y cristalina.

Lanzo la pregunta?
las aguas sonríen, y dicen:
fueron muchos,. . . . muchos años.

Pero, el tiempo pasó
el hombre creció
y mis aguas contaminó.

Aquí, sigo cansado . . . .
cargando con lo que no se quiere
con lo que no sirve.
¡ A….que tiempos me has hecho recordar, replica
con un suspiro de tristeza! . . . . . y sigue su caminar.

MAYO

Mayo viste de flores
flores de colores,
colores de fiesta
traídos de la floresta.

Mayo viste de mujeres,
mujeres santas y buenas,
de sentimientos alegres,
de sentimientos puros,
amores nobles y sublimes.

Mayo es fiesta,
fiesta encantada,
de mujer adorada,
de mamá soñada.

Mayo es lluvia,
de abrazos, besos,
caricias y regazos.

EL TIEMPO

El tiempo camina al compás de la vida,
la música nos vuelve
al pasado sentimental.

Sentimiento y suspiro
por el mismo tiempo que partió,
sentimiento por la infancia vivida,
por las calles de piedras,
de zacate del pueblo.

Sentimiento por el padre,
la madre ausente, los amigos,
los juegos, la tierra,
las costumbres,

La música sigue sonando
el tiempo pareciera que regresa
las notas y versos indican
el recuerdo de tiempos de juventud,
termina la música,
vuelvo a mi realidad, y estoy más viejo
el tiempo no se detuvo, sólo mi pensamiento.

LA CAIDA DEL SOL

Ha caído la tarde y con ella el sol,
de madrugada el campesino salió a sembrar,
La semilla calló en tierra fértil
y dio buen fruto.
Ha caído la tarde y con ella el sol,
el campesino, vuelve a casa,
felizmente, el chucho lo recibe moviéndole
la cola.

Ha caído la tarde y con ella el sol,
el campesino vuelve a casa,
su mujer sentada al telar
teje la vistosidad multicolor
del traje que nos identifica ante el mundo.
Ha caído la tarde y con ella el sol,
el campesino vuelve a casa,
tras la troja de maíz
salen corriendo los chirices
que abrazan al papá
que vuelve con el jornal ganado.

Poesia de Nancy Barrios Soto

2008-06-18T17:13:00.000-07:00

LO MIO

Hace unos días vi caminar a un señor
Con no se cuantos años encima,
Caminaba lento pero muy seguro
Llamo mi atención como si llevara ALGO MIO.

Volví una y otra vez mis ojos a él
Hasta que di media vuelta y camine hasta alcanzar al simpático señor
Aprecie sus finos y experimentados ligamentos.
Vi hasta sus huesos.

Inconcebible pero me sentí dentro de él
Me permitió hurgar cada pensamiento, recuerdo,
Impresionada, me mostró toda una vida,
Efectivamente hay algo extraordinario en él.

No di un solo paso más,
Pues ante mis ojos,
Tenía toda una exposición de los mejores momentos de su vida
Me vi envuelta entre un enternecido corazón, reclamando atención.

En cada palabra que hechizaba mis oídos, había una dosis de amor,
Por cada maltrato una pizca de deseos
Y cada pensamiento enrollaba el mañana
Buscando el hambre y el frío.

Conmocionada pude sentir el dolor de sus manos laboriosas,
Aprisionándome sus preocupaciones
Viendo la intensidad del amor de padre
Perpleja e incierta,
Con un nudote en la garganta de la impresión

Era mi padre el señor que llamo mi atención,
Pues como no, si lo llevo entre mis cogollos
El que por amor a mi, se descalcifico
Y dio hasta lo que no tenia, MI PA…
NADA

Camino a mi casa inspirada en la música
Y lo bello del atardecer,
Viendo los cambios que presenta el cielo
Me emocioné y lo disfruté.

Por un largo instante,
Creo haber perdido la noción del tiempo
Obviamente que la música me noqueó
Y entro hasta por los poros sin avisar,
Como guitarra que te deleita y desnuda el alma

Imaginando que bailábamos, bajo la luna llena
En un exótico lugar, sus manos se paseaban por doquier
El ritmo hacia disfrutar cada movimiento
Toda yo, descendida y liberada.
Gustosa desmoronándome de complacencia.

