The Quest (La Búsqueda)

The Quest of the Mother 

My great grandmother Adela Morales

It was the summer in the year 2000. I went back to Mexico to visit the family. Everything was still fairly "normal", Sunday gatherings at my grandparent's home were still in place and all Ortiz family will eat together and spend an afternoon of chatting and music. My grandfather Ricardo was then struggling to stand up from his bed. His eyesight went bad, so when before used to read, now will use his ears to comfort his hunger for data brain which was still as bright as ever. He will play Mexican "Loteria" in the afternoons and will know his cards and the place of the images by memory. He tried to keep a routine, I suppose not to fall into the fear of death approaching. He was afraid of death. When tested in life with illness, the grand, sophisticated clever Doctor, known and respected by society, will be reduced to a child, lost in the vulnerability of being close to the Not Known Land searching for comfort in my grandmother's arms, Bertha Martinez, her second most beloved one, the first one, his mother Adela Morales. I remember well, one of the times he had to go to the hospital because of his heart, I stayed over to take care of him. In the middle of the night, he began calling my grandmother, crying and shaking fearing death. He will say to her: "Bertha, hold my hand, I think I will die... I am afraid... hold my hand, be near me..." It was heart-breaking to hear him, more after having such a solid presence of him placed in memory, someone who gave support and care to so many people in Monterrey. My grandfather lived many years later after that day in the hospital.

In that summer of the year 2000, on that Sunday family gathering before coming back to England, I spent with him the whole afternoon just near him, laying down beside him, telling him jokes and reading to him, talking about themes I knew he used to love, I will call him "mi burundango" (my little monkey) and will blow in his big fat tummy, he will laugh childishly. I was the only granddaughter that dared to call him with a monkey name, at the beginning he hesitated, feeling that perhaps I was not being that respectful, and then he just gave in to the laugh and the game, our age gap shortened and our family status levelled giving us still moments in which two human souls embrace each other in their humanity and experience. It was time to give farewell, I gave him a kiss and a hug and left, when I saw that no one was ready, went back to him and hug him again.  Once at the entrance of the house, I told my mother to wait for me, that I needed the toilet and went back to give him another hug. Then once in the car, I felt my heart tearing apart, a real heartache and with tears, I asked my mom to let me go say goodbye one more time to my grandfather. I came out of the car and went to him, lay down by his side and gave him a long silent hug while he embraced me with his bear comforting arms, and then he asked me: Why have you said goodbye so many times? I replied: I just can't let go of you... That was the last time I saw him, a few months later, on the 15th of March 2001 he passed away in my brother's arms. 

Once I was able to return to Mexico, I visited my grandmother and sat down to drink a coffee with one of the oldest loyal maids that worked at my grandparent's home and talked about his last days before he passed away. She told me that in the last week of his life he will call his mother, and they will hear him having with her long conversations. When asked, he will say: Can't you see? and he will go on describing a beautiful garden, and the sweetness of having his mother near him. 

My grandfather lost his mother when he was 4 years old. During the Mexican Revolution, traveling was not safe and was a need for everyone. One day doing a journey by train, the train got taken by revolutionaries, although my great grandparents survived, they had to walk for hours in the desert, passed thirst and hunger, my great grandmother was pregnant of my grand uncle Raul. This event traumatized her,  she never recovered from what happened and a few months after giving birth, she passed away. The pain of the loss of his mother was immense for my grandfather because with it many changes happened in the family shaping for good or for bad, my grandfather's destiny.

In every step my grandfather took, he will search for his mother, his mother was that part of his soul in spiritual questing, his mother was also the shadow of his inner desires expressing in every angle of his life, the arms and the kiss that he tried to find in my grandmother as well. She was the essence of all his movements, and the last call in his voice while embracing death. He will call her asking her to help him die, to teach him, and that soul image that he created throughout his life helped him to pass through the other side eventually. 

This poem is a vision and premonition of his destiny and his journey. Like a prophet of his own life, travelling and in the quest of his own soul through the pathways of the unconscious, my grandfather Psalmed his own spiritual journey.  

The Quest

If in my wild search my anxiety does not find you

If, when I call you, my cry falls lost at the distance,

If the clinging of the abyss devours your name,

My eyes shall get to know all horizons,

Across all confines, my arm shall be felt

I shall go through the last of the world's spheres

And the universe in its extent shall acknowledge my quest of you.

