DE VISITA
"De visita" means "visiting" in Spanish. This zine is about existing in the imagined space between the homeland and the host country.
I I talk about you, my problem, in the abstract and hide the reality behind metaphors of a fantastical world. It’s nine AM and all I can think about is running away from you if only for a little while longer. I try to push you to the back of my mind but an alert notification pops up telling me my disk is out of storage. Covering my eyes with my hands, I make my final decision wishing you wont hold it against me. Confined within these four walls, I’ll keep you trapped for the day and hope
II A collage of faces adorns the surface of my grandmother’s chest of drawers. In this altar of memories mami is simultaneously in her 20s and 40s. This is the warping of a chronology, the overlapping of distinct ages at the same point in time. Between a laminated prayer and a recordatorio de difuntos I can see myself morphing into an adult and then rejuvenating back into a baby wearing a pristine baptism gown. Light captured and turned into an image; just like this, various moments have been immortalized and become part of history. Facing the uncertainty of death and the fragility of the mind, the truth is no human ever wants to be forgotten. If a picture is a legacy and a legacy is how I’ll be remembered then I’ll definitely try to smile next time.
III I heard that once you hit the big two-zero, the human mind becomes feverishly obsessed with recalling the past. Perhaps as a way of wanting to undo mistakes and understand where life went wrong, an overwhelming sense of nostalgia possesses you. Like an archeologist hoping to unearth a precious treasure, I have taken refuge in this sort of escapism. In this trance I feel the urge to devour childhood photo albums in the search of clues, to find evidence that can help me psychoanalyze myself and restore what’s broken. Either painful or happy, I’ve willed forth the earliest and faintest of memories and carefully tried to reconstruct them with the help of hindsight. But my hunger to trace, to look back and to return cannot be satiated with just my own experiences. My mental diversions have surpassed what I understand as my individual existence. Scavenging through the well of my foremothers’ memories, I've conjured a series of familiar settings: a small town surrounded by sand dunes, a ciudad provinciana, a northern plantation, an old barrio in the once not so busy capital. Fantasizing about the stories I’m told, I play them in my head like movies, my body growing fainter as I attempt to become part of all these various realities I invoke. In this nostalgic stupor I imagine myself in the body of my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, my great grandmother. I run barefoot, get drunk off of cachina, talk to spirits, swim in
IV Tonight, with bite marks all over my body, I’m looking for a connection. I page the moon shinning brightly over my window and leave her a message asking her to keep me company for the rest of the night. With the chirping of the crickets distorting my senses, I let the weight of my body seep through the tiny holes in the fabric of this chair and I wait for her response. The bite mark you left on my right arm begins to ache. Do you grow more ferocious day after day because I only forgive to later resent? In the silence of the late hours of a weekday night I google the name of an uncle I never met.
V I shut my eyes and hope to drown myself in the remembrance of times, let my mind soak in fantasies. But the truth is I can’t call forth any image. All I'm left with is a sea of black with sparse blotches of light fading and immediately popping back up again like jellyfish in the dark.
The writing is from a piece titled "20's Blues" published in La Liga Zine Issue #1.
Mari Santa Cruz is a peruvian girl in her early 20s currently based in Baltimore that enjoys writing and taking photos. She's the co-founder of La Liga Zine. ig - @m_santc / twitter - @msantc3 msantc3@gmail.com http://www.laligazine.com
MARI SANTA CRUZ