Tijuana Baja California, October 29, 2020

Jose A. Zorrilla:

Dear grandfather,

First of all, I want to let you know that I feel awkward typing a letter to you in English. It is also weird that I am trying to communicate when you are already dead. On October 3rd was your seventeenth death anniversary. God! It’s been a long time since I took a still picture of you with my first camcorder. You were so peaceful in your coffin, a miracle. I couldn’t stop staring at you. I felt my body numb, as if it were soil lined up by ants moving leaves back and forth in seconds. Anyway, I am writing to you because you were in my dream last night and today my mother’s neighbor, who rents your house, told me that she heard steps in the kitchen… around the same time I was dreaming of you. Was that you? Were you trying to tell me something?

In my dream, I was wandering at Forever21 when I got to the second floor, it was a long hallway with crystal walls. Near the end of the hallway, I saw two surgery rooms. On my left side a baby delivery by c-section. I saw how the doctor burst the sac followed by the newborn’s first breath. Then on my right another baby was being delivered naturally, I also saw their first breath. I probably breathed as well. I kept walking to the end of the hallway, where I could see a snowy village outside, a group of elders gathered on the mountain slopes. I focused my eyes, so I could see what was going on. There was a man with a megaphone saying, ‘Who do you think will win? Let’s wait until they get to the top and we’ll see!’ Then the group of elders cheered and yelled three names at the same time. I gazed to the top of the mountain and saw you dressed as usual. As I saw you earlier on your photographs: light blue shirt, khaki shorts, white long socks and white classic Reebok sneakers. You stared at me, wow, I felt it, even if we were so far, I could see your eyes in front of mine. I saw you as history. You went inside a cave, but your face was still outside. The snowy mountain transformed into your lab coat. The first thing I saw when I woke up was your great granddaughter’s book “Hoja” laying on the floor, showing an illustration of a polar bear inside the same cave you were in.

I wonder where you are. I imagine you as a breeze, invisible but present. Like any element traveling around, from inside and outside the Earth’s atmosphere. Are you wandering around the exosphere? Do you know where you are? Are you still a being?

Did you and my grandmother feel something when I projected the photographs the day that I dreamt of you? Do you know that I displayed your image as a colored light on a wall in your downtown building? Do you feel that you were being re-recorded? You became part of a chemical process that printed light as time and with time. Do you know and feel that you are part of a physical memory? I have your archive, and since I dreamt of you, I’ve been thinking of the relationship between a dead person and their archive.

Anyway, I have too much to say, but I don’t know if you are going to receive this letter. I must mention that I am writing it with the intention of getting in touch with you, whatever that is at this stage.

Let me know as soon as possible if you read me.

By the way, thanks for giving me your analog Minolta a couple of days before you died.

With curiosity and love.

Your granddaughter,

Ana

Around, do not know when.

Mi nieta que ya es señora:

I am so glad to read from you. I understand how virtual expression has been increasingly dominating the world. In my life, I saw how the typewriter evolved, that was my writing machine. Do you remember when I first typed on your computer keyboard? When I was young the virtual world was a speculative medium of communication. I think about language and I have to mention that I always had an easier time understanding than speaking or writing English. But as you know, I’ll try to do my best, as usual.

I did not consciously try to reach you, I was just thinking a lot about your grandmother and I know that you were with her this November 5th, 2011. When you opened the hospital room, those four walls were loaded with your grandmother's last essence. You felt her dense energy, that made you feel like soil again. This way was different, you open the door spreading her invisible mass while disappearing, instead of photographing her at the coffin. Two days before, she mentioned that she was joining me. It was November 3rd and we heard her saying: “the fifth'', “I am going to be with my husband” while her son was driving. I was there, we were passing the International highway of Tijuana, by that famous country limit fence. You kept touching her shoulders from the back. Your uncle is the “black sheep”, an abusive asshole. I know, he didn’t pass to the beach at a parallel street when you were taking her to the hospital. I also want to acknowledge that I am happier having my films and photographs with you at my building. Mi tiempo está contigo.

Did you ever think that you took me to that cave in your dream? after you handle the slides that day? You interacted with me, touching the cellulose by accident to project the photographs. As usual, you weren’t using gloves, therefore I felt a particle of my time adhering to your hand. A fragment of my past had been transferred to your thumb. That night you read “Hoja” with Yatzil, both of you touched the printed image of that mountain. Your thumb took me to the cotton fiber of the paper, and as you moved your finger, I went back to your skin, then you touched that injured eyebrow with your thumb. It wasn’t me, but I was there, it was an old debris of fixed light traveling to another time as a non-existing memory. Then you slept and I went to the other side of that mountain, where we found each other with our gaze.

I understand how vivid some dreams are, once I dreamed with your adorable grandmother, dressed as a queen, waiting to hold my hand at the end of the darkest alley. She was a queen, I first saw her dressed as one, the town mayor was putting her a crown, she was dressed with a long velvet red cape. She was nominated as La Reyna de Pátzcuaro for their town’s festivities. Then I started thinking how to make her my queen and started writing her love letters. We love each other for the past and future longest period of time.