Húmedas sentía deslizarse cada nota,
Que aventuradamente emergía de los poros.
Baile hasta más no poder gozándome cada paso
Y el deseo apasionante broto
Como la hierva en el invierno

Entre sus brazos me sentí
Y no era la niña aquella que deseoso de proteger veía,
Era toda una mujer coqueteando y seduciéndolo
Sin importar el que dirían,
Sin mascara alguna limpia como la poca nube de verano.

SOLA

Cada que hago el intento de hablarte
Y me das espacio para decir lo que quiero
Me tiembla el cuerpo
Sin saber que hacer o decir, me limito
Y este corazón agiliza su palpitar

Es el espacio que contemplo
Para pensar en ti de otra forma menos hiriente,
Evitando ser sarcástica
me veo plena,
Con menos presión y vas soltándote

Eres quien quieres ser
Ese, es el punto
Ser quien quieres ser y no dejarte llevar
Ver al mundo como es,
Clasificando tus miedos y botándolos de poco en poco

Fragmentándote en nervios
Creyendo vociferar, con impulso golpeas
Desmenuzándote hasta quedar regada,
Expandiéndote en todo sin decir nada,
Sin decir nada, si.

HACIA ARRIBA

Hoy mis ojitos lindos
Han visto el amanecer, ellas,
Las nubes estaban galanteándole al sol
y de pronto se chiviaron!

Eran los rayos del sol
Los que provocaron ruborizar a las elegantes nubes
Atrevido de su boca escucharon
Un lindo y delicado verso

Tartamudeando del asombro
Sintieron el intrépido aletazo que las erizo
Desconcertadas como volviendo en sí
Queriendo salir corriendo.

Impresionante, locas se volvieron,
Incapaces de decir nada,
Mudas obviando la razón
Apreciando de sus ojos una lagrima al caer

He visto clarear esta mañana
Escuchado su saludo como trinar de pajarillos
Que se turnan las voces,
Para no gastarse.

BELLICIMO

Esta estación se lucio
Se vistió de los más bellos colores
Me opaco…
La elegancia y alharaca natural me inspiro.

Aya por la zona calida
Se vestían y desvestían sus ramas fulgorosas
Luciendo cada color, estilo y aroma
¡Despistando!, provocando volver a ver.

Modelándole a todo el que volteaba,
Es mas hasta el viento las solapaba
Ondulando sus hojas y pétalos,
Delicados y sigilosos al caer.

Uno que otro pétalo arrancado
Es el precio de lo incomparable!
Coqueta bugambilia,
De savia pura y fornido corazón

Picara y luminosa Jacaranda,
Fresca flor, como el jazmín que suelta su aroma
Para coquetear, enamorar
Y llamar la atención.

happy kids...fuzzy camera

2008-06-06T16:33:00.000-07:00

2008-06-06T16:23:00.000-07:00

Work in IZABAL stay tuned for fotos...

2008-06-02T10:48:00.001-07:00

My brain is slightly fried from sitting down all morning and writing up 2 reports, 2 grants, uploading a bunch of photos, writing a bunch of emails, etc…. So this is what it is like to be a paper pusher…. I don’t think I could ever manage.

Anyway, I wanted to sit and take a moment to reflect. I had the opportunity to co-facilitate a workshop for Proyecto Payaso. It starts with my friend’s delightfully eccentric neighbor, Tony, who just happens to be one of the founders of a large organization that sends clowns to do AIDS education work. Its really the only way to do it in this culture. I read somewhere that laughter often bridges the gap between 2 disconnects or floats a soft carpet over the mud of anxiety. The reality of the AIDS epidemic is forcing this culture to change, to become more open, to bridge the disconnect between the squeaky clean public discourse about sexuality (like hell you’re all virgins) and the reality of its private practice, to face the intense church inspired anxiety around well, bumping uglies.

And so there we found ourselves in a truck crossing the distance between the cold Western highlands and the hot tropical Eastern lowlands synergizing, at the very last minute, what would become the curriculum for the 4 day training session. (did I mention Tony gave me no advance notice? A Clown organization…. Organized clowns? A contradiction in terms) It came together beautifully.. The day passed. The air thickened with moisture and heat. The rotten smell of harvested rubber plants. The increasingly dense layer of DEET covering my skin.

The sky changed color. At first turgid with gold, the great sack of blue above our heads drained to pale magenta and ever darkening hues of evening. We got onto the boat watching the color show, gigantic drums, puppy dog and all and headed across El Lago de Izabal. The thick forestation, impasto strokes of green, was dotted with white cranes. Like baldspots on the canvas, like flying orchids, ridiculous and elegant, devastatingly beautiful under the rising full moon, the slick parting of water around the bow of the boat mimicking the liquid obsidian of night. Sometimes things are so beautiful I feel my entire insides implode, my eyes roll back in my head, and my body moan in a strange mixture of gratitude and longing. This was one of those moments.

