The water is plentiful here.
My home forever internal life,
the ocean and its sand.
Welcome students and colleagues, friends and family, if you have made it this far, I encourage you to stay a bit longer and read about some of my work. The writings reflect many of the thoughts that I carry with me throughout the course of a day, evening, and often times, the dreams that take hold of me while I sleep. The verses represent the inner voice in me that speaks of the past, the present, and the future. Writing is my ultimate form of expression that allows me to reflect, inspire, get well, and grow. The energy that feeds my work, I pull from themes that correspond to Mesoamerica, my ancestral place of birth, and the area I study. References to symbols of the past, deities, and natural phenomenon, dominate certain pieces, and blend with current verses of life, love, and death. I have never taken a writing class... the only "style" that exhibits my work is the one that I create from my imagination, heart, and dreams.
I’m an avid builder and horticulturalist, and so I spend a lot of my time building things and growing different types of herbs and plant food. I do not identify as an artist nor do I make art for aesthetic purposes; my work solely materializes a ritual-ceremonial or utilitarian function. The craft of working with wood I learned from my father, by watching him design and build homes throughout much of my adolescent youth. I also learned how to work with stone by watching my uncles construct brick and rock landscapes, in the wealthy neighborhoods were they labored during much of the 1980s, when construction was booming. My paternal grandpa Juan was also a craftsman, hence why all his sons became builders of some sort, and so building has always been an integral part of my family’s trade history. I learned about plant cultivation from my abuelita Mercedes on my paternal side and my abuelito Severo on my maternal side. Much of the landscaping strategies that I learned from my grandparents came with them from Mexico when they migrated to Alta California, in the early 1960s, along with my parents. A lot of the building and planting strategies that my family has implored have been in use for over 3,000 years. It is my purpose to revitalize and sustain these ancestral practices through ceremony, household building, and plant cultivation.
My fascination with building and growing food is not only familial, but also physical-skeletal (see my Physical Anthropology 101 blog), and because so, I have an admiration for the morphology of the human hand. The hand is unlike any part of the body, and because we use our hands every day, we literally take them for granted, sometimes failing to notice their full potential use. Our hands are our first weapons of choice in an attack, yet they are the first part of the body that we extend when helping or consoling someone. With our hands, we build shelter, writer letters, prepare food, and unknowingly, make love. Our hand-digit coordination is unique because it is precise, well adapted for creating, and for using and making tools. Hand-digit use coordination has been a part of our human evolutionary past since we inhabited arboreal environments, way before we developed bipedalism. When combined with tool use, the creative use of the hands has the capability of decolonizing our minds and bodies.
My inquiry into the relationship between hand-bone morphology usage and social behavior remains in the early stages. Nonetheless, some preliminary findings I modeled in a recent paper where I discuss the role of the hands, and early human tool making, in the creation of spatial wellness. The paper is published in Vol. 3 No. 4 of the International Journal of Development and Sustainability.
Not just a drizzle
The winters became longer
and the summers became shorter.
Rain would fall in July.
Not just a drizzle… but a calm storm.
This was new… And I wanted it.
It meant my livelihood…
and the summers became shorter.
Rain would fall in July.
Not just a drizzle… but a calm storm.
This was new… And I wanted it.
It meant my livelihood…
Rain fall upon us all
Lord Serpent help me understand.
Grant me patience...
Plant seeds once again…
Allow me strength to help them grow…
Shall trust in my garden
all over again... Till my death all over again…
Rain fall upon us all.
From the book The St. Andrew's Cross
Boca bajo
A veces es mejor morir.
Ser encontrado boca bajo en un mar.
A tener que recordar.
De lo que solo fue un mal...
Prefiero hundirme en un mar
Si ya sabes que te perdí.
¿Porque vuelves a preguntar de mi luz?
¿Porque te burlas de mí?
¿Crees que no me duele tu ingratitud?
Prefiero hundirme en
un mar a recordar, borrar el día que te
conocí, y no saber de ti.
¿Que te ganas por saber de lo que me
hace sentir? Y hoy que
ya tienes halas quieres saber de lo que
piensan de ti… pero no
tienes derecho saber de mis amigos, o
de lo que me hace vivir.
Before we go
I want to let you in,
so you can come around. The crazy
things that bring me down
all disappear when you’re around…
You can have our home, its
yours to keep… If there is hope
you will make us complete.
So before we go, I want to let you in,
and show you what I mean.
This is not a dream.
This is the town that only we know,
so lets walk the trials where
only we go, and drink the wine that
only we know… Will be the
best of friends and watch her grow.
Everything that she loves you
can get to know, and help her get to
where she wants to go…
No need to knock, just
come on in. All the things that you
hope for are ready to begin.
This is not a dream, I want to watch
you grow, you’re everything
that I want to know. Here you have
your own space, in a town
where only we glow, a simple place
that only we know…
Like Jack and Sally
We can live like Jack and Sally, if we want...
Where you can always find me.
Will have Halloween on Christmas, and in
the night will wish this never ends,
will wish this never ends... - Blink 182
Where you can always find me.
Will have Halloween on Christmas, and in
the night will wish this never ends,
will wish this never ends... - Blink 182
Crawl back into the shadows
There's no reason to make wrong feel right.
You've already started a new life.
You should've thought better before making them cry.
Before letting things die.
What would you gain from explaining your side?
You should've kept things inside.
Her Love will always be mine…
Peace and happiness doesn't exist when all you create
is chaos and devastation.
The Rain don’t need you.
Bones bones from the depth of the earth can’t be unearthed.
The dead can’t ask the living to pray.
No one cares to know of the jester and his bride,
or what severely aches inside.
Crawl back into the shadows.
Die.
You've already started a new life.
You should've thought better before making them cry.
Before letting things die.
What would you gain from explaining your side?
You should've kept things inside.
Her Love will always be mine…
Peace and happiness doesn't exist when all you create
is chaos and devastation.
The Rain don’t need you.
Bones bones from the depth of the earth can’t be unearthed.
The dead can’t ask the living to pray.
No one cares to know of the jester and his bride,
or what severely aches inside.
Crawl back into the shadows.
Die.
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