Wherever I am I witness situations. If I am in an urban environment, I can perceive the dust, sand, smoke, and the skin remaining of the people that are passing by. You know what else? Cloth debris, when someone takes off their sweater and shakes it, both remains of fabric and skin are incorporated to the emptiness of the place where the action happens. I think about this because the other day, I saw something that I still can’t decipher.

I can’t exactly describe where I am, it feels as everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But I understand all your points. For example, I know how the dream-like experience is, but I don’t know if what I am experiencing is real or just a juxtaposition of time generating nonstop memories. I feel like being inside a high-speed microscopic capsule, when I observe something the speed slows down. Like a time machine without specific intentions, but always wandering, taking me to any place. I never forget anything, even if I just pass by in the high-speed capsule.

Your letter made me feel the world again, I could feel my skin and the air coming in through my nostrils. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be José Zorrilla again.

With all the love of my heart.

Your Grandfather,

José

San Diego California. November 8, 2020

Querido Papápepe:

When I got your letter, I felt like soil again. The same ants wandered inside my trunk, as if my body were their home. I told you! I was in front of a miracle, you made me feel the same way, but I don’t know how to refer to you. I believe you’re a non-matter being, since you were able to communicate with me. I feel that you’re not only one, it seems that your self is disintegrated and your fragments are scattered everywhere. I am impressed by your capacity of observation and how your actual molecules (if any) are traveling at the speed of light, while retaining information. I can’t explain to myself: how is it that a fragment of your time became your past self where you can be present as what you are now? By the way, are you still in my thumb?

I can’t stop thinking about my grandmother as well. I know you were in the car with us that day. I really don’t know what’s your state of being, probably you don’t know either because you don’t have a shape that functions. You are intangible, amorphous, invisible, I am glad that you’re around, but not as a corpse. Are you really able to see the micro-particles that float in the wind? How big are they in proportion to themselves? You mentioned how shedding constantly happens. Are we surrounded by our own corpses,even in our beds?

When your beautiful wife died, I kept the violet comb that she used since I have memory, do you remember which one? Even though she was elegant, ordered, clean, and had an obsessive routine with time, she didn’t clean her comb. I kept those thin gray corpses interweaved between her comb’s teeth. I left it on the roof of your house, exposed to the elements. I wanted to see how long it would take for the hair to disappear, but my uncle threw it away before renting your house. I could write a whole letter complaining about your son, but right now the only thing that I can do, is thank you for everything that you have shared with me.

As I told you, I already brought a new living being to Earth and you are one of its roots. Yátzil says that she comes from Little Prince’s planet. Since I knew she existed, I started thinking about life as a collective action that mixes tangible experiences with invisible elements. Always evolving in different forms, scales and percentages. We weren’t alone; actually, I have never been alone, the material that makes my body contains you, your grandparents, and my grandmother’s great grandmothers, my ancestors. Sometimes I think that I am made of something closer than my ascendants. I feel that I am a fragment of my planet, but most of the time I’m separated from it by my shoes or cement. The other day, Yatzil and I were looking at a sample of soil under the microscope, once she put her eyes on the lens, she yelled “The Little Prince’s planet” “there he is”. She saw a planet on a fragment of rock that I collected from Chicxulub crater. Can you believe it?

Are you what I breathe?

When I was a little kid, a couple of years older than my daughter, I saw you. You were working at a laboratory. My brain recorded the image of a body that was you. Isn't it more appropriate to say: the body where you were? or, a body that had you? the body that you made? or a body that made you? I don’t know, but my eyes processed and transformed the image of your whole physical live structure into a memory.

I remember a big white shape bowing. Your face was connected to a thick white metal machine. It seemed as if you were watching through a type of binoculars. That tool had a tiny aluminum square as a platform which you could control up and down with a wheel. You placed a delicate rectangle piece of glass with something on it. Suddenly, your arm appeared and touched a part of the machine with your fingers and pressed a button. You turned on a light which was pointed towards the platform from below. I walked inside the room, then I perceived you, wearing a white long blouse, seemed like a dress. Your other arm moved from inside of a lab coat white fabric, it touched the focal control of the microscope. Another wheel, similar to your yoyo made of wood, but this non-yoyo was blue.

It seemed that you were possessed, your hands were managing two grids, I heard you whispering many things, something surprising had happened. Then your body trembled in front of the white table. I felt like floating and turned my eyes up, I saw your instruments shelf moving as your knees. An earthquake was making us shake as if we were ground. The test tubes fell down and broke, the mortar hit my eyebrow and I woke up in a hospital room. You never took me to the lab again. But I still remember your objects: fibers, metals, rocks, flowers, tubes with minerals, water, many books, images of molecular structures. Also, another shelf made from boxes of carousel slide trays with a projector above. I would like to know what you found that day, I never knew.