We arrived to a thatched hut on the banks of Rio Dulce amidst towering trees. An indigenous school and medical clinic. Kids get scholarships to come here and leave the hard existence of the remote jungle villages beyond the reach of the Guatemalan “education system.” Here, in their language and Spanish they study and work. Here we would work to train a group of new indigenous clowns to do bilingual “Intervenciones” in Kek’chi and Castellano.

The next day would mark the start of 4 days of increasing sleep deprivation. Our hotel sat on platforms a couple feet above the forest floor off the banks of a mediumish tributary. The forest floor moved if you moved to quickly. Little crabs crawled out of their holes and saught shelter, gigantic insects in the shape of leaves forgot that they were supposed to be acting like fallen leaves, spiders, shrieking birds, you name it. Thankfully the blood sucking bats only came out around and after midnight.

We caught the boat at around 6:45 and worked on theater and AIDS education all day long. IT was my first time doing full blown theater facilitation and it proved to me several of my own mottos:

Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell
Fake it till you make it
Lead with your heart and you’ll tap into more power than you thought you had
Screw the cultural dependence on experts

The activities went really really well. The first day focused on getting the kids loosened up and comfortable with the group experimenting with different walks, vocal warm ups, yoga, projecting their voice, using space, experimenting with different levels in theatrical space, learning names. The typical theater drill. The kids, all 22 of them, were a dream of cooperativeness after working with the intensely stifled young indigenous people of the highlands. It was another exercise in studying the impact of the armed conflict on the cultural psyche. These were the children of people who fled the violence in my neck of the woods: Quiche.

We worked and worked and worked until the kids started to bloom. There are some really great clowns in the bunch. Daisy, a budding Lucille Ball, Jose a natural leader, Adrian, the other star clown-love interest of Daisy (puppy love is so cute)…. After a great deal of training we headed out to do an “intervention.” This involved crossing Lake Izabal on a boat, exiting onto the CArribean, speeding up northbound on the Carribean, getting out of the boat and pushing it over a thicket of mangrove roots, heading upstream an hour or so on a slender jungle tributary and then marching two hours in the midday jungle heat under a big sheet (of course I forgot sunscreen I looked like a cheap plastic Virgin Mary) We arrived in a small very isolated rural village and the kids did their magic: applying clown makeup over beads of sweat in a small thatched hut. They performed their show naturally loaded with sexual humor. Women covered their mouths and flitted their eyes nervously to see if their neighbors were doing the same.

I will never forget the end of the day. The kids piling into the boat on the edge of the Carribean beach just as the color of the sky turned gold. The rainbow wigs illumed from behind speeding past palm trees. Faces still painted white, red, purple, green, all eyes and smiles. The boys on the bow of the boat in big floppy clown shoes singing as sheets of sea spray rose in the background frozen in time for a moment before crashing down on us, happily giddy on the energy of a show well done.

proyecto payaso

2008-06-02T09:34:00.001-07:00

We caught the boat at around 6:45 and worked on theater and AIDS education all day long. IT was my first time doing full blown theater facilitation and it proved to me several of my own mottos:

Bite off more than you can chew and then chew like hell
Fake it till you make it
Lead with your heart and you’ll tap into more power than you thought you had
Screw the cultural dependence on experts

clown training

2008-06-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

one of our facilitators
Which is bigger? Magic trick...
Participants

Clown training

2008-06-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

this is Carlos explaining some theater theory. He has worked in theater for 30 years. He graduated highschool at 28. He had to work on coffee plantations as a child and saved enough money to put himself through school so he wouldn't be illiterate like the generations before him. He also worked throughout the armed conflict and continued working after his theater headquarters were bombed. He is a very inspiring man.
Here we are learning magic

Here is the librarian learning magic

Algunos dibujitos para el libro de los derechos del niño

2008-05-22T12:06:00.000-07:00

Derecho a estudiar: Nuestra cañonera fallecio entonces estoy trabajando a mano en lugar de usando proyecciones. En todos modos aqui estan algunos dibujitos...