The laughter, between my lips, shall be suspended;

My eyes, two sharp and steely lanterns,

Through the vast outline of a thousand latitudes,

Shall be stinging throughout all trails;

My ear shall resort alongside all trines

Shuffling chords to hear your voice.

I shall catch the missing note of your song

To forge with it God's music.

My fluttering shall follow your diluted fragrance

Peeking in the shadow your distant glow;

One by one, my soul is gathering your petals,

But many are missing to obtain the flower.

If my burning desire falls terminally ill

And with no compassion fatigue girds at me,

My torch shall be put out; My hand stiffened

Shall be an intense hug on your blue memory ...

Inert, like a broken and sore wing,

I shall fade away through hills and plains

To see if my desperation enshrouds you ...

Ricardo Ortiz

Iniciacion, p.35, 1942

My grandparents Ricardo Ortiz Morales and Bertha Martinez Taboada

Still keeps beatting (Aun sigue latiendo)

Finding himself caught in the reality of the moment described as "thirst" and the desire of that which will satiate and nourish his Self. It is much more than a desire, it is a deep ingraned need of that which he had before. The word moist is gentle, it points to that which has been tasted in little sips of sweet nectar in a form of embracing intimacy.

The next pharagraph gives a sudden turn directing the heart to that which is the imprint of the Soul's journey. The travelling within states of light mirages in permanence and desertic impermancence. My grandfather recognises the Source and in this recognition swirls around words like piety, hope and faith. The struggle of the heart's duality to reach its desire: devoution and exhaustion as human and faith's hope as the light of the Spirit recognised in certainty. It is for me a very interesting  last sentence, because he seems to be talking about his oun Soul-Self as in constant change. By using the word "corner", he denotates a place within the big room of his Soul-Self in which he can see clearly and with certainty something which is inmovable by begining the sentence with " and": "many other things get in and go in that room, but there is something I see with certainty which is permanent", he is expressing. He also speaks of Faith as belonging to Hope and the words are impersonal, he doesn't say "my" faith in hope, instead a whole Spirit in Hope that within carries Faith...

I am facing towards life

With a thirsty mouth...

Dont know who ended the owner

Of the moist of your kissess

That my lips have tasted...

Much useless piety

Against my discourage

As they arrive, they are gone...

And in my soul's corner

Still keep beating

Hope's Faith

Ricardo Ortiz

Translated by Sandra Ortiz and Jesus Ortiz.

INICIACION

This is the beginning of this journey. 

It all began with my father announcing that my grandparent’s home was finally sold. My heart sank in sadness, so many moments in time, so many memories stored in that house. The effort, the love, attention that my grandparents placed there not only to its material existence but every single person that used to walk through their doors; my grandparents were up to their last breath, always welcoming and giving. I always had dreams of bringing the home back to its splendour, even converting it into a care home, in which older people could live a happy enjoyable life. I left Mexico 16 years ago to live in England, and the house was not part of my father's inheritance, so my dreams couldn't come true. But after my father's news on the house, I began to have a series of dreams of the home calling me, dreams of me visiting the home and witnessing its life , seeing its spirits. It occurred to me that if I could view my grandparent´s houses spaces and expression from a different perspective, I could dig somehow into my grandfather´s beautiful Self and mind. All of a sudden, from that angle, my grandparent’s home has become a place full of life and eternal manifestations inside of me as well as an opportunity of exploration in my own Self too. For that, and the wonderful childhood moments, for the love, care, presence, I will always be so grateful to them. And I witness now that even after their death, they keep filling my life with colour, rhythm and love!

It feels just right for me to write this blog in English. English language forms part of my reality and life after so many years living in this country. After sharing my dreams with my therapist, she suggested that I could take the venture of translating a book of poems from Spanish that my grandfather wrote and published in 1944. Interestingly enough, my grandfather was a lover on mastering language, he did so in Spanish as well as in English, and he was self taught. He was always challenging himself in any venture he decided to take, he will challenge his mind, every single time, his brain never aged, and he kept it bright up to the last moment. Playing, we used to bring a dictionary in English and just choose a word by random and he was must of the times 99% right. Beautiful Mind! Some of us have taken just "some" of that passion, for me out of need, living in this country, but another one is my brother Jesus Ortiz who will be with me, cooperating in the finding of the best expression of what my grandfather could have meant in his poems (he doesn’t know yet, I have kept him texting each other suggestions, and naturally he responds). My brother had the most years living near my grandparents in our childhood, and in his adulthood lived besides him and supported him in the last breath of his life and to whom my grandfather's life is too an inspiration.