What I know is that the day of the earthquake my mother was with my brother at the dentist. Which is two blocks away from your ex-laboratory, and now I work on the third floor of that building. This was your property. How were you able to own properties? What do you think about the action of stopping interacting with materials when you stop being a material? I mean, you have your body, I have mine, everyone has their own, but when (in this case) you died, you stopped having your body. You stopped having those white socks, cameras, family, your properties… Did you stop having your memories?

Do you read my letters in a couple of nanoseconds? Am I the only one who has written to you? Thanks for being around, I am so excited!

With all my best wishes of reading from you again. Your Granddaughter

Anacaro

Multiverse, Forever

Dear actual woman that once was my granddaughter:

It has been a while since I stopped being José Zorrilla, I also question to myself: am I still being him? Am I another being? probably when I become the other being I do not know that I was or I am José. And if that is the case, I feel comfortable when I am this being. I started remembering me since you reached me and I know that I am happy with what I

had the opportunity to be.

Now that you remind me of that earthquake I am finding out that it has been a long time, even if for me that day could be today because I do not know where this capsule is going to take me, also because once I remembered it I felt worried again, I did not remember the feeling of being worried. Oh dear, it seemed that you were about to lose your eye, I could not think of anything, not even my fifty year experiment, I was desperate to call an ambulance or reach your mother. The digital communication style was not that advanced as it today. Anyway, your eyes survived and I am glad to know that you are now a mother, which is impressive.

Giving birth is the most natural action in the world, and it is also a reminder that humans are still mammals. I saw my wife giving birth to our six kids; during labor, she was the most powerful woman that I have ever seen. I helped her in whatever I could, I would get up at midnight to lay our babies next to her breast, so she did not have to wake up during her postpartum. I loved her and cared for her all my life, I had hoped to keep caring for her when death would bring us together again, but she is not by my side. Having her next to me is my only hope.

Your grandmother was the noble divinity that represented the maximum ideal of my life.

I met her in 1940, two years after graduating as a biochemist from the National Academy of Chemical Sciences. I had accepted a job offer in her town. Once her uncle saw us close to each other by the woods, he took her away. I do not blame him; she was eighteen and I was twenty-eight. Her family did not know mine. I was a foreigner that was arriving in their town. They did not like me as her husband because I was not Catholic. But I only needed one second to know that I would do anything to marry her, and to succeed I became Catholic.

I am the husband of that incredibly beautiful queen of Pátzcuaro. As I told you, I am around without knowing where I am going, but one day the speed took me to my room. You were there, looking around her stuff, I remembered our secret right in the moment that you found it. You opened a drawer and found her hidden nightgowns, curiously you unwrapped the silk cloth finding out that they had holes at the pelvis. I remembered when we used them, she kept all of them. I was already eighty, but we still chose which nightgown she was going to use. That day I was begging the speed to bring her into our room as well, but it did not happen. Imaginate que eso hubiese pasado, habría sido el hombre más feliz de los muertos! La amo y la amaré siempre.

That speed capsule (I will refer to this phenomenon as that, but I am not sure if it is that) takes me wherever, even to the wings of a fly inside a prison cell, or to an eagle’s feather that is being refreshed by the dew of the Niagara Falls. I would love to be transported to the kitchen where my wife Carmencho used to make breakfast and coffee after watering her plants. I would love to be at her back smelling her nape and admiring how she squeezed oranges for our juice. But nothing is easy after death.

I do not know where I saw this, it is something similar to a dream, but I am aware that I do not dream anymore. Seriously, this experience sometimes gets out of control. This one time, I was inside a drop of water that fell down from a cloud, there was a community of meteorologic natives, a multifaceted sustainable human species. They were as small as dwarfs, similar to those Mayan mythological creatures that were created by the ancients to take care of their lands forever: aluxes, (I assume that you know them because you wrote about Chicxulub… I am curious, why do you have soil from there?) The meteorologic creatures could adapt to everything; when the weather is low their hair grows long enough to wrap their bodies and cover them. They don’t need coats, nor shirts, nothing, no clothes. If it’s cold their hair grows abundant, if the next day is hot, they lose their foliage. A natural transformation. The weather leads to their anatomy, just as it does with the land when its bloom period ends and the drought starts. I believe it’s an interaction between the Earth and living species, I know that this happens to every living being in the world. You dreamt something similar at the breathing hall, when the mountain became my lab coat, I was the mountain, I was the Earth.

Please keep in contact, as I already told you, you make me feel alive and I am grateful.

Always grateful to have saved your eyes.

José Albino Zorrilla Jaramillo

P.S. I did not remember my complete name until now

Downtown Tijuana, Baja California., November 15, 2020

Querido Papápepe:

I am still with my eyes wide open, amazed by this letter exchange. I can’t believe that you were there when I found those nightgowns, I didn’t know what to do. I felt that I had to hide them from your son, by the way, were you around when he kicked me out of your house and changed the lock of your door? He was mean, but he had inherited it, maybe it was his right to yell at me while I was scanning your archive at your studio. I feel sorry that you engendered this type of person. Well, he is decrepit, so whatever.