La familia de la protagonista:

Basureros

2008-05-22T12:01:00.001-07:00

Formulario de Planificación de Actividades ArtCorps Fecha de la reunión: ____________

Organización: Artista: Brenda Cleary
Personal de la ONG presente: Artista voluntaria
Otros presentes: Bibilioteca, Ninos de la Escuela Urbana, Practicante Karina,
Nombre de la actividad: Inauguration de los basureros
Esta actividad se realizará (marcar uno): UNA VEZ
fechas/días de la semana: 14 de Mayo
Ubicación: Frente de la biblioteca
¿Qué pasará/ se hará durante la actividad?
Pusimos los basureros pintadas y los monstros de la basura a fuera de la biblioteca para una exhibition. Dimos information a los habitantes de Chiche sobre la importancia de poner su basura en su lugar.
¿Qué resultados se buscan? ¿Cómo se vinculan a los objetivos de la ONG y a los indicadores de ArtCorps?
Los ninos adornaron los monstros de basura y los basureros. Ellos aprendieron el valor de la limpieza y lo transmito a su comunidad.
¿Quién dirigirá la actividad (puede ser el colectivo) y de quién se necesita apoyo? El proyecto era dirigido para, Karina Esteban, la practicante educativa en la biblioteca con el apoyo de la biblioteca.
¿Cómo se investigará el contenido/mensaje?
Karina dirigio algunos talleres con mensajes educativas que eran reforzados con los proyectos de arte.
¿Qué materiales se necesitan? ¿Qué transporte, cuidado de niños, y refacciones proveeremos, si alguno? ¿Dónde se consiguen y quién es responsable de conseguirlos? ¿Cómo cubriremos los costos?
Como su proyecto final, Karina conseguio toda la material necesario.
¿A quiénes invitaremos a participar? ¿Cómo les contactaremos?

¿Cuántas personas esperamos que participen? ¿????
Un clase de la escuela participo en el proyecto.
¿Cómo evaluaremos los resultados de la actividad?
Una reduction en la cantidad de basura tirada frente de la biblioteca.
Diario de Monitoreo ArtCorps
Favor de usar este diario para monitorear la implementación de las actividades que ha planificado. Usar cuánto espacio que quiera; los espacios abajo se expandirán.
Nombre de la actividad: Monstros de Basura
Descripción de la actividad, interacción o evento
(¿Qué hiciste?
¿Con quién?
¿Cuántos?
¿Cuándo?
¿Cómo?
¿Dónde?)
En las ultimas 6 semanas 2 monstros de basura y 4 basureros eran adornados con la ayuda de algunas 25 ninos. El 14 de Mayo presentaron su trabajo a la comunidad y distribueron information sobre la importancia de depositar su basura en su lugar personas en la plaza.

¿Está la actividad terminada o continua?
Terminada
Si continua, le invitamos a usar las siguientes páginas para apuntar observaciones pero no es necesario completar cada sección.
Si está terminada, favor de completar las secciones en las siguientes páginas.
Con varios anos de colaboración con cuerpo de arte la biblioteca era muy abierta a la idea de usar arte a influir el comportamiento de miembros de la comunidad. Karina tomo el papel del lider del proyecto y todavia brinda su apoyo voluntario a la ONG aunque termino su practica con nosotros.
2.
La comunidad esta usando los basureros para depositar su basura y la area frente de la biblioteca es mas limpia.
3.
Los ninos locales hicieron todo el arte y aprendieron a usar reciclaje en maneras creativas.
4.
Mas que todo elevaron la nivel de consciencia alrededor de contamincion ambiental en los habitantes de Chiche. Ahora tenemos una sistema organizada para botar basura frente de la biblioteca.
5.
Ojala que la municipalidad puede tomar mas responsabilidad por la area de la plaza frente de la biblioteca y buscar maneras de instalar mas basureros.
6.
Al inicio yo hice los eskeletos de un monstro de basura pero Karina no le gusto. Ella no me dijo nada y pense que no iba a buscar otro proyecto final para su practica hasta que ella Aparicio con 2 eskeletos de monstros hecho de alambre. La biblioteca tuvo algunos retos tratando de coordinar con la maestra de la clase que participo en el proyecto pero mas que esto el proyecto fue un éxito!

