I have had a certain laziness about writing lately, and I realized that it is the inertia of hot weather that brings all effort to a screeching halt. Spring here is like summer in the north – hot and dry, sweaty and oppressive days broken by the occasional electric charge and quick downpour of a crashing thunderstorm. Everyone gets school vacation for two weeks around Easter to go to the beaches or just lay around panting in the shade. So I haven’t written a word, ok well, a poem maybe, short abstract lines more given to breaks between beers and barbecues than anything longer and prose-like. I haven’t painted. I haven’t drawn. I have had to pull myself up off my cool tile floor just to mop it and keep some sort of order in the dusty scorched world. I looked back over several years’ worth of poems written at this time of year and they are all about the sensation of the sun being just several feet above my head, penetrating into my skull. We all have headaches from the brightness, the washed-out whiteness of so much sun so close to us. Parasols are a necessity just to go to the market around the corner. I am out watering the flowers in the garden every night to try to bring their thirsty droopy leaves back to life in the cool dark of chirping crickets.
Just about the time I get to feeling bad about my “sloth” and lack of creative action, I look up at it from my yard-watering efforts. I mean literally, I look up at it. You see, I sometimes forget that creativity isn’t just about the usual stuff, painting, writing, drawing, blogging … I’ve told people so many times in classes that creativity takes on many shapes and any form – if you’re passionate about it, and even if you’re not, but you’re still squeezing it out because you feel called by some unseen power to do so, if you are creating, well, then that is creation. That is creativity. So, what creation do I look up at? A house. Yup. Second one I’ve built in as many years. First one was the house I live in at the back end of the lot, and now this one is a giant flat at the front end of the lot that will be a very nice vacation rental, if I do say so myself.
This business of building houses may be a massive creative effort and certainly massive expenditure of creative energy in any place, but here in Mexico … we are our own architects and contractors and project managers. That means, hire a team of masons, go order every cinderblock and bag of cement and pile of sand yourself, oversee every little detail of the building, draw up plans on the backs of napkins, measure every centimeter of it to figure out whether or not you’re paying the right price, manage plumbers, electricians, tile-layers, window-fabricators, trek into the center of Mexico City to find good prices on cables and light switches, schlep a marble sink home in the backseat of your Jetta with the kiddie seat propped on top because you forgot to take it out, etc. etc. etc.
And don’t forget the party, because everything needs to be celebrated here in Mexico. May 3 was the Day of the Holy Cross, and more specifically the day of the Stonemason. On May 3, any building that is happening needs to be blessed, and the stonemasons on the construction site will bring a wood cross decked out in flowers to hang on the building they’re working on, while the “godfather” of the project will hand out candies, maybe shoot off some fireworks, and sponsor a big festive meal for the crew and anyone else who happens by. Our project is virtually complete, the actual stonemasons long gone onto another site, but we decided to invite the tile-layers/painters/handymen/jacks-of-all-trades who fixed up all the mistakes the stonemasons had made to bring a cross. The assistant to the master tile-layer is a soft-spoken young man, who has a condition that is described locally as “bad in the head,” but he’s a very hard worker, honest and sweet. Because of his supposed past career as a coconut picker scaling the palm trees of Acapulco, we have to keep an eye on him when he’s up on top of tall ladders, because he gets dizzy and is likely to take a tumble. His boss jokes that he once fell out of a coconut palm and that’s why his head is a little off, but quite frankly I don’t need to go sniffing into his past beyond what he has already volunteered to me, none of which involved falling out of a palm tree and was more along the lines of horrific childhood trauma. Who knows, but the healer part of me likes supporting him and respecting his work, and the artist part of me likes his work ethic and aesthetic. Anyway, he got so excited to be the padrino/godfather of the event that he volunteered to both make the cross himself, being an expert carpenter, and to save all his extra wages for candies to hand out. Too sweet to resist! He went to mass to have the cross blessed, decorated it with silk calla lilies and a ribbon, and came to hang it on our brand-new wall. We celebrated him and the occasion with a little party, pots of food, a bunch of the usual party favorites like tamarind pork, fresh juicy slices of watermelon, chipotle beans … yummm.
The work isn’t done, of course. We’re still missing various electrical components, bathroom accessories, interior doors, curtains, kitchen, and the biggie: furniture …I look at all the blank walls and think, could I paint enough stuff to hang in here and make it look homey? When will I ever be able to paint enough? Meanwhile, just over the days it’s taken me to write this much, in the midst of what I had considered to be heat-induced inertia, we’ve had a surprising amount of activity: a Children’s Day festival, Mother’s Day, the Mother’s Day festival at school, Teacher’s Day, a trip to Mexico City for electrical parts, a trip to a religious sanctuary called Chalma on the far side of the state, a visit from a dear comadre, a new puppy to clean up after, and construction over at my in-law’s, with a broad cement roof being poured today and whenever that many men mix that much cement and run it on their shoulders in buckets up little planks to the roof, there has to be a celebration afterwards! Hard physical labor should always be honored and celebrated, because none of these creations would exist without it.
So as I breathe against the heavy pressure of heat, I remind myself that creativity happens in many forms. I have built myself a space using all my creative energy that I now can vision to fill with more creations, paintings perhaps… Above all, I must honor the labor that has gone into the creation, by so many co-creators willing to work hard beneath the beating sun to help my vision come into being. What have you created lately that might not fit your usual type of creation? Take a second look around your life and give yourself credit for creating outside your box! And take a moment to send thanks to people who might have helped you along the way with their labor!
Emily has an upcoming journey to Teotihuacan July 22-27, 2011 with Iva Peele – this will be an incredible opportunity to focus on creativity and macrobiotic nutrition, as we learn about how the way we view our food can support our dreaming and creative visioning. We will be meditating, dreaming, creating, visiting the pyramids, and we will include a very special “field day” where we will harvest seasonal produce in the fields and prepare our meal on the spot, to reconnect to our source for all creative energy, the blessed earth. See www.spiritrecovery.com for more details or contact thedreaminghouse@hotmail.com