Now I feel confident to tell you how uncomfortable and dizzy I felt, when I heard and saw you on top of my grandmother in the room that I shared with you when I was a kid. During that day I knew who had the joker because I didn’t know how to play but I could walk around the table to see everyone’s cards. You were playing continental for about eight hours while drinking Bacardi with Coca Cola and ice. Now I know that you were making love, but I got scared. The noises weren’t normal. I thought that you were the bat that was printed in your drink’s glass, a huge white bat landed above my grandmother, covering her with its wings made from white sheets. You both were breathing hard, your bed was shaped as a hill, your head faced towards the ceiling while chanting a relief chorus together. Then you laid down next at her left side, your side of the bed.

By the way, I never heard that you went to Mesoamerica. When I got your letter, I found a reel of 8mm from some Mayan archaeological sites. It appeared that you sent it as well. I had seen all your archives, and I only saw your journeys to Europe, Asia, North America, and other states of Mexico, but I never saw your printed time on the other peninsula. You were always photographing my grandmother, reproducing her to admire her again. You were able to look at her twice: as fixed time being projected; and by your side. Once I saw you at your studio, your left arm was moving towards your mouth, your hand took a glass and raised it to drink your paloma while touching her leg with your other hand. There were two bodies looking at their past-self on the screen, when strings of smoke came in slowly through the window. A thin smoke invaded the studio. It seemed that my stomach smelled it because it started growling, then I heard “la carne asada ya está lista'' and I went outside to eat.

A couple of weeks ago we built a swing for Yátzil. It’s on one of the three trees that you planted when you started building your house. It seems that their trunks have carved tattoos because they’re not natural scars. As if you etched codes or formulas on their trunks. I have been observing their transformation since the day of the carne asada, when you stayed with my grandmother at your studio full of smoke. Were you hiding something? because they appear to be secret data, or sacred? Why would you want them to remain etched on the tree trunks even if they were going to deform with time, as me and everything that’s rotating in the universe.

Once I found a stone in Yucatan. It was made of limestone and had a calcite crystal inside. I kept it because it made me feel good, even if it was hard, it felt soft. Its crystal projected colors, the stone had its charms and a capacity to transmit peace, at least for me. I couldn’t bring it back to Tijuana, so I took a photograph of it. I reproduced the crystal as pixels, the light turned into digital information that I sent to my mother. Guess what she told me? That when you dug the ground to build her house, she found an identical stone at the hill where I was conceived. Since then I have been visiting the other Península often, I even got pregnant there.

Last December, we went to Yucatán, we walked at Samuel’s land plot. That day was so hot that we needed to find shelter behind a tree that protected us with its shade. The soil was covered by a thick, soft layer of mulch as a carpet that I enjoyed with my feet, while trying to get to the shade. In order to get behind the giant mango tree, we passed by a semi deep carved ground canal when my two-year-old daughter pointed to a couple of red rocks that were below the corner of the desirable shade. Yátzil ran towards the rocksand yelled, “casita!” showing extreme happiness while jumping as though celebrating something important. She stayed close to the rocks petting them for a while emanating an unbelievable joy and she kept saying, “casita”. My daughter found her home in the rocks where I had sexual intercourse with her dad, while we were watching unknown entities flying in the sky, transforming their shape while disappearing with unique movements. Probably there was an invisible force connected or coming from those interactive living pieces in space, who probably sent information to our surroundings at the same time of our climax. She made me have the idea that our native origin could be the exact territory where each of us was conceived. It appears that having the opportunity to go back to that spot and get in touch with the essence that belongs to us could give us peace. What do you think about this? I know you read a lot, probably there’s a theory that mentions this. I haven’t found anything yet.

You are right, delivering a child is one of the most natural actions in life, but the most impressively surreal pain as well. You know what? I made a list of 66 types of pain that I felt during my 66 hours of labor. I appreciate that you helped your wife during her postpartum, when that happens whoever gives you a glass of water is an angel. Probably you became one and that’s why you haven’t met her. Sorry, but this is an adorable reason, don’t you think?

Let me know anything that you remember, think, or observe. Anything. Please, I’m so excited!

Thanks for saving my eyes.

Your living fragment,

Ana Caro

I do not know where, nor when.

Anacaro:

Hoping you and Yátzil are very well. How is your mother? My adorable daughter, Luchita de mi corazón. Por favor abrázala de mi parte y salúdala, even if she does not understand it. I have been around her, she looks a lot like your grandmother with the difference that she also looks like her father, José. I have traveled around her watching her early days. She is, as a baby, older enough to sit. When I saw her, she looked like a porcelain doll, dressed in a baby blue mini dress. I acknowledge that your daughter is as beautiful as mine.

I want to let you know, I do remember the stone your mother found when we were settling the ground to start the construction for their house. It was similar to those I also have seen at Yucatán, like the one you described. I did not say anything because my visits to ‘la otra peninsula’ (como tú le llamas) were confidential and it was prohibited by your grandmother. She was afraid that her father would find out my past. When I read about this region in your letter, I was where your grandmother threw away those films. Being dead is weird, I do not know how you got the reels, I only thought about them after reading your letter.