FORMULARIO "EL LIBRO de MANO A MANO"

2008-05-22T11:59:00.000-07:00

Formulario de Planificación de Actividades ArtCorps Fecha de la reunión: ____________

Organización: Artista: Brenda Cleary
Personal de la ONG presente: Artista voluntaria
Otros presentes: Grupo Mano a Mano, 2 costureras locales,
Nombre de la actividad: Realization de un libro gigantesco
Esta actividad se realizará (marcar uno): UNA VEZ
fechas/días de la semana:
Ubicación: Dentro de la biblioteca
.
Diario de Monitoreo ArtCorps
Favor de usar este diario para monitorear la implementación de las actividades que ha planificado. Usar cuánto espacio que quiera; los espacios abajo se expandirán.
Nombre de la actividad: Monstros de Basura
Descripción de la actividad, interacción o evento
(¿Qué hiciste?
¿Con quién?
¿Cuántos?
¿Cuándo?
¿Cómo?
¿Dónde?)
En las ultimas 8 semanas junto con el grupo Mano a Mano en la Biblioteca realicemos un libro gigantesco de 13 paginas del tamaño de 1 metro x .5 metros sobre la tema de integridad entre otros valores.
Empecemos con un discusión sobre valores en general, y usando varias tecnicas del education popular escribimos juntos y juntas una historia apropriada para la cultura local sobre el valor de Integridad. Con los deseños iniciales de los jovenes yo hice deseños finales. Usando la cañonera, transferimos los deseños a las paginas.
Las paginas eran preparadas con la ayuda de 2 costureras voluntarias y un nuevo receta para gesso que prepare con la ayuda de los hermanos Juan y Miguel de la escuela de arte Maya en Chichacastenango.

¿Está la actividad terminada o continua?
Terminada
Si continua, le invitamos a usar las siguientes páginas para apuntar observaciones pero no es necesario completar cada sección.
Si está terminada, favor de completar las secciones en las siguientes páginas.
1.
Este proyecto aumento la bibliografía de la biblioteca y van a permitir la biblioteca a dar mas eficaz horas de cuento en la area rural donde a veces hay algunos 75 ninos escuchando la bibliotecaria o directora leer desde un libro muy chiquito. Tambien, es la primera y unico libro juvenil que la biblioteca tiene que se enfoca sobre la vida de Chichelenses indígenas. Los imágenes del libro son de la vida cotidiana de los ninos que lo va a escuchar. El libro tambien es un beun herramienta para estimular conversaciones sobre valores: integridad, solidaridad, perdon, y responsabilidad por los menos. La enseñanza de valores es un gran parte del trabajo de la Fundacion Reicken y el libro es un muy innovadora y sostenible manera de lograr esta parte de su mision.
2.
Todavía no hemos usado el libro para un hora de cuentos porque la próxima que tenemos planificada es el 13 de Junio. ¡Espera los fotos!
3.
La historia salio de varias sesiones de lluvia de ideas con el grupo Mano a Mano y los dibujos que hicieron los jóvenes. La creación de la historia era una esfuerza colectiva
4.
La historia reflejan varias temas culturales que impactan Guatemala hoy en dia. La historia muestra como solidaridad puede vencer corrupción, como jóvenes pueden salir del grupo y tomar liderazgo por el bien de sus pueblos, la importancia de la perspectiva de jóvenes, la dignidad de la gente indígena, etc. El libro es muy unico y apropriado por este area.
5.
¡Ya que (por fin) el libro es hecho hay que usarlo!
6.
El proyecto desavio de los planes en algunas maneras grandes. En medio del proyecto una de las jóvenes lideres se enfermo y su amiga dejo de venir. Ellas dos eran mis pilares de apoyo en el proyecto. Después de esto tratando de consolidar el grupo era casi imposible. Tambien la biblioteca cerro algunas dias cuando los jóvenes tuvieron reuniones que confundio los que si vinieron a participar. Ultimatemente, el libro salio mas caro que pense.
Aprendi que hay que siempre trabajar a motivar los jóvenes. Solos, ellos no animan mucho a trabajar porque ya tienen mucho trabajo en la escuela y en sus casas. En estos dias estamos empezando un otro “reto de valor” del Fundacion Riecken y estamos consolidando el grupo alrededor de recaudando fondos para ir de paseo. Estan mucho mas interesados con la promesa de irnos por un viaje.
Mas que todo aprendi a tener mucha paciente con el ritmo lento del trabajo en Guatemala.

Basureros

2008-05-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Lamentablemente, nuestra computadora fallecio ayer junta con toda la documentacion de este proyecto. En palabras breves, hicimos monstros de basura y pintamos basureros. ahi estan los basureros. Funcionan muy bien en la comunidad y ilustran una manera en que arte puede tener un impacto sobre la cultura......

