The Power of Words
Words stretch the edges of our brains,
nudge our minds toward outer space.
Unrelenting stirs to reason,
presenting thoughts we have to face.
Reason’s scent obscured by magic,
one more sense stretched to its end.
Does its vapor lull or stir us?
What sort of message does it send?
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle 681 the prompt words are: stirs scents unrelenting nudged magic stretch face words space edge sense end
In her 39 years, Kristina Trejo has worked in jobs from a receptionist at a sauna shop, to pretzel maker, but her soul work is as a pianist and batik artist. Her father, Ernesto Trejo, was a renowned Mexican poet and translator who earned his degree at California State University, Fresno, where he met her Anglo mother and began his long collaboration with Poet Laureate Philip Levine. After earning their degrees, her parents moved to Mexico City to facilitate his translation work. Here Kristina was born, moving back to the States with her parents at the age of two.
Kristina lost both of her parents at an early age—her father when she was ten and her mother when she was 17. She had already skipped two years of high school by that time, received her GED, and entered Fresno City College at the age of 16. With her mother’s death, she dropped out of college, taught piano for six months, and then travelled––ending up in San Francisco for one year, Fresno for one year, and Oregon for three years, then back to Fresno for a few months before travelling to Mexico City where she stayed for the next few years.
I interviewed Kristina at Pasta Trenta, a local restaurant where at the time she was playing the piano on Friday nights, and after we had ordered our meals, she settled in to tell me the rest of her story. “When I got to Mexico City, I felt complete—as though I had lived there for many different lives and as though that was where I was supposed to be.” She bought a piano and it was also in Mexico City that she perfected her skills in doing batik. “My mother was a pianist and batik artist. At the age of four I started begging for piano lessons. My mother finally relented when I was five, but although she herself was teaching piano, she insisted that I would probably learn more with a different teacher. It was at the age of ten that I found my mother’s batik tools in a box and asked her to show me how she created her pieces. Insisting it was too complicated and much too dangerous for a ten-year-old to work with hot wax, she promised to teach me when I was 18. But of course by that time, my mother had passed away and I had long ago forgotten about my desire to learn the technique of batik.
“One night, when I was 18, I had a dream that I had my own batik studio. I didn’t know how to do it, but in my dream I could. After that dream I felt an urgency to do batik for the rest of my life. So the next day, when my cousin sent me a gift of 100 dollars, I took the money and went all over the city looking for a book on how to do batik. I bought dyes, fabric, wax—all the materials my mother had used to do her batik but which she had quit doing before I was born. I read the book and taught myself the process, obsessing over batik until six months later, when I went to Belize and stayed in a house in the jungle where I was amazed to discover the friend we stayed with was a batik artist. It was there that my instruction began. When I moved to Mexico City, I found other artists to study with and thus began a lifelong compulsion.”
When Kristina came to a distant relative’s funeral in Ajijic ten years ago, she had no idea that she would decide to stay. “I came at a time when I needed it. Lakeside is a perfect place to still your mind and create––a perfect place to heal. Because it is positioned between two monumental natural things—the lake and the mountains—it is like you are being held safe in the middle of a peaceful embrace. The city of Fresno is situated in a valley where the air seemed trapped and full of chemicals. This situation was not conducive to music and art. There were a million people there––that many people––but fewer who appreciated art. In Ajijic, almost everyone appreciates art, music, and poetry. You don’t have to fight to be an artist. You can do it calmly in your own time and not worry about what you’re supposed to be doing. In Fresno, people thought you should be doing something serious. Here, being an artist is viewed as a serious profession.”
I asked Kristina about her goals. “My future goals? To continue following my heart about creating music and art, no matter how difficult the path. I just produced a new CD, so for the past year I was mainly obsessing over that. I don’t know how to think very far in the future because I think I was born without that part of my brain. I keep things very short term. I try to live in the present moment. There is something about the States that makes them think they can control the future. There, everyone has a five-year plan. It is very much a culture that lives under the illusion that they can control the reality we live in, but we don’t really know what is going to happen! Last night I was going to buy two bars of soap and then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Do I even know I’ll be alive to use the second bar? If I finish this bar of soap, I’ll buy another one then.’ I stay focused on my work. That’s what keeps me going.”
At present, Kristina continues to show her batik in local galleries and restaurants. She plays piano at Casa Linda on Sundays from 11 to 1, and has collaborated with other musicians to produce her first album. “A beautiful recent spiritual experience that happened this year was to watch a huge flock of birds flying as one. The Spanish name for this is parvada, and that is the name of my CD. That flock of birds flying as one is the best answer I’ve ever gotten for why things have to be as they are. Why even question the timing of the universe? Have faith that everything is operating in a sacred design of how it needs to happen at the time.”
“I live between two worlds,” Kristina answered when I asked how it was to be a person of mixed heritages living in Mexico. “It is almost impossible to explain to each group exactly what the other one is about. Too often, I am seen as the ‘other nationality.’ It has always been that way. It is a lesson in how people view things. It’s hard for people to see things from two sides, but I hope to be a bridge, translating when needed, explaining cultural differences, and continuing to love both sides.”
At this point, the waitress brought our bill along with two mints in plastic wrappers, each of which contained a short quote. Kristina’s read, “A fish that fights the current dies electrocuted.” Mine read, “Money doesn’t make happiness. It buys it ready-made.” Somehow, they seemed completely appropriate in marking the difference between the two cultures that Kristina has been alternating between and living with her entire life.
This is an interview I did with Kristina that ran in the Ojo del Lago four years ago. Since she has a new CD out, I thought I’d run it in my blog. Her new CD Betrayal of the Sun is on Bandcamp at https://kristinatrejo.bandcamp.com/album/betrayel-of-the-sun. Check out her other albums and her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/kristina.trejo.9
Until the Late Middle English period (beginning around 1450 CE), one common spelling of the word “the” was “þe,” particularly when the word was used at the beginning of a sentence. Over time, Middle English speakers began writing “þ” in a way that looked a little more like a “Y,” and once the printing press was invented, printers started just using “Y” to represent the character, especially when converting older written documents to typed ones. By then, “th” was also being used to represent the sound (the letter combination dates all the way back to ancient Rome), and it eventually took over the letter “Y” in the spelling of the word.
“Ye,” meaning “the,” reentered the popular lexicon with its modern pronunciation around 1850 as a gimmick for businesses that were trying to appear old, a usage that still persists today in business names such as Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe. Soon after, “ye olde” also became a figure of speech for describing anything as archaic; one of the earliest uses referenced in the Oxford English Dictionary is a magazine article that describes a character as “ye olde fogie.”
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I was just looking through my inbox and found two emails from my sister that I had never read before. This one was especially interesting:The source for this interesting artical is: https://historyfacts.com/arts-culture/fact/ye-olde-is-pronounced-the-old/
With the exception of the first shot, which is a back view of a shoe display at the feria, these are all shots of feet taken at the writer’s group that meets twice a month at the Nueva Posada in Ajijic. Faces and bodies have been removed to protect the innocent. Sorry for the pun. in the title. Can’t help myself.
I don’t know if you’ll see this or not, Cee, but I just need to keep sending you flowers!!!
This hibiscus bush just started blooming profusely..These are only a few of the blooms that showed up on this morning, as though they wanted to present you with a bouquet!!!!
For Cee’s FOTD
Click on photos to enlarge.
These three photos have been hanging around on my desktop for three days or so and seem to want to be seen, so here they are!!!
For Cellpic Sunday
Every book I have downloaded from Audible lately has turned into a depressing, problem-filled chore to read. You might understand why I am already depressed by reality–be it the present state of the nation or almost weekly notices of the deaths of friends past or present–– and badly in need of an entertaining and upbeat book. Does anyone have suggestions? I like character-driven well-written books that do not just present problem after problem after problem. Even my favorite authors seem to have fallen into this pattern lately. If you don’t believe me, try reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperfield.
I need escape, not tales of war, Inquisitions, enslavement, child abuse, mass murders, cruelty toward animals, spousal abuse, molestation, death, poverty, colonial cruelty or illness. This is a true list of themes in the last few dozens of books I’ve read. No matter what I think they are going to be about, they end up being about one or more of these themes! I NEED HELP!!!! I NEED ESCAPE!!!! No Harlequin-type romance, Apocalypse tales, war stories, mysteries, detective stories or science fiction fantasy, please. I need escape. Engaging, well-written books that display intelligence and sense of humor. This may be too much to ask, given my recent experiences in ordering books. Yes, I’m turning into my mother. I don’t want to hear anything that will make me feel bad! I will be forever indebted to those of you who seek to assist me in my search. oxoxo Judy
This photo was actually taken by my neighbor David Bershad, peeking over my wall to capture this wonderful shot of a grasshopper on my favorite hibiscus. As you can see, it has taken a few bites out of the flower.
Hoping for a miracle for Cee!!! xoxo
For Cee’s FOTD
Bob in “the” sarong, Bali, mid-1990’s jdbphoto
Fine Fabric
The fabric of my batik blouse seems to have grown too thin
as though what keeps the world out suddenly wants in.
A small tear on the shoulder and a long rend on the hem—
At first I wondered what it was that could be causing them.
Its fabric was durable— a fine hand-dyed sarong
spotted in the market and purchased for a song.
Young travelers in Bali, we had watched them being made—
as they traced the delicate patterns, we stood there in the shade.
And then I remembered it was nineteen seventy three
forty-four years ago that I brought it home with me
still smelling from the wax used as a resist for the dye.
The palm trees and the gamelan, the ocean and the sky
are memories wrapped up in that sarong I purchased there.
I used for a wrap–around, a towel for my hair,
a curtain and a picnic blanket, bedspread and a shawl,
a tablecloth and blanket—it served for one and all
as we traveled with our backpacks, on foot and boats and plane
then I took it with me when I went back home again.
Twenty-some years later, with my husband now along
I returned to Bali and brought my old sarong.
We found another like it—one for me and one for Bob.
Whenever clothes were called for, those sarongs did the job.
For years since then, I’ve used them for tablecloth or shawl,
for coverups around the pool, a curtain for the hall.
I had a caftan made of one. Now on another shore,
I wear it nearly every day and this is how it tore.
The woven equipale chair with tiny nails within it
reaches out for fabric every time I go to sit.
It gets my lovely caftan. and another favorite, too.
I know I shouldn’t sit in them, and yet I often do.
These memories are torn from us. It’s no good to resist.
All the parts of those gone days retreating in the mist.
Its fragile fabric wears away in spite of all our care.
It will not last forever. One day it won’t be there.
Later, I will join it through the tears life’s made in me.
All things are made or born to this inevitability.
(Click on first photo below to enlarge all and read captions.)
For SOCS the prompt is: blanket.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 