Remembering the Next World

Originally published in the zine Xicanista Radicalisms by Tierra y Libertad Press

corn mother, i watch the way
you stand with dignity 

i seek to be the same 

but i tremble,
i am weak,
with shaky knees,
and my cracking voice stuttering my speech 

my pulsating heart
becomes like squash vines
tethered and tangled on the ground
lost in its growth, not knowing
where to go 

oh, you seek to have
wisdom, you say
you want to know 

corn mother, i seek guidance
can my nimble spine
spiral up your stalk
towards the the sky? 

my shaky palms
reach into my left pocket
stumbling to make an offering
of lint, crumbs, crumbled paper,
and leftover tobacco... 

a desperate offering 

corn mother, creator, god,
earth mama, wind, fire, water,
ancestor, person in my head, 

whoever can hear me, 

help us to be free,
i ask for courage,
may we be courageous, 

the road ahead is not easy
and we must strengthen our hearts
to make it through 

my spiraling heart,
reaching the tassels
shouting at the heavens 

may we be strong
may we be loving
may we be honest
and true... 

We sit at the cusp of the rising Sixth Sun. Many who think they don’t have an eye for these kinda things are fearing the end of times, without realizing that the world has been created, destroyed, and remade throughout various cycles, in this spiral we call “time.” Cyclical time is embedded into our double helix DNA, the same way squash and bean vines intertwine and coil up the corn stalk. These are the things that we forget, as we become indoctrinated into a cosmovision of fragmentation, fear and shame. Our relationship with fear is distorted through the colonial project and made to immobilize us into apathy and submission–– we forget that fear, if sung to in the right way, can teach us a dance of courage. 

We are in a time of reckoning. From astrological eras to time keeping cycles, the Earth and Universe have seen more changes than our human minds can comprehend. Religious conservatives are preaching the end of times, while atheist liberals cry out about the destruction of the Earth. Often times these groups are at odds with each other without realizing they are at opposite ends of a branch stemming from the same lineage of thought. Maybe there is some truth about our current human condition through these claims, but isn’t it a bit egotistic to think that we as humans are the only beings in the world important enough to bring forth the apocalypse or the destruction of the Earth?

Earth is resilient and adaptable, who has sustained eras, eons, grand cycles of time. Earth will regenerate, but can WE as a species adapt to the changes human beings are bringing about through the extractive-mindset of deforestation, overharvesting, pollution and overconsumption? If we remember ancient history, and the old ancestors, we will know that what we are going through is not new. Many who think they don’t have an eye for these kinda things, believe their salvation comes from individualism. Yet in the process of breaking away from the linear-mind, we learn that the only way to survive is through surrendering to interdependence and responsibility. 

Instead of placing blame and moving from a place of helplessness and fear…
What courageous choices must we make in order to make it through the next world? 

things that western-linear thinking dismisses:

ancestral memory,
resurgence,
recuperation of that which is “lost,”
relationship,
spirit... 

i think sometimes we may get caught up in western-linear thinking.
even when tryna be radical and critical of that which oppresses us,

in our theories, critiques, logics, and politics

we end up being dismissive of “non-western” cultures, philosophies, and the reclamation of them. 

think about how deep our assimilation is, how engrained the colonial project is in our belief systems — 

i believe it is reversible.

I am not well versed in academic theories, not that I don’t care about them, please excuse me if I fall short in my reflections–– but my thinking often times de-privileges the logic mind to the surrendering to the non-linear dream realm. During the fall of 2019, I awoke from a dream of where I was laying on a stretch bed in a room with other people; we were all affected by a smallpox outbreak. I reflected on the dream during the days after, and I wondered if I had transported back in time to the smallpox epidemic during the colonial eras, that decimated approximately 90% of the Native population on Turtle Island-Abya Yala and the Caribbean. I reflected on this historical memory, this loss and the collective susto that came from it. I reflected more, and recognized that the dream was based on the present-day, and thought of the possibility of what would it be like if there was to be another smallpox outbreak. 

And here we are, months later, finding ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic. I cannot help but to think that the ancestors were speaking to us, reminding us of what is to come. At times I am not humble nor patient enough to receive the message–– but we must remember the world before us.

Come sit at the fire…

Cherrie Moraga offers to us the possibility that: “Our preconquest imaginations offer strategies for building self-sustaining societies today, societies that can disrupt the mass suicide of global consumption, engineered by the empire of the United States.” I reflect on ancient memory, and wonder if I–– as a detribalized, mixed-blooded, urbanized brown person–– can ever view the “ancient world” without romanticizing it. This is the dilemma of colonized people living with a colonized mind; yet I follow the mandate to “get out of the way to know” as maestra Celia Herrera Rodriguez calls for us to do. I am humbled in realizing that the path towards decolonization is messy; and even though we may all have competing political definitions of it, the internal colony of the psyche (and heart) is one we must all reckon with.

observe the ways the bees speak to the corn and flowers,
the wind to your hair, the way the morning sun courts the water.

there has to be infinite ways of knowing… 

and in that observation of communication, there has to exist a way of being that teaches us
to be much more accepting, understanding, and wise in our actions.

In the re-telling of a Nahua creation story, Dr. Cintli reminds us of the mythic origins of corn cultures across Turtle Island-Abya Yala. In the re-creation of the world as the Fifth Sun, Quetzalcoatl emerged from a journey to the underworld with bones leftover from the destruction of the Fourth Sun. The debris was then infused with old lessons, new teachings, and good intentions in order to mold the present-day human beings.  In this era, we became People of the Corn through the ants gifting maíz kernels to feed the hunger of the first humans. According to this story, this was one of the foundations of the world that bore us, that witnessed the cultivation of civilization and the aftermath of its so-called “destruction” … 

We have arrived at the end/birth of another cycle. If you have an eye for these kinda things, you would see that the world is destroyed and remade every day.

What are you taking from the rubble?

What teachings will you blow into it to create the next world?