HURRAY!!! EL CUENTO DE INTEGRIDAD

2008-05-22T10:06:00.002-07:00

BASTA! UNA HISTORIA SOBRE LA INTEGRIDAD
Pagina 1

En una aldea muy lejana en Chiche donde el sol de los atardeceres doraban todas las milpas con el color de mazorcas secandose sobre los lazos, una paz profunda reinaba en el corazon de cada habitante y en sus hogares. La comunidad vivia en una harmonia completa. En las mananas, cada madre y padre del pueblo despertaban a sus hijos con un abrazo y un beso. Cada noche, despues de un dia largo y alegre en la milpa, volvieron a casa a celebrar un dia de trabajo bien hecho y luego a descansar y sonar con los angelitos que siempre velan desde la cima de los arboles. Y asi pasaron generaciones tras generaciones de gente humilde, trabajadora y honrada. Pero llegaria un dia que apagaria la llama de esta paz sagrada cuando nacio un nino, chiquitito y arrollado en las sabanas limpias y frescas de la comadrona local tomo su primer respiro y grito su primer llanto. Pronto se callo, el sonido de su proprio voz llego a sus orejas enormes como las de un viejo elefante. Y asi ocurrio que el agarro el nombre de OREJON.
Pagina 2

Mientras crecia Orejon, tambien crecieron sus orejas hasta que casi caeron hasta sus hombros. Los otros chicos no sabian que pensar y se burlaban de el sin misericordia. Pobre Orejon no tenia ni un amigito en todo su escuela. El no entendia a los demas ninos y los demas ninos no l’entendian a el. Cuando los otros ninos tomaban su refaccion, Orejon se quedaba en un rinconcito callado y humillado por todos los dedos de sus companeros apuntando hacia el. Y cada dia, cuando Orejon se sentia mas triste, salia una nina a decir…
Pagina 3

BASTA ! Ella era su unica amiga en el mundo solitario de Orejon. Siempre trato de ayudar al pobre Orejon a sentirse un ser especial. La nina se llamaba Victoria pero todo los demas le decia Oro, porque asi era la calidad de su corazon.
Pagina 4

