Here is my Brown Xicana body sitting in white space and I can’t help but reflect on how the being feels as if it has to suddenly change, a type of harsh transformation where I go from being the real me to having to put on the mask. I remain aware so that I don’t forget and so that I can continue to resist.
All around me what appear to be beautiful spaces, everything carefully tended to – from the plantas y florecitas to every single item hanging on the walls. Everything so carefully and methodically placed. But what I observe instead of the glossy veneer is the painful condition of whiteness. Their stiffness and awkwardness of being attempting to seep into me. I observe how they walk, talk, and interact. Their every move and word calculated. Always thinking hard about what they will say, do, wear, stand, eat, I mean everything.
As I eat their bland breakfast devoid of color and spice, I am watching a group of older women, “The Santa Feas,” all decked out with their Native jewelry thinking that by wearing the sacred stones that somehow they can absorb some of the essence of the hands that made it. An impossible task. I think about this contradiction – they love to wear the stones carved by Native Brown Red hands but those are hands that they would never love or allow to touch their naked flesh.
A family of four sitting behind me, no one talking. Dreadful silence. Thinking about my own children and how everywhere we go their freedom of being is demonstrated through their cries and loud laughter.
It’s hard to believe that only a few days ago I was in immersed in the songs. The drumbeat still resounding in my ears, reminding me that the prayer is for 365 days and not only 4. The Ceremony, a complete and utter disconnection from la suciedad (a.k.a. la sociedad or society). La ceremonia, teaching us how to experience life and the world from an entirely different perspective – imparting onto us an amazingly un-ordinary way of seeing.
I can still feel the hot sand under my bare feet as my body moved with the heartbeat of the drum. Eyes closed but I can see more clearly that way for the lesson is in the heart and in the spirit.
No fancy landscaping. No elaborate artwork. No smooth marble finish or automatic coffee dispensers. None of that. Instead we are immersed and submerged in everything raw and real. We become one with the Earth, connected to the tree, connected to each other through the sacred songs. A giving of thanks through fast, flesh, and blood – something these petty minds trained in the act of continual comfort would never understand.
For 15 years I have been deeply connected to that sacred space. It is the place where I made the commitment to walk the Red Road alongside an Eagle Dancer. It is the place that has seen my blooming uterus four times over, where my little ones have been raised, Sundance children. Arbors witnessing my struggles and inner battles that I face as a human being who aims for a higher form of critical consciousness, a being who strives to become at least a bit liberated from the pendejada. A woman who seeks a shedding of the social skin.
I am here, but my spirit is always there.
#lablogadora #whitespace #sundance #ceremony #chicana #xicana
It’s been 4 months and about 10 days since that unfortunate day.
