Time for a Little Inspiration

Uh...I'm getting lethargic from sitting so many hours in front the computer each day doing my homework! I need a break, something to refresh me!

While this is true, I'm still having a good time reading and writing, my homework gets me so excited (nerd, I know)! Here's a little update on what I'm spending all my time on-

My final essays are on how Growing Power reflects a new rurality in the U.S. and my other one is about how the struggles of the small farmer world-wide due to the industrialization of the global food system and its control by a few large transnational corporations is being felt back home and in Mexico. I'm also wrapping up a final presentation on how Mexico's public policy supports, or rather doesn’t support, the development of its rural community. I'm specifically looking at its public policy for corn (Mexico traditional and sacred staple) and how the government is embracing GMOs and biotechnology as the supposed path to rural development in Mexico. I'm also reading a number of articles and books written by my professors and others on topics such as Post-Civilization, human right and autonomy in indigenous Mexican communities, the systemization and incorporation of traditional indigenous and campesino agriculture knowledge, New Rurality and tonnnsss more! To say the least, I absolutely love my school work! Well now you know what I'm working on.

Now on to the refreshing part-

I found this great thesis entitled, The Concept of Nature in Pre-Hispanic Nahua Thought. I haven't been able to read it all because like I said before, I've been working hard on my homework. I really liked this short section I read on the Nahua view of the correlation between humans and plants. If I am strengthening any of my values here in Mexico, it is most definitely my belief that humans are a part of this living, breathing earth, we are nature, nature is us, we are everything and nothing all at the same time. Thanks to my personal everyday experiences, lack of experiences (not having access to nature like I did back home), classes and relationships, my mind and hearth have been strengthened in these core truths. Here's a great example (from the thesis) of what I am talking about, I hope you like it-

"The lives of humans and plants are the same. Both originate from the earth, grow from seeds, require and take nourishment from the earth, mature, flower, produce fruit, wither, die, and return to nourish the earth. As a contemporary Nahua song from the Sierra Norte of Puebla puts it:

We live HERE on the earth [stamping on the mud floor]
we are all fruits of the earth
the earth sustains us
we grow here, on the earth and flower
and when we die we wither in the earth
we are ALL FRUITS of the earth [stamping on the mud floor]...
We eat of the earth
then the earth eats us.

Like plants, humans are organically interwoven into the living organism of nature, and they need to know how to move in balance and harmony with that organism order to survive and flourish. Like plants, humans need to live in balance with the various paired, polar cosmic forces that characterize the movement of nature: light and dark, hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. Like plants, humans must know where and when to sow their seeds, harvest, etc. -- i.e. when and where to perform rituals activities that help them remain in harmony with nature and maintain their balance upon the slippery earth.

This is inspiring and motivates me to try to become closer to nature every day. Back to homework.

Painting by Jose Esquivel