El tiempo se fue volando y los dos chicos crecieron, crecieron y crecieron. Oro desarollo como una semilla caida en tierra fertil. Bien amada por toda la comunidad quien la buscaba para su sabiduria y su toque casi magico de traer risa a los enfermos y la gente triste. Un dia cuando ella estaba regresando de la Universidad un campesino quien se llamaba Justicio, tambien conocido por sus manos trabajadoras y corazon pacifica se fijo en ella y decidio ganar su amor. Cada noche el llegaba a fuera de su casa en la milpa y cantaba los mas bonitos canciones que nunca se habia escrito en todo Chiche. Pasaron meses y meses asi, hasta que el poder del amor en sus palabras desperto la milpa entera y la milpa entera se puso a cantar con el. Y asi, de bajo de una luna llena con un coro de elotes sonriendo de alegria se casaron. Y sus primeras hijas, un par de gemelas, nacieron cantando versos de amor.
Pagina 5:
Orejon, al contrario, cayo como una semilla sobre tierra arida : el tiempo le amargo mas y mas hasta que el se fue huyendo a la montana : casi no aguantaba estar con sigo mismo! Pero, porque sus orejas eran tan grandes el seguia escuchando lo que pasaba en la comunidad. Y con mucho satisfaccion, desde la montana, se reia de las luchas y debilidades de los demas. Odiaba el rio de alegrias que salia de la milpa de Oro y Justicio y tuvo que tapar sus Orejones con un quintal de hojas de pino fresco para sofocar el sonido.
Pagina 6:
Y paso el tiempo, como siempre volando, cuando llego una tarde en que Orejon no pudo aguantar el sonido de la milpa cantando y se acabaron el pino y no encontro mas. En el momento preciso en que se le acabaron las hojas de pino, llego un zorro bien vivido y caminado por los caminos del mal. « Oye Orejon » dijo con voz mielosa… « Si no aguantas el ruido de la alegria de la milpa de Oro solo hay que robarse a las gemelas… Asi la familia nunca volvera a cantar. » Secretamente el zorro quiso robar la milpa que canta, venderla, y esclavisar al Orejon para apoderarse de sus orejas magicas. Orejon, ignorante de todo, se sentio y se puso a pensar…
Pagina 7 :
« Quizas yo podria robar toda su alegria de un avez y guardarlo para mi mismo…. Alegria, yo no se que es esto. Quizas seria algo que me agradaria…. » dijo el « de todos modos seria una manera de quitar esta bendita builla que me da angustia todos los dias » Ellos se pusieron de acuerdo de ir a la aldea a robar las gemelitas de Oro y Justicio…. Pero ellos no estaban solos esa tarde… Habia un gusano, muy amigo de la milpa que cantaba, quien estaba disfrutando de unas vacaciones en la montana. El gusano escucho, con horror, y se fue corriendo a avisar la milpa. (Bueno, los gusanos no corren entonces se fue gateando gusaneando muy despacio con toda la prisa que un pobre gusanito puede manejar.)
Pagina 8 :
« AUXILIO !!!!! » Grito en la oreja de una mazorca vieja.
« Que paso ? » Le pregunto…
« Pues fijase que el Orejon de la montana va a robarse a las gemelitas de Oro ! »
« No puede ser ! ORO !! VENGA !!! OREJON QUIERE ROBARSE A TUS GEMELITAS !!!! »
Ella escucho y se fue corriendo al cuarto de las gemelas donde, apenas una hora atras habian estado dormiendo pacificamente.
« NO ESTAN ! NO ESTAN ! OREJON SE ROBO A MIS HIJAS !!!»
Y la milpa se puso a gritar :
« AUXILIO !!!! » deteniendo a toda la comunidad con su voz, urgente y temerosa, que, siempre habia deleitado los dias chichelenses con su ritmo alegre y dulce. La comunidad se puso de pie y comenzo a marchar hasta la casa humilde de Oro.
Pagina 9
Orejon, oyendo todo lo que estaba pasando, decidio que nunca devolveria las gemelas. L’iba a descubrir que era esta cosa famosa que se llama la alegria y las gemelas, llorando en una jaula en el miserable hogar del Orejon la iba a traer.
« Y ahora que hacemos, zorro ? » Le pregunto Orejon con voz de hielo.
« No te preocupes, amigo » susurro el zorro « yo hablare con los campesinos. Estas personas son faciles de manipular. Solo hay que darles una mordida y se callan para siempre. »
El zorro se tomo el camino para la aldea sin dudar de su habilidad de enganar el pueblo. A su sorpresa en cinco minutos encontro…..
Pagina 10
Todo el pueblo organizado para retomar las gemelas parado frente a el con determinacion visible en sus caras.
« Hola amigos ! » Les saludo
« No somos tus amigos Senor zorro. Tu y Orejon han hecho una cosa terrible robando a las gemelitas de Oro y Justicio y ahora es tiempo que pagues por tu crimen ! » Dijo una ama de casa.
« No es que las robe… Solo es que… las preste algunos dias.. » Invento el zorro muy nervioso.
“No queremos escuchar tus mentiras! Donde estan?” Declaro el alcalde bravo.
“ Pues… Bueno las voy a mostrar en un rato para que ustedes noten que estan contentas aqui con nosotros… Podemos devolverlas a su familia dentro de algunas dias…Pero primero dame un rato para explicar….. Pues fijense que si me las prestan, (y solo es un prestamo lo juro), yo voy a darles a todos ustedes poderes magicos… de cualquier clase que quieran…
Digo… Las podemos devolver a su familia si su familia se ponen de acuerdo …. de prestarme su milpa que canta… yo voy a vender las semillas de la milpa y darles a ustedes la mitad de la ganancia…… »
« Ya mero ? » Pregunto una mujer embarazada y enojada.
« No todo.. Tambien mientras que estamos todos juntos podemos capturar a este malvado Orejon y alquilar sus Orejas a personas chismosas que quieran escuchar a sus vecinos. »
« Ya zorro ? » Pregunto un joven albanil con su frente arrugada con colera.
« Pues…. Si… Yo les hare a todos muy ricos.. Nunca tendran que trabajar mas la tierra … Por favor escuchenme»
« Ya. » Dijo un campesino, en un tono frio.
La comunidad miro bien en sus ojos traviesos. Y una de las senoritas joven le agarro por su nariz negra y larga y le amarro a un arbol mientras que el resto corria hasta el hogar miserable de Orejon…
Pagina 11
Lo que paso despues es dificil de contar. Con un ciento de personas corriendo detras de Orejon el polvo que levanto hizo dificil ver que es lo que paso. Solo se podia escuchar los gritos de las personas :
Esta ahi !
Agarralo !
No lo dejes escapar !
Yo lo tengo !
En la nube del movimiento de brazos agitando en el aire, pies cayendo sobre espaldas, espaldas cayendo sobre cabezas… Las gemelas salieron corriendo hasta sus padres y ellos se reunieron con toda la alegria del mundo.. Oro abrazo a su chiquita y la acerco a su pecho. Justicio agarro la mas grande y la levanto en el aire. Los que vieron la escena quedaron con nudos en sus gargantas y lagrimas resbalando sobre sus mejillas. Y asi fue el momento mas alegre en toda la historia de la aldea mas lejana de Chiche. Pero en un instante, desde los brazos de sus padres sonaron dos voces muy chiquitas y algo familiares…
Pagina 12
« BASTA !!!!!! »
La comunidad estaba a punto de enjaular al zorro y al Orejon y meterlos en un hoyo muy profundo para siempre
« Escuchanos! Aprendimos aqui que Orejon solamente estaba buscando alegria. En el fondo el es una persona muy muy triste y sola. Porque no le damos trabajo de alcalde auxiliar? Asi el podria usar sus poderes especiales por el bien del pueblo y sentirse util ? »

