Journal I: Strings

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Chére Simone,

Tu ne sais pas maintenant, mais tu seras ma journal de voyage. Et ceci, n'est un moleskine non plus. (ouais, chére D dans le monde physique Simone est marron et belle).

Anyway, at the beginning of this journal there's an inscription made by Marcel Proust (oú quelq'un en faisant un citation) "Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux."

This being stated, this last trip did gave me different eyes, and changed me somehow. I went to a small town, at north. No more than 700 people, excessive offer of silence and thermal waters. The name is Temacapulin, and the purpose was to assist an international congress of people affected by dams. The state plans to build a dam that will flood the town and vanish forever centuries of history, traditions and culture.

My plan was to go there, do some voluntary work and learn whatever I could about sustainability. I wasn't planning to be broken in such a way my future plans seemed ridiculous and useless. So it goes.

Previous to this, I must admit two things that up until now may have not been quite clear: 1-Je suis mexican. 2- Up until this day, it has only been a matter of land, never have I felt like belonging to a territory, a culture, a tradition or a collective society.

And so the idea of leaving this land has never troubled me, if any it has been a relieve in current conditions (read the news). This could be an interesting study of national identity crisis in times of globalization, I that's not the intention. Rather than to state I have had no strings attaching me to this land, its people or to anything else in here.

But it required a godforsaken town, full of people from all corners of the world, for me to see something Diego Golombek once said: In places like this, if I don't do anything about it, who will? It was not just a matter of sustainability in a matter of environment and economy. It was all the injustice, the impunity, the lack of effective public servers; the lack of law.

Hearing the desperate cries of the people, looking at their situations in the face, realizing they're not so far from my geographic reality; all these things made me shiver. Some must do something about, and I can't just look away and pray to the Sun these people will get assistance. I need to do something about it, I need to be there; if not I, at least know for sure it is happening.

And so, feeling firmly about fighting for this causes I notice my feet a little heavier, strings commence to root to the ground, to the mother earth, to this place, to these people. Et alors, je me suis cassé nouveau.


Joeux Anniv ma chére terre

Comments (0)