encuentro

[note #50]

I’ve been in Oaxaca for a week now, a week where news of terrible things kept coming, nearly all of it happening in (Renee Good) or originating from (the oil grab of Venezuela) the country to the north, my home country, a place I still believe will right itself one day. I hold on to the recent elections in the US (Mamdani et al) as a sign that things are righting themselves, that we are (maybe) waking up from this long nightmare.

I’m here as a fellow with the Borchard Foundation’s Center on Literary Arts, which brings writers from Canada, the US, and Mexico (and one from Argentina this time) together for two weeks each year, just to spend time with each other. This gathering is called Encuentro (encounter), and I feel blessed to be part of it.

The writer Michael Spurgeon, of the Borchard Foundation, has somehow pulled this all together. Earlier in the week we gathered at a bookstore (La Jicara) for a conversation between Natalie Diaz, Katherena Vermette, and Mikel Ruiz on indigeneity and literature. Mikel read a poem in his native language (Tsotsil) which was unlike anything I’ve ever heard.

Here’s a fragment of Mikel’s poem: