if: puzzled

if: scattered

if: contraption

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if: ferocious

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and in other fascinating news: the dead sea scrolls online

if: mesmerizing

if: duet

if: burning

I found out about Werner Hoeflich in Jo Ann Beard's brilliant essay in The Best American Essays 2007, and never forgot about him.

if: afterwards

 Before:

It was a nice change, to use the week's word as form instead of content.

And to try out digital colage was fun, too.

if: spent

Mexico City sits on a valley and depends on another state for its water supply. Hundreds of thousands of its (20 million) inhabitants suffer from the lack of water.  A sad irony, for a city originally built literally on water and that continues to flood every single summer. I don't live there anymore. Still, the too-often-ignored anguish of it came to my mind with the the IF word for this week.

And in honor of their well spent lives, here are T's grandparents and mine, in our Dia de los Muertos altar:

 

The table you see is the new life of the well my parents built in 1990 when we moved from dry Mexico City to crazy-humid Xalapa. (Having to pull the water from a well makes you care about water, maybe that's really where my drawing comes from!)

if: dessert

Made this on the move, with solid watercolors because it's the only thing you can take on the plane! I am now in Wahington DC.

On our last day in Madison we visited the amazing arboretum and then ate ice-crem at the University, because -of course!- they have their own dairy store! That's Wiscosin for you!

We will miss you, Madison!

if: immovable

Acrylics. Part of a color-series I've been working on for months. Each painting has a different color background and represents a different passage of a children's novel I've been working on too.

Colors have forever interested me as a theme. For a year I held a column in a magazine about them. And once I had a grant to write a novel where the cochinillla (the insect that produces red dye) was the main character. Sometimes I think my color book is something I will write when I'm 80 and in the first page I'll write: I have been preparing for this my whole life.

But in the meantime: I would love to know what do you think about this painting. 

And also,  if colors interest you too, I do recommend this amazing book.

if: atmosphere

I'm back from a beautiful vacation in North Carolina.

Only bad moment was during a hike in the Smokey Mountains when I almost stepped on a rattlesnake.

It was my fault.

(It's generally the human's fault, isn't it?)

I was dreaming (and dreading, but mostly dreaming) of seeing a bear, and looking around instead of at the ground.

When I heard the rattle noise (not that I knew what it was) and turned down, the snake was a foot distance from my foot. And it was a lot bigger than my foot. It was green. I can't really describe it much more because all I saw was its neck, all stiff and it´s open mouth. I froze. Then I jumped. It all happened quickly but it seemed long. My legs trembled for almost the rest of the walk.

Later, when we crossed a ranger and he told us rattlesnakes bites are not necessarily fatal (sometimes you only loose the leg...) I became kind of mystical about the incident. I take it as a metaphor, that I almost lost my leg (or died) because I was wishing for imaginary bears instead of looking at what was on my path, right in front of me. I take it as a suggestion to advance more mindfully.

Later that day I read that Cherokee people, who lived in those mountains, healed rattlesnake bites with plants and roots. And that they would use the exact same remedy on people who'd been bitten than on people who'd only dreamed of being bitten.

Atmosphere, such an external word... But aren't atmospheres made of perception? Aren't dreams full of them?

The day after, a local told me that if a rattlesnake looks you in the eye but does not bite you, it´s good luck. And so I choose to believe him!

IF: artificial

IF: double

drawn with black ink, scanned, then colored it in the computer, just like breakfast

IF: breakfast

I know all about the importance of breakfast and most days I do get some, but really, for me what breaks the fast (and the sleeping) is coffee. I guess you could call it an addiction. I blame the place where I grew up. Oh yes, Coatepec is all about coffee.

Today (july 20) is Día Del Amigo (Friends Day) in Argentina, so I am a bit melancolic today, about missing my friends in Buenos Aires, where I lived for a year until a month ago or so. But hey, tomorrow is my birthday, so no time for sadness! Plus look at what my cool parents in law sent to me yesterday:

I love that they included that warning, I guess they know me pretty well!

Happy friends-day to all of you!

IF: diary

This is daily reality for me: the before and after of my Morning Pages ritual.

I kid you not. 

Morning Pages are 3 pages you write first thing in the morning. They can be about anything, anything at all, but they usually end up freeing you from stuff that you would otherwise carry around all day! I've been doing them for two years. It is my diary, yes, but it is so much more than that.

The truth of my mood is very simple: if I do not write I rot. Simple, huh? Yeah but easy to forget too, whenever I "forget" to do my Morning Pages... I think is because the daily act of putting pen to paper before doing anything else reminds me of my personal truths, of who I am and what I want, and allows me to "leave the drama in the page", as Julia Cameron puts it. I now think I could have saved myself entire years of therapy if I'd known about Morning Pages before!

I like to think of my monsters (and dramas and fears and anguishes) as dangerous baobabs who'll eat up my pretty planet; and of Morning Pages as the daily act of plucking them:

"It is a question of discipline," the little prince said to me later on. "When you've finished your own toilet in the morning, then it is time to attend to the toilet of your planet, just so, with the greatest care. You must see to it that you pull up regularly all the baobabs, at the very first moment when they can be distinguished from the rosebushes which they resemble so closely in their earliest youth. It is very tedious work," the little prince added, "but very easy."

 

You should try it sometime, I know you have horrible voices too, that desguise as the rosebushes of responsability or coherence and that attack you and your dreams. Let them rot forever in the pit of a diary!

IF: giant

Uff!! on Thurday but I made it!

For this giant I used the tecnique of Carl Cneut, an amazing flemish illustrator. There's a very cool video about it here. If you don't speak French or don't care for the talking, you can fast forward to the part where you can see directly the paper while Cneut paints one of his fairies. Worth your while!

IF: satellite

This watercolor now lives with my friend Camila. Camila is a poet and a yoga teacher and a zen student. She owns a vocho and a plant with strange spiky orange flowers. And this fall (when I move yet again...) we will live in the same city for a few months, which makes me smile.

IF: fearless

...still playing with deamons. And with the wacom pad. I think the saturated version photoshop accidentaly made for me has more charm than the original.

IF: ahead

I´m currently obsessed with demons because of a story I´m writing... Here one of them has decided that Hell needs a moon.