There was so much happening in the life of my grandfather in the early 40’s. His graduation from Medicine School in 1942, so I could just suppose that he was ever so busy placing himself as a Doctor in the "Regiomontana" (from Monterrey, N.L. Mexico) Society as well as paving the way to marrying my grandmother Berta Martinez. What I feel coming from my grandfather is that at his early 20's he was a vibrant, energetic and passionate young man with a whole world to discover. But there is also another side to him, a profound and intimate soul experience manifesting and desiring more expression. But it has been the sincere and profound introduction that Don Eusebio de la Cueva into my grandfather's book of poems on March 1943 (Nuevo Leones novelist, poet and university cathedratic and who surprisingly passes away on July of the same year), the one that has clearly shown the guidance into the journey that I am about to embark. The expression of what he saw on my grandfather and the different elements and dynamics working inside and outside of himself is beautifully placed.  He expresses that although his strength in academic knowledge, he doesn’t sacrifices his own inner poetic truth and instead expresses it with audacity; remembering my grandfather, I know he did the same in many areas of his life, he was a creative nonconformist truthful to himself spirit, ahead of his time! I could just say that there could have been very few people that were able to touch the reality of the immensity of his Self. Eusebio de la Cueva does warn us, the readers, that it will not be “an easy task to precise the mind flows far from human perceptions that determine in the poet the way he translates himself. A tiring hurdle could be to pretend certainty into what strange external influences concern in the hidden meadows of the intimate” which is precisely the quest I have been willing to take. But my quest is a very intimate one, it talks to my Self and I believe in the power of our blood connection and knowledge and wisdom placed in my ancestral line. I hope these series of “sharings” will be for whoever reads them a journey, a pilgrimage to their hearts too.

 
Introduction to “Iniciación"

My friend reader,

As soon as your eyes sneak into the pages of this book: “Iniciación", it will be true for you that you find yourself facing the works of a poet.

Each brief sprout of the youthful numen that these poems begin with is a joyful achievement that accuses the intimate excellencies of a spirit that traduces itself in beautiful expressions of poetic forms.

It will not be an easy task to precise the mind flows far from human perceptions that determine in the poet the way he translates himself.

A tiring hurdle could be to pretend certainty into what strange external influences concern in the hidden meadows of the intimate.

But it doesn’t offer difficulties to see if the poet is facing forwards or sideward in front of the surrounding urgencies of life in what she has of being pushy and persistent; of being disturbing  and suggestive; of being cruel and tyrant.

And the poet whose first work you find yourself dear reader, is one of those that go in a joyful way, facing Life, and who is, for your own luck, still young, and he is one of those who has strengthened his own youth with methodical study and a strong gathering of the excellences of knowledge.

In my hands, this young poet placed, a rightful winter day, with no preliminary strange influences that could credited him, a kind of pile of papers "with long and short lines", with the hope that I read them, -looking forward to create a book-, and then while my eyes looked at the series of pages I found myself  believing I saw emerging in front of my sight, like vague apparition in the foggy canvas of the distance, now the unfortunate Holderlin, -on those days in which Fatality was not being on a hurry to immobilize his genus-, now the Mussett before the days of fever with Jorge Sand of Venice, now that Becquer sick of excruciating nostalgia and eagerness drilled by de dagger of despair.

I found that the ways of translating himself this young soul facing life, on top of the hostile crag of its torturous realities, of temptation, could pain perhaps in indecision, in abruptness, in disobedience to canons of academic order, but -and find here the saviour "but" this time-, give freedom, uncovered, without muffled techniques, the intimate sense of its poetic truth.

The form is obedient to an inner sense of his own poetical truth.

He translates himself in free ways with undisguised audacity that is not uncomfortable and that in the other hand is moving.

I hope that like me you will achieve, my dear reader, having certainty that all of these brief poems confess the work of a poet whose initial achievements are reserved in fixed -for the indecipherable tomorrow- realisations that carry perennial potentialities by the opulence of all virtue.

Eusebio de la Cueva
March, 1943