During that journey, we drove my pearl color car: El Granada, I liked speeding up on the highway, mostly under the stars, breaking the humid environment while driving inside our yellow car. We made the roadtrip, I needed to get more henequén, (she did not know) I carved the reason on the trunk of those trees, where you have been paying attention. I told my Carmencho I wanted to look for a relative who lived in Yucatán. I just wanted to take her and our youngest daughter to Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Kabah, Labná. I was part of a collective science research in 1937, before meeting her, she asked me to keep it a secret. I took them there because I was endlessly curious about how their frequency would feel at historical lands. The tempo changed when she found out my real purpose. Disappointed, she grabbed my film camera and took the reel out the window. The vehicle speed unloaded the film behind a stormy sky. I only thought about how my lost negative was going to mix itself with the ground while disintegrating itself through time. As the loyal husband of María del Carmen Leal, I did not slow down, she needed to express her feelings immediately. By contrast, the male human type is different, thus I kept my other passion a secret. But we did pass by the field where I found my passion, organic fiber in its different stages.

Pienso en la imagen de Yátzil acariciando la roca diciendo “casita”. It is out of this world, but I do understand her. Disculpame Carmencho, pero tengo que compartirlo. In 1937, during the research field trip we stopped to eat Salbutes y Panuchos at an agave field. I do not know if it was the fact of working hours trying to find ancient genetic information, but I felt as if my DNA was going out of a cage. As if the agaves were magnets, I just sat by a huge one to contemplate the others. Are colonial residencies with native Mayan field workers still normal?

As you mentioned, our home is the place where we were conceived. I have not read anything about it, but I felt so connected to the agaves and wondered: how does home feel? So I asked my mother for the exact place where I was born. I went to a residence in Tamaulipas. I have never been there, as you know I am the son of the housekeeper’s daughter and their owner’s son. I never met my father, even if he supported me financially during a considerable part of my life. I went inside the property and found a huge field of Agave sisalana. There were a group of people who worked there, processing the plant in order to get fiber out of it. They were producing threads to sell. (Curiously, I had been conserving some of this fiber for a personal experiment). I couldn’t believe it; my parents must have had sex between those plants. I understood why I had been so passionate about the henequen fiber at the Southern East Peninsula of Yucatan. I had been feeling a connection to the fiber, probably it was related to a microenvironmental filtered element which made me the being that I was.

Invisible substances surround each body in our planetary environment. Conception happens after the interaction between an ovule with a sperm while traveling to the uterus. But there is also an outer environmental resource who mixes with the parent’s bodies to generate a new life. I have been around. It is another type of high speed element wandering inside the atmosphere which filters a woman’s body while ovulating. It only acts to wrap emerging chromosomes. This is probably why you feel that we are not alone, in fact our real home is where we were engendered.

After many years I was doing a secret experiment at the laboratory you went to. Thrilled, I whispered because I had preserved the fiber in a jar for fifty-three years, for all those years I spit saliva each week. When you saw me viewing through the microscope, I looked at something moving. It was the first time I took out the substance and blended it with other chemical mixtures on the mortar. Anyway, there was an earthquake and my experiment fell on your face, so I could not do anything but save your eyes.

I am not sure what an angel is, do you think you could help me find my real angel?

Honored by my own memories,

José A. Zorrilla

November 18, 2020

Grandfather’s non-living being,

My hands are sweating, I can’t believe any of these coincidences. It seems like another dream, where the films were thrown away and I found them after decades. Are you able to ask your microcapsule to take you in nanoseconds to the moment when I found them? How bad was that issue with your political family and your research?I can’t imagine how it is like to keep a part of your life in secret because of religious concerns. You were so passionate that you even let your lover manipulate you to be able to live your love. Are you going to tell me what the work was about? I am also working around the region and I will share it with you. But I need to acknowledge that it's impressive how you understand home as I do. We have a lot in common without knowing, maybe you noticed it before, during your wanderings as a non-matter being. It seems that you are with me in this phase of my life, even if you died when I was a teenager.

I refer to my daughter’s home as an ancestral rock because its location is part of the Chicxulub buried crater, which is 180 kilometers of diameter (obviously this is not the exact distance, Earth is always moving); its ring peak was discovered by geophysicists when trying to find petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico. Did you know that the impact didn’t affect only this region? Other researchers have been exploring Haiti, New Mexico, Colorado, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and other sites in Europe finding K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary, Paleocene in specific) sediments that evidence the geomorphological changes from that period, as the cenotes in Yucatan. My dearest grandfather: imagine that this meteorite is part of our home as well. You found the agave field in Tamaulipas, where others have explored this state finding iridium debris to prove the Earth’s affair of that era. I found an identical stone to the one that my mother saw erupting from the subsoil. The asteroid was powerful enough to reach other lands, maybe Baja California’s lithosphere was affected by this event, or probably the rocks migrated according to the Earth’s plate tectonics.

