I've had so many things swirling around, not a fog, not an eddy, not a cauldron, but something shaped like a cyclone. Layers, cycles, spirals, and so on and so forth.
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I've arrived after five years plus a pandemic to a place I called home 18 years ago. It's surreal sharing stories of Arizonan farmers lamenting the uncertainty of the future of agriculture and hearing the same from my tío. The weather is changing and this year the fruits are small and flavorless. The ocean is surging, and the current is slowing. The macha disappeared thirty years ago, the camarones fewer as well. The agrochemicals are too pricey, the big empresas own the government, but millionaires don't pay taxes. It's so achingly similar to every single case I'm hearing, and the fighting is in the sierra, in Puno and Juliaca, the places where indigenous resistance is more common.
What are we digging up? To renew and to renovate are different in some ways: we indicate with one term a cycling, a growth, an emergence. The other connotes ideas, design, construction - something less organic for some reason. I find this place full of magic and full of promise and full of webs. I didn't make plans, but yet I'm welcome. I feel valued, seen, and understood the best ways possible given my strangeness. Another validation after another trip to see another aunt. My resolve grows. I see Renovación Arequipa (R in a house is their symbol) and I see the face of my former host father on political campaign posters faded by weather. The wind rages, the sky blooms purple and the internet claims a 92% chance of precipitation between now and 11 pm. I've been living in Tempe, AZ for 8 months and 17 days, so now that I've finished two terms (in almost the time it takes to bear a child to term)...I guess I'll reflect a little, for myself and for the practice of writing more regularly.
My tarot card today was "Justice" with her trumpet and fiery hair billowing. Yesterday I met with the two mentors I'm currently most aligned and/or committed to working with for my PhD program. I felt nervous, a little queasy, and ultimately powerless. |