The Furious Spinner

In times of old, The Furies protected Mother Right. If a mother (or any woman) was harmed, The Furies swooped down and took their vengeance. They were one of the last vestiges of a world that existed before the patriarchy. When we feel righteous anger, it is The Furies who are calling out to us to make what is wrong right again.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Fork in the Road

We're leaving in a couple of days. Both feeling sad. We could do this the rest of our lives. Who couldn't? Virginia Woolf was right. A little money and room of one's own really does facilitate creativity. (If you haven't read it, "A Room of One's Own" is very inspiring. It is especially good read aloud.) This has been an absolutely lovely month. (Despite a skin condition that kept me up many nights and left me itchy and jumpy during the day.) I had Mario, this place, and my novel. Ahhh, bliss. We were quite compatible with our housemates as we went about our lives, separate, yet together under an umbrella of creativity.

I wrote and sold an essay, "Healing the Wounded Wild," the first week I was here. The next three weeks I worked on a novel, Church of the Old Mermaids. I finished the first draft last Friday. During that time, I also went to the jaguar conference, and I talked to conservationists, a biologist, ranchers, Mexicans, migrants, and others about border issues and jaguars (as separate issues and related issues).

By the way, I took some photos of the border wall and of an area in the Sonoran Desert (in Arizona) where many migrants have crossed and some have died. It is also a beautiful place. Huge old cottonwoods line the empty river. Last year when I was at this particular trail, a man with a gun came up to me and said, "Have you seen any illegals?" I guess he hadn't read the sign at the entrance to the trail: no guns. We said, "How would we know?" He said, "I just rustled up about six of them." This day, the day I took the photos, we saw no other humans beside ourselves, but I found a great deal of evidence that others had passed this way. (At another time I'll try to post some of the photos of the cottonwoods. They are superb.)

La frontera—the border—is a complex place. Myla Alvarez, the hera of my novel, said of the border, "Thresholds. That was what it was. La frontera was a threshold. Like the wash. A betwixt and between place. Magic existed. Even though the magic was sometimes cruel and arbitrary."

Many of the things I believed when I first came here twenty years ago, I no longer believe. My kneejerk reaction that some people were bigots just because they were concerned about the traffic across the border was wrong. No one I've spoken with has expressed hatred for the migrants. In fact, everyone I've talked with has expressed sympathy or understanding for why they are trying to get here. Nearly everyone I spoke with expressed a frustration with the American and Mexican governments. The problems seem to get worse every time a politician decides to "fix it." Short-term fixes aren't working. But I'll talk more about this later.

For now, here are some photos. (I forgot how to do a slideshow, and I haven't been able to figure it out this night.)

Borders: Scars in the Earth

Handless shopper?

This is the Mexican side of the border. Do you see the Burger King sign on the other side. Sign of the promised land?

This fence is about ten years old, I believe. Neighbors on both sides of the border used to talk to each other over the fence, just like neighbors. No more.

Hundreds of migrants have died crossing the border in the last few years. They die of heat exhaustion, drowning, exposure, and other causes.

Growing out of the wash (Arizona side)

I thought this was a snake skin at first, but it's a sock, probably left by a migrant.

A path from the south. Probably the sight of these riparian trees in the distance seems like an oasis. How discouraging it must be to arrive at the river and find it dry.