Do you know the importance of Earth’s interaction with outer space entities and how this has been essential in her evolution? It seems that every once in a while, the planet has a love affair with other cosmic organisms attracted by Earth’s vibration. They mix their molecules and properties during a magical encounter. Have you seen Mars or Jupiter ejaculating? Meteorites could be their active sperm, who are able to cross the Earth’s membrane, causing catastrophes in many levels, scale and duration (as my body’s reactions to hormones during pregnancy). Some asteroids are able to share their genetic information, incorporating their matter to ours, deconstructing ecosystems and ways of living.

I have been interested in Chicxulub, an asteroid which impacted my Earth (is it still yours?) 66 million years ago, when this happened, Earth started a long-term metamorphosis. During their encounter, it discharged a high amount of iridium along with other chemical compounds. The land where it collapsed is rich in calcium carbonate, so their mix evaporated generating a “global acid rain”. The atmosphere was covered by particles forming a dust layer that did not allow the sun to penetrate on the Earth as usual. The darkness altered the photosynthesis dynamic, causing the loss of many plants, and organisms that were part of the food chain. The loss of ammonites made part of the non-avian dinosaurs go extinct.

Dear Grandfather, is there a way to know exactly what happened? Are you able to observe the Cretaceous – Paleocene era transition? Is it true that some dinosaurs became birds? The avian realm could be transmuted dinosaurs. Many species of plankton disappeared while cyanobacteria (the first and most effective practitioner of photosynthesis) survived. Do humans coexist with dinosaurs? I wonder what happened during that lapse of darkness. I know that mammals evolved because there weren’t any huge predators that would obstruct our growth. As I told you before, evolution is a phenomenon: now the most predominant mammal species are humans and we are obstructing not only other lives, but our own as well. Being able to domesticate the avian realm in cages. I’m sure you have observed how my species has been taking enough space on the planet for disturbing our environment. We are the epicenter of our own extinction… or transmutation.

Tell me if you passed by Oxkutzcab when you went to Uxmal during the 1930s? It’s known as the state’s orchard because of its fertile ground. Funny, right? It is where Yátzil found her ancestral rock. If you were working in that region you probably visited the Lol Tun cavern, La Hermita cave, or any of the cenotes–big rock holes with subaquatic systems. Ts’o’not is what it’s called in Mayan, which means sacred wells, another of their water sources. The first time I experienced a cenote, I went with Don Samuel Uc, Yátzil’s grandfather. We got there in a red pickup truck that was used to carry seasonal fruit, and sell them at the market. When I stood out of the truck, I saw the surface made of lithophytes. The wild flowers were trodden to make a path in which I walked towards a ceiba, its roots above the rock guided me to a big hole. I stood in the corner of the rock, it was a window to the underground, its aperture was about 8 meters in diameter. It was a deep limestone hollow containing water, I saw how the light interacted with the cave, the sun was positioned in a way that its rays could reflect straight in the middle of the hole. An ephemeral landscape formed by the contrast of a cobalt blue with a predominant marine blue, the light could reveal the depth and its floor. We were admiring the photosynthesis in action and I wanted to join the plankton. We went down several narrow steps made of wooden planks with rope, it was tricky, I decided to jump. Are you able to witness the constant photosynthesis as you witness the shedding? When I was in the middle of the cave, submerging inside that light reflection with my eyes open, I felt anxious of that amazing feeling, it was so beautiful that it frightened me, I have never been consciously part of that Earth+Sun dance. My body was surrounded by microorganisms which danced with the sun at the same time. I was floating in filtered water from the ocean. It’s the Earth’s shedding, which forms these sites, millions of years ago, fossils, skeletons and other organisms that had calcium carbonate were deposited on the water’s floor, compacting themselves along with the clay, transforming into rocks. The roots of the ceiba that guided me to the entrance were hanging from the window. I could appreciate them next to a couple of stalactites coming down from the surface, they’re a reaction of water traveling through the ceiling, while filtering, the water evaporates mixing its minerals with the stone creating an icicle shaped extension of the ceiling. Their process is impressive because they are releasing drops of water and with it, they can make a stalagmite grow from the floor. Subterrain miracles. Did you get a chance to visit any of these spectacles? A lot of birds and bats are flying in and out the cave, some of them have their nests inside, on those plants that grow out of the rock walls.

Do you remember when we went to Seaworld? We saw a bird show while eating popcorn. The birds from the cenotes are not caged. Do you think that us as humans are contained in cellular cages?

I truly want to keep writing about my work, but this has been a long letter.

Thanks for not regretting about losing your living experiment.

With all the gratefulness of being able to reach you again.

Your granddaughter.

Ana Carolina Andrade Zorrilla

Here, Instant

To my dearest living fragment:

I am starting to feel sure you are my fragment, a living one, such as your decrepit uncle and all my appreciated descendants who are still human masses of tissues being able to breath and feel, therefore embodying time. Growing shapes moving with time. I do not have specific times anymore, but I still remember it, thus I have the notion and language.

