The Mexico Valley has movement and stillness at the same time.
What if when exploring the city, we suddenly find ourselves in this inert space between kaos and stillness? We could enter and leave the city’s labyrinth with a single blink, and thus find our own voice, purpose and legacy; accepting our duality as the flow of light and life that we are and of the stillness, darkness and death that we also are.
In the attempt to live my life with awareness, whenever I can, I take a break from work and I take a moment to sort out my thoughts.
I walk towards Cuicuilco, the Mesoamerican archaeological zone of the Preclassic period located in the south-east of the Valley of Mexico. Cuicuilco is translated as the place where songs and dances are made. This city existed long ago in apparent linear time, and at the same time it feels so alive and present. I feel it in full connection with our ancestral spirit. It has been a refuge of ideas, a silent refuge of calm seas. And it is in the middle of the city, near my work!
When arriving to Cuicuilco, I take a deep breath and a collection of old memories send me into that isolated space and stopped in time. I feel that Cuicuilco is calling me, and that it wants to share its secrets with me. I like to feel protected by its lava fields. The volcanic eruptions of Xitle buried and destroyed Cuicuilco. This disaster caused the dispersion of the Cuicuilca culture towards Toluca and Teotihuacán; its inhabitants had to be reborn and strengthened again.
Perhaps it is the energy of all that space covered in lava, the thousands of vessels and bones that were trapped in the volcanic rock, in containment; Maybe those secrets are covered and trapped in those eruptions of the Xitle where the lava eternalized the moment. As when I’m here standing time is suspended and my thoughts get clear.
Cuicuilco opens up to my eyes like a vigorous core of restorative energy.
Its circular pyramid brings me the memory of the wind that flows without barriers and cleanses my dual being, awakens it.
I sit down with Ernesto Sábato’s book, “Sobre Heroes y Tumbas” and this sentence calls my attention:
“A mysterious event is proceeding in these moments: dusk.”
What would happen if we really saw the days go by, wrapped in mystery? …
What would our lives be like if we were surprised by the complexity of the night?
If we really put all our attention in a single terrestrial rotation, and at the end of the day we found other answers about our species or about our being?
What do I feel about seeing me here, at this moment, in this space of time? “
I have been asking myself these questions since I was very small: I always thought about the duality of life and death. When I felt fear, from one moment to another, the wind would come to calm my spirit … the wind of a night full of mystery.
In Cuicuilco, the wind flows and whistles a music for me inside, and sometimes meets the edges of my thoughts. Its circular pyramid feels flowing, embracing and reconstructing each idea, each thought until its liberation; the roundness of its main pyramid makes it possible.
This is how the song and dance of the place are received, without any obstacle; it just flows and takes flight to new perceptions. My daily worries fade and I dance in silence. My heart opens even more and an impetus to recognize me as part of this mystery that surrounds me.
The wind touches my cheek while reminding me “I’m here, I celebrate my time, my steps, my darkness and my own singing. I am the way where times converge.” My heart grows.
“I am life.”
