pumpkins and calacas in a season of syncreticity

It has been a weekend of cultural events, some more haute than others...

I. and I made it to La casa de la guerra by nine in the morning, prepared with our best listening skills and her box full of art supplies. She was instructed that she must remain absolutely silent or else the daddy monster would be called and remove her from my presence. We were seated right next to the ofrenda in honor of the Juanes (Rulfo y Sor Juana) and she silently marveled and mouthed commentary to me... thankfully there was no copal being burned until later, because even though I love the smell, it provokes a violent string of sneezes which when one is trying to listen attentively in a small enclosed space, is not optimal.

She happily colored, wrote words and ate pan dulce with minimal interruption and in fact I was able to enjoy quite a bit of the congreso. Of course in her huipil she smote all who approached her, and late into the night at the closing reception (sans child by then for appropriate elbow rubbing oppotunities) both her dress and her gorgeousity were still a topic of discussion. Strangely this never embarrasses me, perhaps because I am totally and perdidamente enamored myself.

One of the presenters, our newest faculty member, presented an extremely interesting reading of Glantz's prise-winning novel, and she read a part which sucked me in, ripe with blood, carnage, open-heart surgery, and devastating love (I know, just my style) and he brought to light these two quotes which spoke directly to me, as if their hands reached from the page and wrapped their sense around me in a beautiful mortuary embrace:

"palabras, palabras, palabras dichas sin iliación, sin sentido ¿o lo tienen? Deben tenerlo, son palabras que salen del corazón y que uno no cuida, aunque sea un error, ¿no dicen que se puede matar y ofender a muerte con las palabras?" (45, El rastro)

"Esta tarde, mi bien, cuando te hablaba,
como en tu rostro y tus acciones vía
que con palabras no te persuadía,
que el corazón me vieses deseaba;

y Amor, que mis intentos ayudaba,
venció lo que imposible parecía:
pues entre el llanto, que el dolor vertía,
el corazón deshecho destilaba.

Baste ya de rigores, mi bien, baste:
no te atormenten más celos tiranos,
ni el vil recelo tu inquietud contraste

con sombras necias, con indicios vanos,
pues ya en líquido humor viste y tocaste
mi corazón deshecho entre tus manos."
(Sor Juana)

And as I am disappearing into my interior world, my peque catches my eye, drawing furiously, finishing one page, flipping to the next in her diary: hearts, and hearts and more hearts wrapped up in trees, framing the pages, pulsing among stars... tangentially listening, I imagine, and in an inspired creational fervor. (Her mother's daughter?)

Today, we played out our Sunday morning ritual, skin against skin, kisses and snuggles, warmth... She sleeps, like me, with as little as she can get away with, and this makes morning colder, but much more enticing for closeness. It is always me that is rustled from sleep much sooner than I would like, but one can hardly complain about such bone-smashing attention.

We went to the pumpkin patch, took a ride on a horse-drawn carriage, traipsed through a maize maze... no skeletons dancing on graves today, but soon the dance of living death, or dying life will unfold in a parade of beautiful children, reflected in shards of broken glass, molten, pouring down the throat of the swan... an interrogation, a petition at dawn.