You are right, those dinosaurs that you talk about from the avian realm can be locked inside cages, there is even a chicken wire. Why are you thinking about the human experience as being inside a cage? I felt similar each time I wanted to share my biogeochemical thoughts, data and experiments. Jesus María y José were the elements I forced myself to believe in. To be honest, I did not have any inclination towards a specific religion, but I did feel something stellar when being next to my fiber source: mis sisalinas. When I felt them for the first time, we where doing a research conducted by The Astrobiology and Human Culture department of the Primera Academia de Cultura y Ciencia Ancestral (PACCA) in Mérida Yucatan. 1937 was the year when I was in tune with the Earth.

During that research trip I was abstracting genetic information from human hair and bird feathers. An archeologist found an artisanal box while digging the ground. We drew a map of the road to get to the site where it was found. The object was made of limestone with carved glyphs on the cover. The philologist translated some of them as “all creation is actively alive”, “after darkness survivors turned into monkeys'', “all those giant reptiles according sun” “notes destroyed by the others” “we see objects that are not made from earth”,”they took our time prohibiting activities and offers to Gods”,” man nailed on a wood cross is god”,”they force us to give our land and pray”,”our debt is eternal”,”our world already ended”. “Halos,”our ts’o’nots are watched by human forces”. It was written by an undiscovered community group. The hair was the last evidence of pure Mayan genetics before the Europeans arrived in their region and spread everywhere they could, transforming the Mayan science into a myth by overshadowing it with their Christian myths. Even if I was not part of their beliefs when I met your grandmother, I do have faith in the culture and science that we discovered. The white feather had unknown DNA but it was close to a Trogon Collaris bird. I carved all this information on those trees, curiously you noticed it and you have been around the same area. So this was another experiment that I could not finish because I had to forget about spreading alternative beliefs, and be able to love. The only two experiments that I did not finish were because of love. The only thing that made me persevere other than love, was my jar with the henequén experiment. Qué crees Anacaro, ahora pienso en que Ella no aparecerá, con mayor razón pues ya plasmé el secreto.

When I think about human interaction with the Earth, I remember the image of a flower growing out from stones or cement. Nature will always defend itself. I do not know what is going to happen, but according to the Mayan speculations we are part of a higher purpose. Cosmic eventualities gave life to their Kairos calendar which is determined by phenomenological events. Their priests would study how evolutionary time cycles are correlated to the celestial movements. They also refer to the origin of life as the primordial synchronizing event when the four forces of nature: energy, matter, three-dimension, space and time came to existence. The Universe was created in three dimensionalities of length, width and depth, as well as the four directions and periods of time. It is impressive how they refer to consciousness as the mixture of time, life with senses and mind. They have thirteen heavens for each of their nine underworlds; this was their way to look at life evolution. Their Lords were characterizations of the cosmos. They used to offer human bodies as gratefulness for their existence. Humble enough to not worry about leaving their lives. Many of them were thrown to the cenotes that you talked about. How wonderful it is. Si tenemos cosas en común es porque eres mi fragmento.

Seriously, I was aware of the significance of cenotes for the Mayan civilization but after reading your letter I found a linkage between them and the Chicxulub impact as an astrological interaction, which gave mammals an opportunity to become humans of course but it was not the only one. Take a look at some meanings for how the Mayans will refer to cenotes. I will let you decide if it makes sense or it does not:

IK’-WAY-YA which means “black water well for the origin,”

WI- TE’-NAH stands for “home for the lineage origin,”

IK’K’UH POLAW K’UH: “cave of the wind divinity,”

STI’NAIL WITZ: “portal of the hill,”

SLOK’IB IK’: “departure for the clouds,” YAJNIB CH’ULELETIK: “shelter of the soul.”

I know which Hermita you are talking about, the one that is above the aluxes cave. Did you know that a witch had to intervene with the ancient Mayan spirits so the cave could be open to the public? We had to hire her when we went, otherwise a serpent or spelled air could intervene with us. On our way to the cavern I met a couple of embroiders, they were stitching in front of the church. I do now know how to describe the feeling of looking at them embroidering with steel needles instead of bone needles. Creating the shape of a flower by making crosses with colorful strings, even if their work is beautiful I could not stop thinking about their history. I can refer to my experience of being threatened for my passion, and the experience of their past women being imposed by European religious corporations.

Anyway, your grandmother’s family could not accept anything outside their catholic realm. But I accepted them as that.

I feel sorry that you had to go to a catholic school, but proud you are thinking in all of these cosmic connections to life, finally someone from the family knows how being in those lands takes you to a primitive state of being.

If your grandmother gets in touch with you, please tell her I am sorry, I broke the promise, but I still love her and hope the same from her.

Your death fragment.

José

Tijuana Baja California, Diciembre 3, 2020

Dear one of my patterns:

Wow, wow, wow multiplied by a thousand more wows. First of all, you are the most extremely in love person that I have ever known. Courage or dumbness is required to leave your first professional path because of a lover. I appreciate that in this case it wasn’t dumbness. I am part of this because your resignation was effective. I wish I could pay you back by being able to reach her. It’s something that I’ve been trying to achieve without success. Sorry about that.