« Por favor » pidio Orejon « Lo siento si hice algun mal es que mi corazon era celoso de la alegria que disfrutaban ahi en la aldea. »
El pueblo se puso a murmurrar entre si. Reconocian que eran, en parte, culpable del destino de Orejon y reconocian que era necesario extender el perdon y comprension. Oro y Justicio sonreian orgullosamente. Sus hijas tenian razon y si eran criaturas sabias. El pueblo se puso de acuerdo y el campesino quien habra sido uno de los peores tormentadores de Orejon en su ninez, pregunto,
« Bueno ninas, tienen la razon y creo que le podemos construir un puesto de vigilanicia a la entrada del pueblo pero queda una pregunta… Que trabajo podemos dar al zorro para que el corriga sus malos caminos? »
« Pues, » dijieron las gemelitas, « El tiene pelo muy muy suave que sentiera muy muy rica sobre nuestros pies descalzos…. Entonces amarrale bien y traigalo a nuestro cuarto. »
« Y esto ? »
« Creamos que el seria…. »
Pagina 13
« Un muy bien alfombra ! »
Y asi paso todo el resto de sus dias sobre la face de la tierra aguantando las cosquillas de pies muy chiquitos y las risas sin fin de generaciones de ninos Chichelenses.
FIN.

Solicitud por el poemario

2008-05-22T10:06:00.001-07:00

22 de Mayo, 2008

ATTN: Gerard Saurin
Alianza Francesa
Antigua, Guatemala

Estimado Senor:

Les mando saludos cordiales desde la Biblioteca Comunitaria Ventanas Abiertas al Futuro de Chiche, Quiche y espero que se encuentre bien. Je m’apelle Brenda Cleary et je suis une amie (plus o moins francophone) de Eduardo Villagran. Lamentablemente, surgio un inconveniente y no pude ir a la reunion de la semana pasada. De todos modos quise escribir una carta breve explicando mi trabajo y algunos proyectos que tenemos aqui en la area rural de Quiche.
Cuerpo de Arte, una fundacion que manda artistas profesionales a colaborar con diferentes ONG en Guatemala, me mando desde los EEUU a trabajar con una biblioteca comunitaria afuera de la capital en el departamento del Quiche en el municipio de
Chiche en transcurso del 2008. Mi trabajo es de apoyar la mision de la Biblioteca : estimular la lectura, creatividad, y liderazgo en grupos de ninos, jovenes, y adultos atraves del arte. Tenemos algunos proyectos en estas 3 areas. En estos dias, estamos en el proceso de recaudar poesia de los poetas locales con la meta de publicar un poemario Chichelense. Seria un gran honor de tener una lectura del poemario con La Alianza Francesa. Tenemos una red de personas que estan interesados en venir y celebrar la primera lectura del poemario. Ademas, la lectura seria una gran oportunidad de reconocer y celebrar a los poetas Chichelenses, ayudandolos a motivarse e inspirarse y seguir adelante como artistas. Ojala que, juntos podamos lograr algo y de esta manera contribuir a tener dentro de nuestra biblioteca bibliografia que apoye a la comunidad Chichelense y unir esfuerzos con La Alianza Francesa. Espero respuesta positiva a mi propuesta.

Atentamente,

Brenda Cleary : voluntaria de Cuerpo de Arte
Biblioteca Ventanas Abiertas al Futuro
Chiche, Guatemala