This is a spiritual time of year in Mexico. And New Mexico, one of those "the border crossed us" places, has similar traditions. And so, this weekend, it's more than costumes and candy corn amongst la gente. It's deeply religious, too, in that way the Catholic Church incorporated indigenous traditions in Mexico.
One of the traditions is to have a marker (descansos) at the place where a person died. There's a lot of them along our mountain and canyon roads, and at dangerous intersections. They serve as a warning about dangerous stretches of highway.
They're tended as carefully as the graves where bodily remains are buried.
It's a time to remember the dead. There's a couple of people, Kossacks or friends thereof, who we lost this year. They were both giants in environmental work, my core issues, and I miss them. So this diary is a time to remember them:
- Luke Cole, a pioneer in the field of environmental justice
- Our own Johnny Rook, who worked almost until the day he died, to educate the world on climate change
This past month, too, has been the worst yet for U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan. There's wars all over the place, and a lot of pain and suffering in the world. There's been way too many IGTNT diaries of late.
I invite others to add their own remembrances in the comments.
THE BIRTH OF ANGELS
Lately, I've been missing Hunter's writings, and browsing his old posts. (That got started when I remembered something he'd done about the overuse of exclamation points, but then got pulled in to read more.) There's some meta which is worth a diary or three of retrospective. As relevant today as when it was written years ago. But that's beyond the scope of this diary, and will wait for another day. Of relevance here is something dated 1/5/05, called An Image, Deconstructed.
There is an image of a little girl (link to see it, NY Times), crouching on the ground, and it is an image of war. Or an instant of war; a blameless moment, an unavoidable horror. It was dark. Perhaps her father did not see the uniforms, and only saw the guns. Perhaps she and her brothers and sisters were playing too loudly in the back seat, and why couldn't they be quiet (don't make me come back there, I told you before) and he couldn't hear the shouting outside the car, and then it was loud, and now it is quiet.
...
It is a stupid question, because I know the answer, I always know the answer. Of course I would. Of course I would kill, if she were killed. If her mother was taken. Of course. Not out of revenge, or sorrow, but as an act of ultimate blasphemy upon the very world that took her, as a single pointless attempt to peel the crust off the very earth like a gigantic orange, to shred and burn the entire planet, to make sure that where she could not live, nothing ever will. Of course. I cannot conceive of it any other way. I would kill, or I would die, or if heaven smiled upon me I would be lucky enough to do both in the same instant. Not because of promises of virgins in a glittering afterlife, or a million words from a thousand pompous fucking preachers who deserve a death much worse than mine, but because she was me, and I am her, and we will go out together or not at all, and goddamn the entire world if it wants it any other way.
...
Somewhere in Iraq, there is a man not going back to work. He has wandered onto a street in the dark, and seen a little girl crying in the stark light of a few flashlights, face and clothes streaked with blood, crying like a favorite toy has been broken, has been smashed forever. She looks strikingly like his own daughter, she has the same hair, the same face. He sees the medics attending to what remains of her parents, he sees her brothers and sisters scattered about, each in separate flashlight beams, looking like confused angels being suddenly born upon the earth in an instant of blood and chaos. He knows it is nobody's fault, that there was nothing that could be done, and yet he will not sleep. There are no pills strong enough, after you have witnessed the birth of angels.
The whole diary's worth revisiting. Of course.
ANGEL FIRE
I've been making regular visits up to the village of Angel Fire lately, for physical therapy. I don't usually drive in the mountains during snowstorms, but did last week. So I grabbed the camera, intending to work on the skill of taking pix in glaring sunshine and snow.
There's an Vietnam War memorial there, started privately, but now a New Mexico State Park. That's where I went.
This is the plaque explaining what the place is about:
Not many had ventured out yet, and it had only stopped snowing only a few hours before. The first substantial snow of the season, and early. Snow doesn't typically accumulate in town during October. Hunting season is in full swing, and procrastinators are out gathering firewood.
There's a chapel there.
Earlier in the fall, when the aspen were still golden in the mountains.
The text of another plaque:
Vietnam Veterans
Peace and Brotherhood Chapel
Dedicated May 22, 1971
by
Dr. Victor Wetphall
Jeanne V. Westphall
Walter Douglas Westphall
In Honor of their Son and Brother
Victor David Westphall III
And All His Buddies
It's a beautiful place. Quiet and encouraging reflection. Removed from the minutae of daily concerns.
Over Memorial Day there's a big Vietnam Vets motorcycle gathering there, and the whole county roars with all their engines. But it was more meditative there surrounded by fresh snow. And I was moved by some words from the young man who died too young. Sad for the life that was never lived out, the promises never fulfilled, the grandchildren never born.
We lost Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul & Mary) this year, too. This version's a singalong:
Mother Jones has been dead for a long time. She's famous for saying:
Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living!!
(Keeping Hunter's exclamation point guidelines in mind...)