Every time you were photographed you looked to the horizon. Your eyes pointing to either the right or left but never the lens. It seems that you’re discovering something, as with the microscope. I haven’t told you yet why I have soil from Chicxulub, it’s because I’ve been scouting various cenotes collecting soil and water from their underwater. I have been tracing half of its invisible crater. A ring of cenotes is part of it, that’s why I’ve been collecting metamorphosed fossils mixed with water. I photograph fragments of the crater with a camera adapted to a microscope, the images are intended to create an embroidered cartography of the crater. Come on! You met embroiderers where I found the only woman from the town that accepted to try to sew my microscopic images. Are you sure you met them, or did you filter in a drop of water again? I was tired of photographing people. By the way, did you intervene in my decision? I mean, I use the same tools as you, I have your archive, live in your building, and now I know that you did something on the other peninsula as well. And you are guiding me through our project. I still can’t decipher why I found those reels; this is a bio mystic experience. As mystic as the words that the Mayan used to refer to the holes of the Chicxulub crater.

Were you around the day that I decided to start using a microscope? My foot got stuck in the dirty mud of the Tijuana river, where I was working with deported people. My legs shook as yours when I saw you using a microscope the day of the earthquake. Your tool was another option for documenting life without having to interact with the energy of certain people. After a couple of years, I visited Samuel in Oxkutzcab, he was an involuntary immigrant who was deported. After years of living in the river canal he got sick and returned to his land of origin. We went inside La Hermita cave, the sound of dripping minerals like water droplets guided our journey. He turned on a lamp and the light bounced illuminating crystals all over the cave. We were inside a black hole that shined while interacting with artificial light. We also called that place the Aluxes house, it was surrounded by dripping stalactites and stalagmites coming from the floor. I used a tiny Ziploc to collect drops of water and photograph them. The day that I developed those samples under a microscope, I maximize a miniature image of the macrocosms. I felt those ants again going through my tissues. The amazement obstructed my vocal cords with whispers. Like yours in that laboratory.

Now that you mentioned the relations between cenotes and Mayan science. I would like to share with you some experiences that I have had during and after my visits to these historical cenotes. When the sun is not passing by their window, their darkness produces an apocalyptic feeling. A couple of times I swam to pick chips packages, plastic bottles and cans that were floating. Once we went to Zazil-Ha at Tecoh. It was too dark, I couldn’t get close to the walls because there was a deep dark barrier that felt as a precipice, I felt the presence of someone else, a suffocating feeling made me think that if I crossed the line I could drown, but I took a sample close to the shore. When I looked at it, I felt as small as that sample because I was as powerful as the most powerful people in the world. It was a snail trying to survive and I was a giant and could decide what to do with it. We looked at each other’s eyes as if we were in my dream. Seriously, I felt something for it, was that the presence that I felt when I couldn’t swim farther? Are you able to decipher interconnections of different types of beings? I felt sad, this snail was too far from its home. I put it back on the Zazil-Ha tube.

There are towns where the inhabitants charge for the cenote entrance, some have artificial lightning, and are full of people. There are villages that have their own sinkholes and are unknown by foreigners. Others are hidden in between giant and old bushes in the middle of the jungle and some of them are covered by trees, probably there are many that haven’t been discovered. There are private cenotes in restaurants or residencies. The Yucatán Peninsula also has wide open cenotes as rock lagoons. Last summer I took Yátzil with me to an ecotourism attraction in Cuzamá. Our transport was moved by a horse that walked over a narrow railroad track in between bushes for almost an hour. We got to Chacsinicche, Bolonchojool, and Chan Ucil. Last December I was able to get a sample from the Sacred Cenote of Chichén Itzá (I know you went there because I saw your film) where as you said Mayans conducted sacrifices. I got water from that well! Also, I collected a couple of samples from a haltun at Dzibilchaltun in which I observed green communities of microorganisms spinning as they float in the water, the cyanobacteria’s tone was altered by the digital exposure of light. In other samples I witness two planktons playing or fighting in a piece of plant while consuming floating micro-particles.

I am a human, a tiny living being that seems to be big. How would you describe yourself? If you’re a non-matter being but there are more like you, you must be a race with the characteristic of being from the smallest length that exists in the universe. You are able to experience the dust by your side. You are sensible enough to be transported with each gravitational vibration of Earth in the universe. I am your fragment, Yátzil is our fragment. You have your fiber, she has her rock and I have my crystal stone. We’ve been belonging to the organic realm, but have been segregated by our bodies, these are some of the cages that I was referring to in my past letter.

How is it to be disappearing? Probably by this time most parts of your buried body are dust. When your body disappears completely, would you donate the coffin? Burial wasn’t your decision. My grandmother read an article in the Reader’s Digests about how having your mortuary ready will improve your quality of life, then she proposed to get a mortuary package. I don’t understand why human bodies are buried inside a fancy heavy box that is trash. Life is full of ironies, the biggest irony might be the fact of being separated from the Earth while being the Earth. I am sorry that I brought this out, but since I got your first letter I have been thinking about it.

If you are still comfortable to communicate with me please write to me again. I feel you by my side when I am writing to you, did you already read this letter?

Always grateful for your existence.

Anacaro